A spicy small-town, brother’s best friend, sports romance “packed with sizzling tension, heat, and sweet, swoon-worthy moments” (Peyton Corinne, author of TikTok sensation Unsteady) between a college football coach and the one that got away that you’ll want to devour in one sitting.
If he can prove he loved her then, and he loves her still, this time might be different.
Ten years after one of the most heartbreaking nights of her life, Melody Woods is back in her small hometown of Oakwood Bay, broke, jaded, and unceremoniously dumped by her big-city boyfriend. To top it all off, her twin brother, Parker, is pushing her to take his spot on a camping trip with the one guy she’s spent a decade avoiding.
For college football coach Zac Porter, his best friend’s twin sister, Melody, has always been off-limits. And after fumbling his chance ten years ago, a devastated Zac was sure he’d lost Melody for good. So, when Melody shows up at the campsite instead of Parker, Zac realizes that now is the time to prove to her that they were always meant to be, no matter how long it takes to make up for his teenage self’s mistake.
Reeling from the truth of her last relationship, Melody plans to stay in town just long enough to get back on her feet. Then, she’s gone again. Meanwhile, Zac is facing an uphill battle to coach his team to its first winning game in years, to show Melody how she deserves to be loved, and to keep Parker from ever finding out. Maybe then, being with her will be more than just a dream.
Publisher:
Atria Books
Print pages:
480
Reader says this book is...: strong chemistry (1) strong heroine (1) terrific writing (1)
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Prologue: Melody Prologue Ten Years Ago Melody “I have something for you.”
I snap my bedroom door shut. Then pause to listen for sounds of my parents coming to inquire why their daughter felt the need to sneak into the house after coming home early from a fully sanctioned final hurrah with her classmates the night before she leaves for college.
As it happens, that reason stands just feet away from me in the form of a tall, eighteen-year-old boy.
I give it a second before flicking on the overhead light. Even without it, I know I’ll find his chin dipped to get a proper look at me, sending dark hair spilling onto his forehead. I know that eyes the color of molten caramel will be on me, conveying their amusement.
“Whatever happened to the no boys in the bedroom rule?”
I was right: his face is screwed up, a touch confused but amused as hell, as he wonders why I brought him up here.
I don’t blame him.
In the four years that we’ve known each other, Zac and I have rarely found ourselves alone. Unless you count those few minutes in the boys’ locker room at school before a game, but that ritual went away months ago with the end of the football season.
I’ve been third-wheeling with Zac and my twin brother Parker since the first time he trailed into our parents’ house after practice, all quiet and lanky. Polite. New in town. At fourteen, Zac was already offering to help Mom set the table for dinner. When Dad went to drop him off at home later that night, Mom praised Parker for bringing home such a nice boy, who’d clearly been raised right by his parents.
Days later, we found out he was being raised right by his grandmother. Weeks later, we found out he wasn’t so quiet once he got used to new people. Months later, he was the perfect middle ground between the Woods twins—the right balance between my relentless sarcasm and Parker’s sunny smiles.
“It’s still a rule. But you’re you,” I tell him. He follows me into my room and plops down on the end of the bed with me. An imposing figure, just like I always imagined he’d be if I ever got him in bed.
Not that I ever could.
“Elaborate on that for me, will you?”
“You know.” I shrug. “You grew up with us. You’re… basically a brother.”
Zac’s eyes sweep my bedroom, a space he’s only ever glimpsed from the hallway. “Trust me, Melody. I’m not a brother.”
“Parker’s brother,” I amend quickly. “You grew up here, with him. What I mean is, you hardly count as a guest. This is totally fine.”
Zac arches an eyebrow, reaching behind him for the mini foam football sitting on my bed. “So why did you sneak me in through the back door?”
“I felt like taking the scenic route in.”
His mouth twitches. “And why are we whispering?”
“So that the guy I keep hidden in my closet doesn’t hear you and get jealous.”
Zac laughs, a warm, deep sound that’s been rewarding my snark for the past four years. He’d been one of the rare people in high school who hadn’t immediately confused my dry humor with snobbery.
“It’ll be weird not having you around, Clover,” he says with a sigh. “You think you’d ever move back here? After school, maybe?”
I eye Zac in my peripheral vision, refusing to look at him on the off chance the rush of warmth coursing through me has me flushing. He’s called me Clover more than a thousand times in those precious few minutes we’ve spent alone, but the way he says it tonight feels… different.
Quiet, intimate.
Like he can see into my brain and knows exactly how badly I need to hear that he’ll think about me while I’m away. At least for a little while.
“Maybe. But Oakwood Bay is all I know. I’ve always liked the idea of moving to the city.” When Zac only nods, I release a long breath. “Who knows, maybe I’ll be in both places one day. A city apartment, and a big stone house on the bay here.”
He looks around curiously. “A big stone house?”
I nod at my desk, where sits the large vision board we’d been tasked with putting together as a senior year project. “With a wraparound porch. A yellow front door, maybe a cute porch swing, and a patch of daisies. Or… you know. Something less cheesy.” I rise, tucking my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. “Anyway, I wanted to give you a going away present.”
Zac runs a hand over the stubble at his jaw that grew in way sooner than Parker’s, much to my brother’s dismay. “You’re the only one going away for school. Shouldn’t this be the other way around?”
“It should be.” Pointedly, I study the pockets of his jeans. “But you seem to have forgotten my gift at home.”
He rubs his lips together, trying not to laugh. “No, I didn’t. It’s in the car.”
I squint at him. “So, first he forgets to get me a going-away present. And then he lies about forgetting to get me a going-away present.”
He quirks a smile. Not a big one. Not the one that casts a glow on whoever he bestows it on. But it’s just enough to trigger the very best part of it. His eyes go all squinty, as though he refuses to be anything but singularly focused on the joy of the moment. Laugh lines carve deep around his eyes, deeper than any eighteen-year-old I know, announcing to the world what kind of person he is.
He’s Zac Porter, the golden boy of Oakwood Bay. Quarterback of the high school football team, on the cusp of taking the field for the University of Oakwood Bay, in just a few days’ time. My brother’s charming best friend, with a bevy of girls always trailing him. So confident and optimistic that everyone can’t help but crave his company, just for a little taste of his warmth. Even me, the infamously grouchy Woods twin, standing in the periphery of his life. Close but never close enough.
Without warning, Zac tosses the mini football. It soars over my head and I scramble back to catch it before it hits the ground.
“Nice catch.” He gets to his feet, shrinks the distance between us. Standing this close together, I need to tip my head back to look at him. “Why’d you sneak me into your room, Clover?”
“To give you a present,” I say breathlessly.
“And what kind of present is it?” Zac smirks, and I’m blushing again. “What kind of present requires you to sneak me into your bedroom, huh?”
There’s no way he doesn’t hear the rapid thump of my heart. I’m shocked my parents aren’t already barreling up the stairs, every heartbeat sounding the alarm.
Boy in bedroom. Boy in bedroom. Let’s go up and make this awkward as hell.
Zac nudges my chin, scrapes his teeth over his lower lip. “What are you gonna do to me, Clover?”
Is he… Is he making a move on me?
His gaze sweeps my face, and he fingers my chin. I think he’s holding his breath, but I might be projecting.
Because we don’t flirt, and he’s never touched me like this. I’m not sure what’s possessed him now, but it really feels like he might be…
He’s just trying to get a rise out of you, same as he and Parker always do. Don’t embarrass yourself falling for it.
“Ha-ha, you wish,” I say, moving for my desk. “Only in your dreams, Zac Porter.”
I force a laugh as I sort through the mess on my desk, trying to find what I’m looking for. Buying my cheeks enough time to dial down the heat, and so determined to move us past this moment that it takes a second to realize that Zac isn’t laughing with me. To recognize the silence as heavy.
He huffs out a breath. “Well, fuck.”
I turn to find Zac rubbing his face with rough hands. Every stroke reveals a couple of inches of flushed skin on his forehead, his cheeks.
Shit.
“I’m only kidding,” I blurt. “God, that was so embarrassing. I know you’d never actually wish—”
“I’d better get back to the party,” he says, finally surfacing from behind his hands. When he does, there’s not a trace left of that smirk. He eyes a spot on the wall above my head, cheeks still flaming. “I left Grams to fend for herself with the rest of the guys on the team.”
“Summer’s there,” I say of my best friend. “They were wiping the floor with Parker at poker when we left—”
“I’ll be quiet sneaking out. Don’t worry.” Zac flashes me a quick smile, turning for the door. “I’ll see you around, Mel.”
“Wait.”
I dash for the door, push it shut just as he starts to pull it open.
I’m panting. Maybe from rushing to catch him. Maybe because he’s standing so close, soft brown eyes staring at his feet, or because my heart is shoving the air from my lungs with every one of its rapid beats.
I can’t seem to pull together any other words, so I raise a hand between us.
Zac’s gaze lifts as I twirl a stemmed four-leaf clover between my thumb and forefinger. The way I always do, at least ten times a year. Our pregame ritual since we were fourteen, and I’d caught Zac nervously pacing the quiet halls of our high school before his first game, dressed in his gear from head to toe. A quarterback unable to coax himself out onto the field with the rest of his team.
“Can’t let you leave without it.”
He holds out his hand, accepting the clover. Staring down at it like I’ve just poured fairy dust into his palm. He swallows. “I don’t know how I’ll make it through a game without one of these.”
“You’ll pull through. This happens to be a very special four-leaf clover. I spent all day doing all kinds of crazy magic over it.”
“You’re saying it’ll never wilt?”
“It’ll wilt, and you definitely want it to,” I tell him. “Because it so happens that the person who’s carrying it when it wilts will inherit its magic. They’ll throw a million touchdowns every game. Ace all their exams. Never get a hangover.”
With a soft laugh, Zac folds his fingers over the clover. Tucks it into his pocket. He’s still not quite looking me in the eye. His shoulders are still deflated, and a prickle builds at the back of my neck.
Like I’m missing something.
Like it’s staring me in the face, but I can’t make it out.
Zac slides a hand into the pocket of his jacket and produces a new pack of shoelaces. They’re red, the same ones he wears on his cleats.
“What are you doing?” I ask when he rips open the package.
“Giving you your present.”
“You bought me a pair of shoelaces?”
“No, I didn’t,” he says. “You were right. I forgot to get you a going-away present and I’m feeling like a pretty big jackass over it. Hold out your arm for me.”
When I do, he loops a red lace around my wrist. Once, twice, three times. Double knots the bracelet in place.
“Now do me,” he says, holding out his arm and the other lace. With lightly shaking fingers, I loop and double knot it around his wrist.
“There,” he says with a breath. “I didn’t get to do crazy magic on it or anything. But maybe whenever you feel down or… or if you ever miss home? Maybe you look at it and know that someone here is thinking about you. Missing you.”
I think I might be suffocating.
Intense, all-consuming weight builds in the pit of my stomach, drifting upward, as I stare into his eyes. They peer down at me, fixed on mine like he feels them, too: the flurry of unsaid words now surrounding us. Words that mean nothing in isolation, but that, if I could just figure out in which order to string them together, could maybe change everything.
Because this feeling hardly makes any sense to me. Other than the weekly ten minutes we spend alone when I deliver his good luck charm from September to February, I’m number three in his friendship with Parker. The spare.
Except, right now, I feel like the one.
How many times have I wished he’d look at me like that?
We’re standing so close our socked toes are touching. And I’m filled with the most overwhelming urge to run my fingers through his hair. Feel the stubble along his jaw. Touch the lean muscle he’s built up from years of quarterbacking to a full-ride college scholarship.
“Kiss me.”
The words leave my mouth before my brain processes them. I wait for the kick of humiliation. For the regret, the urge to say something to erase the words. When none of that comes, all I do is stare.
Zac has gone completely still. I can’t get a good read on his expression, but I can tell he’s holding his breath.
“That’s not funny.” He says it so quietly I can barely hear the words over the sound of my own heart.
“I’m not being funny. I want to kiss you.”
Zac swallows hard. Once. Twice. “You’re not fucking with me?” I shake my head, feeling my throat dry out. “You really want to kiss me?”
I nod, suddenly overwhelmingly nervous.
And then his chest swells, and he takes such a long and thorough breath it’s like he’s surfacing from the deep sea.
“Stay here.”
I rear back. “What?”
“I have to… I have to go do something.” Zac opens my bedroom door, eyes still fixed on me. “Stay here and wait up for me, okay? I’ll be right back.”
“But—Zac, I just—”
I reach for him, but he shakes his head with enough intensity that I hit the brakes. He slips out of my bedroom, inching the door shut between us, eyeing me through the shrinking crack.
“I’ll be back, Clover, I promise. Wait up for me.”
Chapter 1: Melody Chapter 1 Melody “What a jackass.”
I focus on the pale-blue cashmere sweater I’m folding, tucking it into the dresser drawer with so much care you’d think it was my most prized possession.
It’s not. What I’m really doing is ignoring the man sitting at the foot of my new bed. His eyes are burning into my back, waiting me out, but he should know me better by now. I don’t cave when it comes to Parker Woods, and he’s also stubborn when it comes to me.
Just not as stubborn as I am.
“Melody, I am begging you to say words to convince me you know exactly what kind of jackass this guy is. He dumped you.”
“I know he dumped me. You don’t think I know he dumped me? I’m back in town, moving in with you, aren’t I?”
“Specifically, he dumped you so he could fuck his way through a boys’ trip to South America. You do know that’s what he’s doing, right?”
I wheel around to face him, immediately regretting the way I plant my hands on my hips like a stern mom. But I’ve committed to it, so I throw in some narrowed eyes for good measure. “You don’t have to rub it in. Okay, maybe he dumped me. Maybe I just spent the past month wallowing in our old apartment by myself. But it really was a great relationship while it lasted, and I don’t see why I can’t remember it fondly—”
With a groan, Parker falls dramatically onto the mattress. He’s freshly home from work, still dressed in a pair of athletic shorts and a T-shirt adorned with the UOB Huskies logo on the sleeve.
“Correction: He’s a manipulative jackass. He’s out there sleeping around, and he’s got you here remembering him fondly. I don’t know what you ever saw in him, Mel. Is it the rich guy thing? Did he at least buy you nice things for tolerating him all these years?”
I move to the bed where one of my suitcases sits open, still full to the brim, and stare down at Parker who’s now glaring at the ceiling.
There are boy-girl twin combinations who look totally alike.
That can’t be said for me and Parker. We have the same blue eyes, the same scowl when we’re pissed off, and the same talent for conveying our disdain with just a half-second glance.
But we’re opposites in every other way. He’s brown-haired where I’m blond, and he got blessed with several extra inches in the legs. He’s spent his whole life here in Oakwood Bay, graduated from UOB and took a job as a physical therapist in its athletic rehab center.
Meanwhile, I moved to the city for college ten years ago and never made it back home outside of the holidays.
Except now, courtesy of the demise of my six-year relationship.
“Is this what it’s going to be like, moving in here with you?” I ask him. “Look, it’s bad enough I had to move out of the apartment I shared with Connor—”
“And hightail it out of the city you’ve lived in for a decade—”
“That part had nothing to do with him. I couldn’t afford to live there alone on a part-time salary.”
“Because precious Connor couldn’t stomach the idea of the independence you’d gain having a full-time job. And then he goes and throws you to the curb. How are you still sitting here defending him? Where’s the rage, Mels? Where’s the hate? Why aren’t you telling me about the bonfire you made of his belongings on your way out of that absurd apartment you shared?”
“There’s nothing to hate. He always treated me well. Looked after me. He got me my job—”
“Which you despise,” Parker interjects. “I’ve never once heard you gush about the prospect of making rich white men richer for a living.”
I ignore him, but he’s not wrong. Maybe I’d graduated college armed with a math degree and no clue what to do with it, but crunching numbers at the same investment bank where Connor worked definitely hadn’t been on my bingo card. Until it was.
But at least I’d found a job, as aimless as I’d felt back then. At least I’d been earning something, paltry as it had been. At least they’d hired me as a remote worker, letting me move back to my hometown after it became glaringly obvious I could only afford to live—quite illegally and perilously—in a street-side federal mailbox post-breakup.
It might have been the gracious thing to do to let me have the apartment we shared, but it was Connor’s apartment, really. He bought—well, his parents bought—a stunning condo in a high rise in the heart of downtown, high enough to peek over the surrounding skyscrapers for a glimpse of the river and the deep orange sun as it crossed the daytime sky. That apartment was pure glamour. Everything a small coastal town girl pictured when she imagined a life in the city.
And Connor ratcheted up the glamorous lifestyle when he sweetly refused to split the mortgage with me and my part-time salary, insisting he was thrilled to afford it for the both of us and that it made little sense that we’d both run ourselves ragged working demanding jobs. That I should go out and enjoy my life. Which, other than the three days a week I spent in the home office he lovingly put together for me, consisted of lengthy, directionless walks along the river, various fitness classes, and lunch with the other barely employed girlfriends within our circle.
Parker plucks a high-necked blouse adorned with pearls from my hands, holding it up by the shoulders with a grimace. “Let me guess: He bought this for you?”
Also true. I’ll never deny that I lived a very spoiled life with my very doting boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.
I snatch back the shirt and go to hang it in the closet. “I already know my life is in shambles, Park. I’ve had to crawl back home to live with my baby brother at twenty-eight.”
“Hey—first off, I’m only a minute younger than you. Are you always—”
“Yes, I will always hang that minute over your head. You know it’s my favorite thing to do.”
“Second, I may live above a bar—”
“Oakley’s is the only bar in town.”
“—but I’m living a very adult life, in this very adult apartment. You know, I think it’ll be really good for you, being back. Have you told Summer you’re here?”
She’d be happy to see me, I know she would. Growing up, my friend Summer was a refuge in a world where I was constantly surrounded by boys, between Parker and his football teammates. Maybe I’d detached myself from Oakwood over the past decade, but she’d always made it a point to come around when I was back for the holidays. Still, though…
“No, I haven’t told her,” I sigh, fiddling with a shirt sleeve in my closet. “As much as I love you for letting me move in while I get back on my feet, you have to admit it’s all a little embarrassing. Getting dumped out of nowhere. Crawling back home, not being able to afford my own place.”
“Trust me, the only person who should be embarrassed is that idiot ex of yours.”
“Actually, Connor is incredibly smart. He’s the youngest person at our company overseeing a Fortune 500 CEO’s portfolio.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mel,” Parker groans. “I know. It’s all he talked about the last time I had the misfortune of enduring his company, the pompous prick.”
When would that have been? Parker made the three-hour drive to meet me in the city all the time, when I first moved out there—a good thing considering I started avoiding Oakwood Bay like the plague, and I love the hell out of my brother. His visits dwindled, though, the further I got into my relationship with Connor. Parker wasn’t a fan of the so-called pompous prick. But Connor also wasn’t a fan of Parker’s many opinions, and the way he’d supposedly espouse them as fact.
I never felt like I could have them both equally in my life, and seeing as I lived with Connor, it was my relationship with Parker that suffered.
Not for the first time since the breakup, the image of Connor in my favorite shirt of his—the fitted polo that brings out the blue of his eyes—comes to me. He sits me down and takes my hand, then shares with me that he isn’t happy anymore. Tells me how much I mean to him, how he’ll always be grateful for me and the years we spent together, even when we go our separate ways. And then we do—we go our separate ways.
I finger the hangers in my closet, waiting for the tears to hit. They did, quite badly, the night of our breakup. Then the confusion settled in and hasn’t left me since.
I didn’t feel the monotony he said he felt. Had no idea what he meant when he said our futures no longer lined up. He left me so perplexed by the end of our talk that I spent the rest of the week trying to sort his words into an order that made sense. He’d stayed over at a friend’s place that first night to give me space, and by the time I woke up the next morning, he’d left for his month-and-a-half-long South American sabbatical. I’d never had a chance to ask where I went wrong.
Maybe that’s why I’m feeling this way. Maybe the confusion is why I haven’t shed a single tear since the initial shock of the breakup.
It might explain this inexplicable lightness, this strange relief deep down in my bones.
What else could it be?
Parker blows out a breath. His eyes are soft, sympathetic as I sink onto the bed beside him. I don’t know why. Perhaps we’ve developed some kind of twin telepathy sometime in the past twenty-eight years, because I haven’t made a peep about this I don’t miss my boyfriend of six years thing. It’s entirely heartless. Better kept to myself.
“You know what? What you need is a good distraction,” Parker says suddenly. “A change of scenery to get your head right. I have to skip the annual Labor Day camping trip this year. There’s a friend coming into town last minute, and I can’t miss seeing her.”
I make a face. “The French exchange student you met at UOB? Or the Australian?”
“She’s from Sweden.” Parker wiggles his eyebrows. “She’s loud. Enjoys a little voyeurism—”
“Gross, Parker. I get that hearing questionable sounds is probably part of the deal now we’re living together, but I thought you’d at least give me a grace period.”
“You do get a grace period, sis,” Parker says with a shit-eating grin that instantly has me dreading his next set of words. “You won’t be here this weekend to hear it.”
“And where exactly will I be?”
“You’ll be taking my spot on the camping trip.”
I return a deadpan stare, letting the thought sink in. Waiting for some part of it to appeal to me. But it doesn’t. Spending my first weekend back home camping with Summer and…
And Zac Porter.
Absolutely fucking not.
“I’m not certain that’s the best idea,” I say, folding a pair of crisp, inky blue jeans.
“It’s a brilliant idea. You’ll have a great time. Get your mind off Connor. You can hitch a ride out with Summer, and you’d get to meet our friend Brooks—”
“I will not be attending.”
Parker laces his fingers behind his head. “Then I should warn you: I’m loud in bed. And she’s not a quiet little mouse, either.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Yup,” he says, popping the P sound. “And I won’t tame my impulses in my own apartment, big sis. So unless you wanna go out and buy yourself a pair of industrial-grade earplugs, you’re in for a very long, long weekend.”
“Parker,” I groan, giving up on unpacking and tossing that pair of jeans back into my mess of a suitcase. “This is a horrible, horrible idea. I haven’t even got a tent!”
“You won’t need one,” Parker says. “I’ll make sure everything’s set up for you by the time you arrive at the campsite.”
I gesture at my suitcase. “Look at all this. I don’t have any camp-appropriate attire—”
He waves away my words. “You have until tomorrow morning to figure that out.”
“But—”
Parker grins. “You know, Ava and I have this thing for bondage. Rope, restraints…”
I rear back. “You do that kind of thing? God, what am I asking—stop talking about this. Right now.”
He shrugs. “It’s great, if you’ve got the right partner—”
“Oh my God, okay,” I say loudly, tone begging for the end of this disturbing conversation. “I’ll go camping. But be prepared to take the brunt of my bitching when I’m back, and you’d better stock up on After Bite because mosquitos devour me.”
Parker pouts. “Poor wittle Melody and her mosquito bites.”
I smack him on the knee. “You know they turn into these insane red welts—”
“It’ll all be worth it, Mels. You’ll see,” he says, grinning at the ceiling and proud as hell of himself. “This’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
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