Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 116759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
It’s hard to stay in the friend zone when the attraction is this hot…
Going into my senior year of university at war with a member of the British royal family wasn’t in my carefully laid plans. Sebastian Thorne might be the grandson of a princess, but it’ll take more than a royal pardon to get me to forgive him for pretending to be someone he’s not.
But Sebastian is determined to be my friend. Even if it means signing up to a psych experiment just to get me to talk to him. Who knew a sincere apology and him saying my name in that posh English accent would make me weak in the knees?
This year was supposed to be about my dissertation and graduate school. Only, Sebastian has thrown my ordered world off kilter. He makes me bolder, more confident. A braver version of me.
Yet every lingering glance and stolen touch has me realizing one thing…
I’m falling for my best friend.
There’s just one problem. Sebastian has demons, ones that make him determined to keep me in the friend zone no matter the cost.
And even when temptation sends his walls tumbling down, the beauty we’ve found might not survive against the will of powerful outside forces
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER ONE
LILY
Edinburgh, Scotland
Cars and black cabs continually moved up and down Leven Street. My gaze wandered from the street to the shops opposite the flat, to the Victorian apartments above them that mirrored the one I stood within. My fingers twitched on the curtains as I attempted to dispel the melancholy hovering over me.
Bruntsfield has been my home for two years. After a year in university accommodation, Madison, my freshman roommate and best friend, and I moved into this flat near the Meadows, a park close to the main campus. We were a quick walk to the library and the Dugald Stewart Building, which housed my psychology classes. The flat was old with a crappy heating system, several broken sash-and-case windows, and a stubborn mice problem. But it was airy and roomy, and it held within it two years of memories. Some extremely happy. Some not so much.
But it was home.
And it was my final year here with Maddie.
A soft object connected with the back of my head, bringing me out of my musings. A sharp glance over my shoulder informed me the object was a cushion and my attacker was Madison.
She grinned unrepentantly from her spot on the sofa next to Sierra. “Hey, daydream believer, I’ve been calling your name.”
I turned, settling against the windowsill. “Sorry. What’s up?”
“It’s our first night back at uni. We need to celebrate,” Sierra, our podcast cohost, piped up in her American accent. She was a full-time international student at the University of Edinburgh, originally from New Hampshire. We’d met in one of my English lit modules in freshman year before I made the switch to psychology. Sierra wanted to work her way up to becoming a developmental editor at a publisher when she moved back to the States.
“Teviot? For old times’ sake,” Madison suggested.
Sierra and I glanced at each other before immediately shooting our friend’s idea down with a cacophony of increasingly emphatic nos.
Maddie raised her hands in surrender. “Jesus, it was only a suggestion.”
Teviot was part of U of E’s student union. It was housed in a beautiful, Gothic-style building on the main campus at Bristo Square. It had a nightclub inside and a couple different bars, including the Library Bar and Teviot Lounge Bar. Sierra and I considered Teviot primarily for freshmen. Also, a wee bit gross. There were much-needed plans in place to redevelop the entire building.
“I guess we’re too cool for Teviot these days,” Maddie continued sardonically in her Geordie accent.
I snorted because I’d never been cool a day in my life. “It’s not that. It’s freshers’ week and it will be teeming with eighteen-year-olds. Let’s go somewhere less freshmany.”
“Somewhere less freshmany requires paying full price,” she reminded us.
“We could go to BrewDog.” Sierra shrugged. “Student discount.”
A twenty-minute walk later, we were in the busy bar on Cowgate, a long way from our first-year uni accommodation. Lucky for us, a table of people were leaving as we came in and we grabbed their booth. The girls strode off to order drinks at the bar while I protected our spot. Indie rock music pumped through the room, loud enough to be heard but low enough you could still have a conversation. In fact, the loud hum of discussion and laughter overpowered the music. Because we’d nabbed the table before a server could clean it, it was sticky and the earthy smell of hops permeated the air.
“You’re doing it. I can feel it,” Maddie said as they returned, sliding a pint of pale ale toward me.
I frowned. “What am I doing?”
“You’re missing this already.” She gestured among us all. “You’re being all sad and mopey when we have an entire year ahead of us.”
Sierra nodded. “Don’t you think I’m the saddest of us all? When I leave, I’m heading back over that great big ocean. Maddie’s heading back to Newcastle, which is only a few hours away, so you guys can see each other whenever you want. I doubt we’ll see each other more than every other year or so, maybe not even then.”
My heart ached at the thought. “I’m going to miss you. So much.”
“No!” Maddie yelled dramatically, causing heads to turn our way. She made a face at the onlookers and shooed them. “Back to your own business, people.” Turning to us, she narrowed her pretty blue eyes. “We are not doing this. We are not spending our senior year missing one another before we even leave. We’re going to enjoy the shit out of this year and each other.” Maddie raised her glass. “Promise me.”
Sierra and I shared one last melancholy smile before I made a concerted effort to shrug off the sadness. Maddie was right. We knew Maddie would be returning to Newcastle with her MA in architecture to work at her dad’s firm. We knew Sierra would travel back to the States, hopefully to one of the publishers she’d already started querying. But that didn’t mean we should waste the time we had together worrying about our impending separation. I raised my glass, along with Sierra, and we clinked it against Maddie’s with an “I promise.”