Until selma, p.1
Until Selma, page 1
Until Selma
Copyright © 2021 by Harley Stone
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published by Boom Factory Publishing, LLC.
Harley Stone, CONTRIBUTOR to the Original Works was granted permission by Aurora Rose Reynolds, ORIGINAL AUTHOR, to use the copyrighted characters and/ or worlds created by Aurora Rose Reynolds in the Original Work; all copyright protection to the characters and/ or worlds of Aurora Rose Reynolds in the Original Works are and shall continue to be retained by
Aurora Rose Reynolds. You can find all of Aurora Rose Reynolds Original Works on most major retailers. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, photocopying, mechanical or otherwise, without express permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, story lines and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or any events or occurrences are purely coincidental.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Afterword
About Boom Factory Publishing
About the Author
Acknowledgments
For my BOOM, Meltarrus.
Thank you for teaching me what romance really is.
Introduction
Fresh out of the Army, Tavonte Jones is home on a mission to rescue his teen sister from a narcissistic creep. Running into his high school crush was the last thing on his mind, but now that he’s seen her, he’s determined to make Selma his.
Resigned to live vicariously through romance novels, Selma Black has all but given up on finding her own happily ever after when an old classmate returns, looking like a fantasy come to life and offering everything she's ever wanted.
As circumstances get complicated and dangerous, Tavonte must keep his family safe and convince the girl he’s always wanted that their real-life romance will have the perfect storybook ending.
A Dead Presidents MC crossover.
1
Selma
MORNING SUN FILTERED through the sheer curtains of my bedroom window, casting shadows across my room and brightening my Kindle as it transitioned to daylight mode. I’d officially stayed up all night reading. It wasn’t the first time. As a grown adult who worked my ass off and paid my bills, I sometimes allowed myself this indulgence. After all, the love I had for book boyfriends was the only no-regret relationship I’d ever been in.
Books didn’t cheat, didn’t lie, and weren’t emotionally unavailable.
Who cared if I was avoiding my own pathetic excuse for a love life by diving headfirst into someone else’s love story? There was nothing wrong with living vicariously.
If only I could get my stupid heart to agree.
Stop. We’re not feeling, we’re reading.
Right. I’d allowed reading to become my coping mechanism. Adulting at its finest. The realization left me reeling. I didn’t want to be the kind of woman who needed to merely cope with reality. I wanted to be the badass bitch who grabbed reality by the horns, wrestled it to the ground, plopped a saddle on that bad boy, and rode it until it stopped bucking.
Snickering at my metaphor, I backed out of the book, pressing the buttons that would return me to its cover. A sexy bare-chested man in a cowboy hat stared back at me, his heated gaze promising the ride of my life. It had been far too long since I’d found the kind of man I wanted to rope in, but if the hero of this story was standing before me, I’d give him a ride around the corral for sure.
I was only about twenty-five percent into the book, but so far, the hero had bravely ridden his trusty steed through a pack of hungry wolves to save the heroine’s little sister. Like most of the romance novels I devoured, there was instant panty-melting attraction and the perfect, swoon-worthy declarations that could only be found in fiction. At least, my limited interaction with men had proven this kind of behavior to be unrealistic, but I wasn’t concerned with nonsense like believability. I read romance because I wanted stories that filled me with hope for something more. Something deeper.
I wasn’t looking for grand gestures. I didn’t need declarations of undying love while the hero rescued me, swept me off my feet, and made me the center of his universe.
I just wanted to feel special. Like I mattered to someone.
Lately, the dating world seemed like a twisted game of catch and release, where everyone was more worried about quantity than quality. Maybe there was a prize I didn’t know about for reeling in as many options as possible without committing to a single one. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t about that life. Call me old fashioned, but I needed more than a warm body occasionally crowding my bed. I needed mutual commitment and reliability.
Someone banged on my bedroom door, startling me. The Kindle, released in my surprise, fell forward. It smacked me in the face in a painful wakeup call from the universe.
Get up, dummy. You’ll never find what you’re looking for here.
Groaning, I raised my e-reader and checked the screen for damage, breathing a sigh of relief that my hard head had left the thing intact. I hoped the same could be said for my face, but I could already feel a bruise coming on. Setting my Kindle aside, I rubbed my chin and glared at the door. “Yes?”
“Rise and shine, Selma. Breakfast waits for no woman,” my twin sister, Selja, crooned in a chipper, sing-songy voice that made my sleep-deprived brain wince.
I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. 8:12 a.m. was way too early for Selja’s lively shenanigans. Saturday morning was supposed to be about sleeping in, or in my case, sleeping at all. “What breakfast?” I asked.
“With Bre, remember?”
Oh yeah. Lost in my attempt to escape reality, I’d forgotten about the breakfast plans we’d made earlier that week. A lot had changed since I’d made that commitment, and I didn’t want to go out. Hell, I didn’t want to leave the house at all. Thanks to the invention of food delivery, I could stay comfortably wrapped in my fictional world until Monday, when I’d have no choice but to put on my big girl panties and face my latest mistake head-on. I was really hoping to avoid even thinking about my life choices until then.
Besides, I was getting to the sexy part of my book and wanted to find out just how Betty chose to reward Brock for rescuing her little sister. After all he’d done, he deserved some good, good lovin.’ For riding on the couple’s metaphorical shoulders during their adventure, I deserved to vicariously experience their victory sex. I was ninety-nine percent sure their fictional coitus would be better than the sub-par sex I’d experienced up to this point of my life, and I needed to keep reading to knock out my one percent of doubt.
“Uh… raincheck?” I asked, rolling over to grab my Kindle.
Selja fake laughed like I’d just made the worst joke ever. “Fat chance. Get up.”
“I’m tired. I haven’t slept a wink. Insomnia’s kicking my butt.”
“Right.” Her tone said she wasn’t buying what I was selling. “You don’t have insomnia. You have an obsession with books and inadequate respect for our plans.”
I felt called out. Selja and I shared books, so she knew exactly how deep my addiction ran. To be fair, she usually spent her nights with book boyfriends, too, but she was a machine and could run on fumes with no danger to herself or others. I, on the other hand, needed at least a few hours of shut eye in order to form coherent sentences. Hoping to appeal to her sense of solidarity, I adjusted my strategy and tried again. “I started a new cowboy romance series yesterday. It’s really good. I’m on book two. The first is in the library. We should stay home and read. We can call Bre and reschedule breakfast for tomorrow.”
“Nope. You clearly need an intervention. I’m comin’ in.” Before I could respond, she barreled through the door and peered inside, giving the e-reader in my hand the stink-eye. “You’re here, which means your date didn’t go so well. I want details. Does the situation require a blocked number or a body dump? If you’re leaning toward death, I need to know what sort of hitman we need to hire to take out that asshole.”
“There are different types?” I asked.
“Of course. It’s all based on the job. You have the basic rack ’em and whack ’em hits or the slow torture until they regret all their life choices jobs. Quit stalling. You can tell me what happened now, and then repeat everything to Bre, or you can wait and tell us both over breakfast.”
Neither option appealed to me. “I’ll take whatever’s behind door C.”
Selja’s hard stare told me she wouldn’t be putting up with any of my bullshit. Dammit. “There is no third option. We leave for breakfast in twenty, and I’ll bust down this door and drag your ass out of bed if I need to. You know I will.”
My love for my sister knew no bounds. She was my best friend, steadfast roommate, favorite coworker, unflappable sounding board, and bigge st cheerleader. But there were times she could seriously use a pause button. I wouldn’t freeze her forever, just long enough to figure out my own mind without her unsolicited input. We’re identical. We shared a womb, grew up practically attached at the hip, and now we live and work together. I love being around her and wouldn’t change our relationship for all the tea in China, but sometimes it was difficult to decipher where her opinions ended and mine began. I needed to make my own decisions, especially when it came to matters of the heart. A difficult feat with my twin basically in my head.
“Do you think cowboys really have sex with their boots on?” I asked, hoping to spark her interest in my latest read. The guy in book one did, and I was curious as to whether or not that was an actual thing. Living in Tennessee, I’d met my fair share of rhinestone cowboys, the kind that sparkled and glittered, but probably wouldn’t know what to do if you so much as introduced them to a horse. The cowboys in these books were rough and tough. They worked from sunup to sundown, and still found the energy to bless their women with numerous orgasms on the daily. Most of the cowboys I knew were shameless players who blew their paycheck at the bar, guzzling whiskey as they scouted for a body to warm their beds. I wasn’t sure hard-working, one-woman heroes even existed anymore.
Now that was a depressing thought.
Selja’s eyes softened. Like always, my twin saw right through my diversion tactics to my battered hopes and dreams. Although perfectly comfortable with her own single status, she knew all about the pain and loneliness threatening to suffocate my heart. She understood how desperate I was for my own love story, and she wanted me to find it.
“Get dressed. Bre went out with a real cowboy a few times. She said he was always too busy working or too tired to do anything fun. I don’t know if they made it much further than third base, but she might be able to tell us if he kept his boots on,” Selja said.
She wasn’t letting me off the hook, but she wouldn’t be a hard ass when she weaseled the details out of me, either. It was the best compromise I could ask for, considering the way she thought sharing a womb made her privy to all my thoughts and life experiences. Selja ducked out, and I plugged my e-reader in to charge before climbing out of bed and heading to the shower. Twenty-five minutes later, I emerged from my room, showered, dressed, and full-on pretending to be a functioning adult. Selja took one look at me, wrapped me in a hug, and didn’t say a word about me being late.
I must have looked even worse than I thought.
Sweeping me downstairs and out the back door of our two-bedroom townhouse, she led me over the pathway through the backyard to the gate. Two shiny Tesla Model 3s waited in our covered parking area, hers a bright, eye-catching red, and mine, an understated, calming blue. It was probably cliche that identical twins chose to drive the same make and model of car, but we liked comfortable, environmentally friendly vehicles, and needed nice enough rides to shuttle high-profile clients out to dinner. Our Teslas checked all the boxes.
“I’ll drive,” Selja said, unplugging her car.
“Thanks,” I replied, relieved. My vision had gone a little blurry and I was beginning to feel the tell-tale wooziness that usually accompanied a sleepless night.
I climbed into the passenger seat while she slid behind the wheel. A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of Jones’s, a cute little locally owned restaurant on Main Street. Parking in the back lot, we entered to find Brianna waving us over to the window table she’d secured. The three of us hugged it out and sat as the waitress brought coffees.
“Can I get you ladies anything else to drink?” She asked.
Selja’s gaze slid to me. “I think we’ll need a round of mimosas.”
As the waitress retreated, Brianna’s gaze shifted from me to Selja and then back to me. “Mimosas? Are we celebrating or drinking our feelings this morning?”
That’s what I liked about Brianna… she got right to business. Our best friend since grade school, we did our best to pull off a Charlie’s Angels vibe. In reality, we probably had more in common with the Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus. We never tried to suck the lives from children or anything, but the three of us were chronically single and often comically confused about the ways of the modern world. As far as famous trios go, it could be worse. We hadn’t yet lowered ourselves to Three Stooges level. At least, not without tequila.
The smile dropped from Brianna’s face as she read the answer in our mirrored expressions. “Oh no. What did he do?”
Buying myself a few minutes to come up with an answer that wouldn’t evoke tears, I sipped coffee and did my best to avoid eye contact.
Selja’s gaze was so intense it threatened to burn a hole into the side of my face. “Yeah, sis, what did Mr. HD do?” she asked.
Mr. “HD” was an acronym my sister had not-so-lovingly bestowed upon our coworker, and my on-and-off again boyfriend, Paul Erickson. It would be amazing if HD was code for something cool like ‘Handsome and Dapper’ or even ‘Huge Dick,’ but that just wasn’t the way my luck ran. In reality, HD stood for ‘he’ll do,’ since Selja was convinced I was settling for Paul, claiming my willingness to date him had more to do with the ticking of my biological clock than any actual feelings or attraction. And last night, somewhere between reading steamy sexy scenes and crying in the bathtub, I’d come to the conclusion she was right.
I was settling.
I didn’t want to settle, but I also didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. Regardless, I should be attracted to Paul. He was charming, owned his condo, had his life together, and had meticulously worn me down until I agreed to give him a shot. What did they call that? Oh yeah, persistent. Or… annoying. Maybe stalkerish? I couldn’t decide which. Okay, there were no fireworks between us, but between his determination and my work ethic, we should have been able to create a spark. No such luck. He’d spent every minute of our time together singing his own praises while simultaneously trying to get into my pants. Turned out, we didn’t want the same things. I was looking for a romantic connection while he seemed more interested in developing a super-fan who’d spread her legs at the mention of his latest sales report.
Needless to say, Mr. He’ll Do didn’t do a damn thing for me.
Selja and Brianna were still staring at me, waiting for an answer. I had to give them something or they’d never relent.
“Paul has a lot of good qualities.” I started, going for the mature and diplomatic response.
“No.” Selja held up a hand, silencing me. “You always defend him. Just give us the facts and let us make up our own minds. Did you have the DTR discussion?”
My sister was a big fan of defining relationships. She treated personal relationships like business, each connection requiring listed expectations so there’d be no confusion or disappointment. My haphazard relationship with Paul, void of any sort of discussion about our future, had been driving her crazy.
“Yes,” I replied.
She picked up her coffee cup but paused with it halfway to her mouth. “And…? What did you say? How did he respond? Seriously, Selma, why do you force me to pry information out of you?”
I wasn’t always evasive, but admitting Paul didn’t value me enough to commit was humiliating. Relenting, I replied, “I asked him if we were exclusive.” The urge to slink beneath the table and hide was overwhelming, but I sucked up my emotions and kept going. “He said he’s not looking to settle down, but when he’s ready, I’m the one he wants on his arm.” And the asshole had said as much with a wide smile. He’d expected me to be happy with his answer. Flattered, even. Like he was doing me some great service by shelving me until he was ready to take our farce of a relationship to the next level.
Brianna snorted. “That’s ballsy.”
