Forever Only Once: A Promise Me Novel Read online

  Forever Only Once

  A Promise Me Novel

  Carrie Ann Ryan

  Contents

  FOREVER ONLY ONCE

  Acknowledgments

  Forever Only Once

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  A Note from Carrie Ann Ryan

  About the Author

  Also from Carrie Ann Ryan

  FOREVER ONLY ONCE

  A PROMISE ME NOVEL

  By

  Carrie Ann Ryan

  Forever Only Once

  A Promise Me Novel

  By: Carrie Ann Ryan

  © 2020 Carrie Ann Ryan

  ISBN: 978-1-947007-84-0

  Cover Art by Sween N Spicy Designs

  Photograph by Wander Photography

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person or use proper retail channels to lend a copy. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

  Praise for Carrie Ann Ryan

  “Count on Carrie Ann Ryan for emotional, sexy, character driven stories that capture your heart!” – Carly Phillips, NY Times bestselling author

  “Carrie Ann Ryan’s romances are my newest addiction! The emotion in her books captures me from the very beginning. The hope and healing hold me close until the end. These love stories will simply sweep you away.” ~ NYT Bestselling Author Deveny Perry

  "Carrie Ann Ryan writes the perfect balance of sweet and heat ensuring every story feeds the soul." - Audrey Carlan, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

  “Carrie Ann Ryan never fails to draw readers in with passion, raw sensuality, and characters that pop off the page. Any book by Carrie Ann is an absolute treat.” – New York Times Bestselling Author J. Kenner

  “Carrie Ann Ryan knows how to pull your heartstrings and make your pulse pound! Her wonderful Redwood Pack series will draw you in and keep you reading long into the night. I can’t wait to see what comes next with the new generation, the Talons. Keep them coming, Carrie Ann!” –Lara Adrian, New York Times bestselling author of CRAVE THE NIGHT

  "With snarky humor, sizzling love scenes, and brilliant, imaginative worldbuilding, The Dante's Circle series reads as if Carrie Ann Ryan peeked at my personal wish list!" – NYT Bestselling Author, Larissa Ione

  "Carrie Ann Ryan writes sexy shifters in a world full of passionate happily-ever-afters." – New York Times Bestselling Author Vivian Arend

  “Carrie Ann’s books are sexy with characters you can’t help but love from page one. They are heat and heart blended to perfection.” New York Times Bestselling Author Jayne Rylon

  Carrie Ann Ryan's books are wickedly funny and deliciously hot, with plenty of twists to keep you guessing. They'll keep you up all night!” USA Today Bestselling Author Cari Quinn

  "Once again, Carrie Ann Ryan knocks the Dante's Circle series out of the park. The queen of hot, sexy, enthralling paranormal romance, Carrie Ann is an author not to miss!" New York Times bestselling Author Marie Harte

  To R, S, & K.

  Thanks for taking this ride with me.

  Acknowledgments

  This book started off as a fun way to make a date and ended up with fun tagline of “it starts with a blind date and ends with murder.”

  That is all thanks to Nana Malone.

  These characters weren’t my romcom and Nana knew it. So thank you for never letting me take my foot of the gas in this book.

  A huge thank you to Chelle for wrangling my words and asking the tough questions. And next time, call me. You know we are horrible at emails when it comes to this job between us LOL.

  Thank you Jaycee for this cover. I GASPED when I first saw it and cried. You figured out what I wanted before I did. So thank you!

  And thank you to Wander for this image! They are the perfect Cross and Hazel!

  And as always, thank you dear readers for going on this journey with me. I hope you love the Brady Brothers and the PROMISE ME series!

  Happy reading, everyone!

  ~Carrie Ann

  Forever Only Once

  From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Carrie Ann Ryan comes a sexy new contemporary stand-alone series.

  Hazel Noble has survived horrors she wouldn’t inflict on her worst enemy. Since then, she’s healed, found herself, and connected with a group of women she’s proud to call her friends. However, when they make a pact to start looking for love, Hazel finds herself not only up first but also forced to face a past she thought she’d escaped.

  Cross Brady has no need for a relationship. As the oldest of five, he’s always been the one his family can rely on. Now, all he wants is to work in peace and live his life. His priorities shift dramatically, though, when Cross finds himself in Hazel’s path.

  Though the two initially fight their connection, they soon learn that it’s safer to fall for each other than keep running from what’s holding them back—not to mention, who wants them dead.

  Chapter 1

  Hazel

  * * *

  I couldn’t afford to be late today. I had promised that I would be there on time because everybody else had meetings and other appointments after our coffee break, and I couldn’t be the one to hold them back. It didn’t help that I had hit every single red light on the way here, and a student had come in to ask a question just as I was about to head to my car. I’d stayed later than I wanted to, mostly because I would never leave a student hanging. He’d had legit questions, and even though my office hours had run an extra thirty minutes past my scheduled time, I felt like I had helped him solve a few problems so he could work on the rest on his own. Thankfully, that student was also one who asked pointed questions, which got him thinking.

  That didn’t always happen with some of my students at UB.

  Even though I truly loved them and was glad to help, doing so meant I was now running late.

  I hated being late.

  I crossed the street, moving away from the public parking lot, annoyed that I hadn’t been able to find a spot in front of Dakota’s café, the Boulder Bean.

  I loved living in Boulder, the college-town feel with the central university taking up most of downtown, and my smaller university residing in a little corner. Boulder was weird, at least that’s what everybody said. I kind of agreed. But after trying to find a place that called to me, I had needed weird, needed a little bit of home.

  I didn’t have any family left. Didn’t have a place to call home outside of this. Boulder was it.

  I loved my new city, though it wasn’t entirely new anymore, seeing as I’d been here for long enough. I’d made friends, ones that I truly liked. An inner circle that was waiting for me because I couldn’t find a fricking place to park. Parking was nearly always a nightmare.

  Boulder had boomed over time,
and it was getting a little ridiculous now. I found it harder to find my little piece of privacy and peace.

  Tourism was getting more substantial thanks to the fact that I lived in one of the most beautiful places in the world. The mountains were right behind me, the foothills gorgeous and looking as if they were painted on the horizon.

  I tried to take pictures, but it just didn’t work out. A photo could never capture the true beauty.

  I loved Boulder. I loved the home that I had been forced to make for myself. I did not enjoy the fact that everybody and their mother was moving to Boulder. I might technically be a transplant, but I liked to think of this as my new home. If I had my way, everyone else would just stay away for a minute so I could enjoy it. I knew I was part of the problem—I hadn’t been born here, after all—but I wasn’t going to think too hard on that.

  I took another turn and ran straight into a massive chest.

  I held back a curse, mostly because I hadn’t been watching where I was going, just like he clearly hadn’t. He gripped my elbows, clutching them ever so slightly. My heart raced at the unwanted and unexpected contact, and I froze, every single lesson I had learned in my self-defense classes seeping out of my mind as I tried to catch my breath. I grabbed onto my purse strap, as if that could protect me. Then I looked up—and up—at the man in front of me.

  He was clean-shaven, wearing a perfect suit, his thin tie finished with an elegantly crafted knot at the neck. He smiled down at me, his eyes full of warmth…and something else I didn’t want to name.

  I had gotten skilled at deducing what a man thought when he looked at me.

  I didn’t like what I saw with this stranger.

  “Hello there,” he said, his voice deep, a little accented. Irish, maybe? That didn’t sound right, though. No, it sounded as if he had been watching a little too much British TV and decided to add an accent to his voice.

  With his hands still on me, seemingly not willing to let go, my heart raced, and flashes of other hands came at me, shaking me to my core. But these weren’t those hands. This was not him. I needed to remember that.

  “Sorry,” I said, annoyed with myself for even apologizing since we’d both been in the wrong and moving too quickly. But I had run into this stranger just like he had run into me, so perhaps I’d needed to apologize anyway.

  “No need to be. It’s good to have...run into you.”

  I attempted to move away, but he kept his hands on me as if he were trying to keep me steady.

  I tried not to let the bile make its way up my throat.

  “Excuse me. I need to go.”

  “I just want to make sure I didn’t hurt you. After all, we did hit kind of hard. This will be a funny story we can tell our children one day. Don’t you think?” He winked, and I just blinked at him.

  Was that supposed to be a line? One where he still wouldn’t let go of me?

  I took a deep breath and twisted in his arms so he had to move his wrist or risk it getting broken.

  He took a step back and frowned at me.

  “What the fuck?”

  My pulse pounded in my ears. “Thanks for making sure I didn’t fall, but I’m fine now. Have a good day.”

  I moved a step forward to get past him, but he gripped my arm again.

  “I was only making sure you were okay. There’s no need to get hostile. I’m safe. I’m not one of those guys.”

  “Sure. Have a good day.” I moved forward again. This time, his other hand reached down and grabbed my ass.

  I froze and turned toward him.

  “Are you serious right now?” I asked, my heart racing, a lump in my throat.

  “If you’re going to treat me like a lecher, I might as well get something out of it.” He narrowed his eyes. “Bitch.” And then he pushed ever so slightly, and I wobbled on my heels before he turned and walked away. No one noticed the interaction, everyone was too busy with their phones and their own lives.

  No one had seen that he’d assaulted me, called me a bitch, and almost hadn’t let me go. If I hadn’t known how to get out of that hold, I wasn’t sure he would have let me go at all.

  My lips were dry, and I knew I was sweating. I took a deep breath and practically ran towards the café, hoping my friends were already there since I was running late as it was.

  Despite hoping they’d beat me to the café, I also needed a moment to collect myself. The others didn’t need to see me like this.

  No one did.

  They might understand because they knew my past, at least most of it, but I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I wanted to forget every memory, every moment of pain, everything about that time. I didn’t need to bring it up again, even with the women I counted as family.

  I nodded at a few people and pasted a smile on my face that I knew probably looked a little manic. Regardless, they smiled back. Boulder people were quite friendly if you tried.

  I quickly made my way to the front of the Boulder Bean, a cute little shop with coffee brands listed in the windows, and a small coffee mug with steam billowing off the top as the café’s logo.

  I let out a breath, rolling my shoulders back and telling myself that nothing was wrong. That everything was normal. Then, I walked inside.

  There were tables strewn about, and a couple of booths with comfy seats along the walls.

  Some people were working on their laptops, others looking at their phones or just sitting down and enjoying a cup of coffee. A couple of students worked with textbooks and notebooks in front of them, their laptops closed so it looked like maybe they were doing math. They weren’t my students, but I almost wanted to go over and see what they were working on.

  I was a math professor. It soothed me to work with numbers, especially when I sometimes didn’t feel soothed at all.

  I looked to the back corner, in the booth nearest the front counter, and smiled at the three women sitting there.

  Dakota, the owner of the Boulder Bean and my friend, got up and walked over, her eyes narrowed as she looked at me.

  I knew Dakota had come from a life far different than mine. Though our paths had crossed thanks to an incident that mirrored what’d happened to me, we didn’t talk about that.

  We did our best to forget our pasts, all of us, and I was fine with that.

  We were friends because we wanted to be, not because we wanted to share our deepest and darkest secrets.

  “Hey, I was just about to call you. Are you okay?” Dakota asked, reaching out and hugging me. I hugged her back and inhaled her scent. She smelled of cinnamon, coffee beans, and vanilla today.

  The Boulder Bean was mostly a coffee shop, with just about any kind of coffee arrangement you could imagine. But they also did decent business with tea, mainly because Dakota loved tea, but coffee was her bread and butter.

  They had a few snacks as well, things that Dakota made in the back, or ordered in from a small shop nearby. But she did her best to make the Bean a pure coffee shop, mostly because there were enough cafes around the area and she wanted to stand out just a little bit.

  “Sorry, I ran behind at work. I apologize for being late.”

  Dakota narrowed her eyes. “You’re all clammy and pale. What happened?”

  I just smiled. “Good to know I look like crap.”

  “Stop being evasive,” Paris said as she slid out of the booth, Myra right behind her.

  The four of us had become friends a couple of years ago, though I had met Paris in college and knew Myra from when we were younger. Our families lived near each other, and with the way our families were, that meant we were always forced to attend the same parties and the same high-society events.

  It wasn’t my favorite thing. However, Myra and I had been close, even though we’d been a couple of years apart in school.

  Paris had been in a few classes with me in college. And Dakota owned this coffee shop. When I came in with Paris one day to catch up, we had started up a conversation with Dakota, and everything had sno
wballed from there. When Myra moved back to town, we picked up our friendship right away, and now it was the four of us against the world.

  At least, that’s what we told ourselves.

  “Let me get some coffee, and I’ll explain it all.”

  “What are you in the mood for today?” Dakota asked, taking a step back so both Paris and Myra could hug me.

  I embraced them tightly, closing my eyes for just a minute so I could pretend that I wasn’t still shaken or on the verge of throwing up.

  “I’d love a vanilla latte.”

  “That’s easy. I can do that for you. Now, go sit down. We already have a plate of pastries because…why don’t we just attack ourselves with sugar?”

  I smiled at Dakota as she walked off and then followed Paris and Myra to our booth. We didn’t always sit here, but it was the most convenient booth for us to use when Dakota still needed to work.

  And while Dakota’s staff was on the clock, and Dakota technically didn’t need to be behind the counter today, I knew that my friend wanted to make our coffees herself.

  Her staff didn’t mind, at least that’s what they’d told me. They knew that Dakota was just particular when it came to her friends and her family.

  Not that Dakota had much in the way of family, but the other woman was just as secretive as the rest of us.

  “You want to tell us what happened?” Paris asked, raising a brow.