Don’t Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

Don’t Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com Wed, 13 May 2026 18:54:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 http://www.books2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Don’t Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com 32 32 Forget That Guy (Don’t Date Him #5) Read Online Lani Lynn Vale http://www.books2020.com/forget-that-guy-dont-date-him-5-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Wed, 13 May 2026 18:54:36 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/forget-that-guy-dont-date-him-5-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Suspense Authors: Lani Lynn Vale Series: Don't Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale
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Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70566 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)

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Holly Lorena Cain, formerly known as Georgina Lorena Cain, was well acquainted with rock bottom. She’s coasted along its rocky shores for years. It all started when her mother left her when she was barely old enough to understand. For years, her and her dad struggled to make ends meet. A dying cattle farm can’t run itself, and with her dad having cancer, it got harder and harder to hang on to land that’s been in her family for generations.

Just as she thinks that she’s finally made it, her father passes away and leaves every single thing he owns to their neighbor. The man that’d been worming his way into her father’s good graces while she’d been away pursuing higher education.

But she can’t be mad.
Being mad would mean that she has a soul left, but she sold that a long time ago to pay for college.

Once she comes to terms with her father and the land being gone, she moves back to Bear Pass and with one thing on her mind—avoid Denver at all costs. He can never know just how much it hurt that he stole her life away from her.
Only, he makes it impossibly hard to stay away.

He’s there around every corner. He offers her a place to stay. Makes sure she has a place to work. Fixes her car. Saves her from a kidnapper. Oh, and gives her everything her heart desires.
She stays away as best as she can, but she doesn’t stand a chance against Denver’s determination and charm. He’s there when no one else is, peeling her off the floor and propping her back up again each time she falls.

The gruff motorcycle club president with his scary glares and harsh work ethic has decided to make her his, and he won’t stand for her refusal.

He’s been protecting her for her entire life, and she doesn’t even know it.
He won’t stop now, even if she’s bound and determined to stay away

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

PROLOGUE

Nothing is ever too much information. To me, TMI means “tell me immediately.”

—Denver’s secret thoughts

DENVER

“You never listen!” Juliana threw up her hands in defeat.

“What do you want me to do about your problems, Juliana?” I asked her. “I work all day. Literally from five in the morning—if not earlier—until at least six thirty at night. Every single day. It’s not like I can just take a day off to go do fun things when we have literal living things that depend on us for survival.”

Juliana narrowed her eyes. “We could go hang out with the club!”

“We do,” I pointed out. “All the fuckin’ time. When I have time.”

“What about hiring extra hands?”

I sighed. “I do that, too. But I can’t just sit in the house and hang out with you while I have people out there doing all the work. Plus, most of them don’t have the first fuckin’ clue what to do. They need guidance. I can offer that. Why don’t you come hang out with us?”

That caused her to snort. “Yeah, like I want to do that.”

Juliana and I had married almost fifteen years ago. When we’d met, I was in the Air Force. I got to go to all these places and see all the things.

But then my dad had died, and Sawyer had told me, rather succinctly, that he would rather cut off his own nuts than work the farm.

I didn’t blame him.

Farm life had never really been something he’d been interested in. Would he help Dad and me? Sure, of course he would. But he never got the thrill of excitement of it. He never liked waking up at the ass crack of dawn and making sure the cattle were fed and the fences were secure. And they weren’t all out having babies in the middle of a damn blizzard and stranding them somewhere in a snowdrift.

His son, Boone, had loved it. But he was on a different path in life.

So, I’d gone home.

Juliana had come with me, and we’d started having babies.

But she’d never acquired a liking to the life.

She hadn’t wanted to get a job, either.

She loved being a stay-at-home mom—even if she did fuckin’ suck at the stay-at-home mom part.

Hell, I got more kid time than she did before they were in school.

From sunup to sundown, I had at least one of the kids with me, if not all three.

All three of my babies loved the ranch life just like I did, but it was my oldest, Joe, who really got the most joy out of it.

Catalina and DeeDee loved it, but I had a feeling that they wouldn’t be spending their lives out here unless they found a husband that wanted to join that life with them.

“Are you even listening to me?”

I gritted my teeth and turned to my wife.

“What is it, exactly, that you want to do?” I asked. “Do you want to go on a vacation? I can swing that maybe for a week right before we have to start harvesting the hay for fall.”

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Advertisement Be The Full Problem (Don’t Date Him #4) Read Online Lani Lynn Vale http://www.books2020.com/be-the-full-problem-dont-date-him-4-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Wed, 13 May 2026 18:54:36 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/be-the-full-problem-dont-date-him-4-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Suspense Authors: Lani Lynn Vale Series: Don't Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale
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Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >69

This Series will cover a brand new set of characters that are ex-cons (Or can they be ex-cons if they escape from prison?) and the one true loves. This book will be Azrael's book

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Prologue

To anyone that I fell out with last year, fuck you this year as well.

—Nettie’s secret thoughts

Nettie

“I’m pregnant.”

Boone, my sweet Boone, looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

“Um, what?”

We were in high school. This should’ve never happened.

But when it came to Boone Daniel Windsor, I had zero control.

I never had, and I never would.

“I don’t…” I trailed off as Boone’s mother came into the room, eyes ablaze.

They were always ablaze.

“Bartholomew.” Gail Windsor, the woman of the house and the keeper of all the money, walked into Boone’s room like it was her right to do so.

And maybe it was.

This was her house, after all.

Well, hers and her husband’s.

Her husband made all the money.

Her husband, might I add, who wasn’t Boone’s father.

Boone was an oopsy baby with the pool boy.

Literally, the pool boy.

Gail got pregnant by the pool boy and Sawyer, Boone’s stepfather, had lost his shit. Gail, however, was all ‘if you kick me out I’m going to take half your fortune with me’ so he kept her.

He also, joy to the world, decided that Boone wasn’t to blame for his mother’s transgressions.

He embraced Boone as a son and took him under his wing.

That was the only thing that saved Boone’s personality from being just like his mother’s.

Though, Boone didn’t see his mother as being the wild bitch of the west.

He saw her as his precious mother that would never hurt him in any way.

He was wrong. Gail Windsor was a fuckin’ nut case that liked to run his life like a drill sergeant. She scheduled our dates—seriously, she scheduled our dates to work in with her schedule. She chose what he wore. She chose which school sports he played. And even worse, she had chosen what he would do with his life after graduation.

She’d decided that he would be a doctor, and as an act of rebellion that was really quite rare for Boone, he’d decided to go into veterinary medicine and not human medicine.

It was the best blowup I’d ever witnessed, and Gail blamed it all on me.

If she only knew just how different his life path would be had he gotten to choose it himself. If I’d actually had a role in helping him figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

In reality, Boone wanted to be a park ranger. He wanted to spend his life outdoors, soaking in what he loved. Instead, he was going to school eight hours away, to do a job that he wasn’t all that interested in, to make his mother happy.

And now we were having a baby and I had to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

My parents were not going to be happy about the news.

In fact, between Gail Windsor and my parents, Minnie and Barton Wheeler—the pastor and the pastor’s wife of Sawtooth Pentecostal Temple, this was about to become one of the worst times of my life.

My parents were awful. My dad more so than my mother. But my mother did whatever my father wanted, so if he told her to fuck us up, she would. Because she lived to please her man, and her children were subpar to her husband, and always would be.

“Yes, Mother?” Boone asked, looking ghostly white.

“What’s wrong?” Gail asked. “You look pale.”

He would be.

I’d just told him he was going to be a father at seventeen.

“Nothing,” Boone lied. “I’m just hungry.”

“You should’ve eaten your afternoon snack like I instructed instead of coming straight up here with Antoinette.”

Gag.

I hated my real name.

I much, much preferred being called Nettie, and Gail knew it. She took a sick sort of pleasure in calling me by my given name, and always enjoyed watching my eyelid twitching.

“It was important.” I shrugged.

“Well, what was so important that you would call him straight up to the informal living room instead of allowing him to eat after a tough polo practice?”

I kept my mouth shut.

I wasn’t ready for her to know what news I’d just shared.

I wanted to process it with Boone first.

“Just prom plans,” Boone lied.

He saw and read the tension that I had with his mother easily. I’d shared with him multiple times, and had long drawn-out discussions others, about how his mother was unbearable and controlling.

He saw it, of course.

It was hard not to.

But for some reason since she was his mother, he had a hard time reconciling the fact that she was a bad person.

“Oh, you’re going to that?” she asked. “I thought we’d decided that you were to join me at the ball for the business district that night?”

My eyelid twitched.

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Advertisement Not A Side Chick (Don’t Date Him #3) Read Online Lani Lynn Vale http://www.books2020.com/not-a-side-chick-dont-date-him-3-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Fri, 03 Apr 2026 23:15:24 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/not-a-side-chick-dont-date-him-3-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Genre: Alpha Male, Biker, Contemporary, MC, Suspense Authors: Lani Lynn Vale Series: Don't Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale
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Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >70

This Series will cover a brand new set of characters that are ex-cons (Or can they be ex-cons if they escape from prison?) and the one true loves. This book will be Cross's book

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Prologue

It’s not hell if you like the way it burns.

—Winston’s secret thoughts

Winston

“Either do it, or I blow your fucking head off.”

Still, I refused.

“Listen to me and listen to me carefully,” the man that I’d thought was my friend said, placing the gun against my temple. “Do it now, before I have to take drastic measures.”

And somehow, I knew what those drastic measures would be.

He’d been dating my sister, after all.

“Don’t.”

She was going to hate me for this.

She would never forgive me, and I’d spend the rest of my life replaying that look in her eyes as she found out what I’d done.

But it was a choice of either her or him.

And I would choose my sister every time.

“Don’t,” Pippa begged. “Please, don’t do it.”

I looked at my sister, then at my future brother-in-law, and knew.

His pleading eyes, which begged me to do it, were all I needed to see.

“You would’ve been the best brother-in-law ever,” I told him through a broken throat.

I’d been screaming for hours.

For hours, they’d tortured me, waiting for this moment.

I’d been able to resist.

I’d gone through SEALs training. I’d gone through survival training. I’d gone through torture training.

All of that training had led me to this point. I knew I could handle the torture. As long as it was only focused on me or Stanton. Which, at first, it had been.

But with his torture not working, he was going to move on to other things that he knew would work. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Pippa. At least there was that. But he would if I didn’t do what he wanted—removing the man that’d meant the world to my sister—and that time had come.

He would torture Pippa just to force me to make my move.

“Pippa.” I looked at my twin sister. “I love you.”

“Don’t,” she begged. “Please don’t. I can handle it! I can handle it! Please, please don’t. If you ever loved me…”

Sonny gave his signature smile—the smarmy one that won people over and disarmed them—and started to unbutton his pants, and I knew where this would lead.

“Do it.”

Stanton’s sharp order had me looking at him again.

“I can handle it!” she begged again. “Please!”

“Look at me, Winston.”

Stanton’s words had me reluctantly moving my gaze back to him.

Back to the man I was being forced to kill.

“Do it,” Stanton ordered. “I will not watch this. I will not. You can save her right now.”

I had one bullet in this gun.

I’d shoot Sonny, but he was standing behind his bulletproof glass, just grinning like a goddamn fool.

“Choices, choices,” Sonny said as he pushed the zipper down and removed his cock from his pants.

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Do. It,” Stanton said. “Do. It.”

I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

Pippa’s screams would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Eight years later

“Parole denied.”

I didn’t care.

Literally, I couldn’t think of anything worse than being free.

I’d never be free for the rest of my life, not from the nightmares that haunted my every waking moment and my dreams.

I could still see the way that Stanton’s head…

“Get up.”

I did, standing up when the guard all but punched me in the back.

I stood up and walked away, uncaring of the chains that tied my feet together.

I looked up, and my heart froze in my chest.

Because there was the reason I would never want to be free, staring at me with dead eyes.

My sister.

My twin.

I looked away, feeling the bile rise.

She didn’t give me anything.

Not a smile.

Not a frown.

Not hope.

Not death.

She was just a blank slate that would forever haunt me.

She hated me.

Not that I blamed her.

I hated her, too.

If it wasn’t for her dating Stanton, and for Stanton being involved in the FBI and playing stupid fucking games with a psychopath, my life would be a hell of a lot different.

I’d been in the military.

I’d served twelve years in the Navy.

I’d been a SEAL.

And I’d done my time.

I just wanted to get out and enjoy my life. Marry a woman. Have some babies. Just be free.

But my sister had gotten caught up in a mess, and I’d been forced to be a part of that broken operation.

In the end, the FBI had eventually broken in and rescued us.

But not soon enough to save Stanton.

Sonny Gibbons was in prison, where he would hopefully spend the rest of his life.

Funny thing was, I was, too.

And that was all because my sister had lied.

She’d wanted to punish me for shooting and killing Stanton, and the only way she could do that was to lie and tell them that I was a part of it. That I’d been more than happy to kill Stanton to save my own ass.

Which had been a lie.

But she knew that and still didn’t care.

In the end, I was serving a thirty-nine-year sentence for the murder of a federal agent.

By the time I was out of prison, I’d be old and gray and have no life ahead of me.

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Advertisement People We Avoid (Don’t Date Him #2) Read Online Lani Lynn Vale http://www.books2020.com/people-we-avoid-dont-date-him-2-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:32:28 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/people-we-avoid-dont-date-him-2-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Genre: Alpha Male, Biker, Contemporary, MC, Suspense Authors: Lani Lynn Vale Series: Don't Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale
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Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >69

All Birdee Calvert wanted was to be normal.

She wanted the parents who didn’t divorce when she was a kid and make her life a living nightmare. She wanted the sisters who actually liked her. She wanted to live in a town where everyone loved her and didn’t have a single bad thing to say about her.

That was not the life Birdee was given.

She had the exact opposite life. The kind of life where she slunk through the grocery store with a hoodie on so no one would recognize her. The kind of life where men like Creed Daugherty didn’t give her a second look.

After years of abuse and heartache, she built walls. Big, huge, thick ones that no one could ever breach. If she didn’t put forth the effort to get to know someone, she couldn’t be hurt.

At least, that was the theory.

She never counted on Creed Daugherty hitting her with his truck. Then, deciding that once he entered her life, he would never leave it.

Though Birdee should’ve known that Creed was too good to be true.

All it takes is one mistake on her part, and Creed freezes her out. Then forces the rest of the town to make it almost impossible for her to live in Sawtooth, Montana, anymore.

Birdee only thought it couldn’t get worse.

But Creed makes sure to show her that it can and will.

The thing about rock bottom?

Once you’re there, you have nothing else to lose.

And Creed Daugherty just made himself enemy number one

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Prologue

My demons would bend yours over.

—Creed’s secret thoughts

Creed

It was the beeping that woke me. Not the pain.

My eyes cracked open, and I stared at the white ceiling for quite a long time before movement at my side had me moving my head to see in that direction.

What I saw had my entire world crumbling.

“Mom?”

What was she doing here?

And how had she found me?

She grinned wickedly. “You thought you could hide, didn’t you?”

My stomach sank.

I’d thought that I could hide.

That I’d be able to hide both Bernice and me until she was eighteen and old enough to be out from under our mother’s thumb.

“Well, it sucks to say, but you didn’t do a very good job.” She bared her crooked, meth-addled teeth at me and said, “But look who made the mistake now. Town golden boy, Justin Arquette, drunk driving with his sister in the car. Plows into a police station and kills two officers.”

My hand jerked in surprise, and the clink of metal on metal had a feeling of nausea welling over me.

I was already shaking my head. “I don’t drink.”

Because why would I when I’d seen all the bad things that could happen when you drank?

Her smile scared the shit out of me. “Don’t you?”

No.

No, I did not.

Because I’d seen what substance abuse did to my parents.

I wouldn’t touch drugs or alcohol.

Neither would Bernice.

“What happened?” I asked, stomach sick.

“You were drunk,” she repeated. “Can’t believe it. My golden boy. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

I fisted my hands.

Nine months later

The clang of the gavel hitting the wood on the judge’s desk felt like the final nail in my coffin.

“Sixty years,” I heard Bernie whisper, her voice cracking. “This can’t be right.”

But it was right.

I’d gotten sixty years in prison for killing two cops during my “drunk driving” accident.

“He killed two cops.” My mother snickered, sounding overjoyed. “It’s right.”

She crossed her hands in front of her and stood, looking so prim and proper that it hurt.

“Since you’re going in for a while.” My mom smiled. “I hope you know that I’ll take really good care of your sister.”

This fucking bitch.

Six years later

“I found something out,” my sister whispered.

My head tilted. “What?”

She clenched her hand on the phone and stared into my eyes, her gaze heavy. “I found out how Mom got you drunk.”

My stomach sank. “You did?”

I’d always suspected that she was behind it.

Any time anything went wrong with my life, she was responsible.

“The last time that Mom had to go into rehab, they injected her with alcohol intravenously to help with withdrawals. That’s where she got the idea,” she said. “And you weren’t the one responsible for smashing into that police station. She was. I…some of my memories came back recently.”

I blinked.

“Really?” I breathed.

“Really. I knew you didn’t kill them.”

I hadn’t.

I knew I hadn’t.

Yet, every single time I tried to tell everyone that, they looked at me like I was the scum of the earth.

The truth was, my car had plowed into a police station.

I did have a blood alcohol level of 0.22.

And I did happen to be in the area of where the accident had taken place, though I’d been passed out on the street a block from the police station.

But here was the thing.

I’d never driven drunk before. Hell, I’d never drank alcohol at all before. I had a stellar driving record, never had a speeding ticket in my life, and I never even drove above the speed limit.

I was too scared to.

The town that I’d lived in hated us.

My mom had burned a lot of bridges, and I had to keep my nose clean or else I’d end up in jail right beside her. Because the cops of Cedar Ridge had no tolerance for Arquettes.

But what I’d been accused of doing…I knew I hadn’t done it.

Yet, there was no proof.

My sister, who’d been involved in the accident, had suffered a brain injury that’d caused her to forget everything for about a forty-eight-hour time period.

The only people there to witness was a homeless woman—who I was sure my mom had paid off—and a cop that I knew my mom had fucked in order to get him to help her.

My mom had it out for me since the day that I was born.

I spent my entire life barely surviving, and when my little sister had come along, I’d spent my every waking moment making sure that my mother’s filth didn’t affect her.

When I’d turned eighteen, I’d petitioned the courts for custody of Bernice.

It’d been pretty easy to get. My mom hadn’t shown up to court and had even said to multiple witnesses that “maybe it would be better for Bernice to live with Justin.”

And we’d lived happily ever after for a whole two and a half years before my mom had seen that I had a little bit of money to my name and gotten jealous.

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Advertisement House of BS & Lies (Don’t Date Him #1) Read Online Lani Lynn Vale http://www.books2020.com/house-of-bs-lies-dont-date-him-1-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Sun, 01 Feb 2026 09:24:03 +0000 https://www.books2020.com/house-of-bs-lies-dont-date-him-1-read-online-lani-lynn-vale Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Erotic, Suspense Authors: Lani Lynn Vale Series: Don't Date Him Series by Lani Lynn Vale
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Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70004 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)

<<<<1 2 3 11 21 >70

This Series will cover a brand new set of characters that are ex-cons (Or can they be ex-cons if they escape from prison?) and the one true loves. This book will be Romeo's book

*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************

Prologue

Um. The element of confusion.

—Coffee cup

Romeo

Apollomijames@noname.com

Subject: The Great Escape

* * *

Romeo,

I hope this email finds you well. Your sister is doing really great—greater than great to be honest—and her one wish in life is that you will breathe free air again.

I know that you think that you’ll be in there forever, but you won’t.

In fact, starting next week, you’ll have a new lease on life.

I can’t wait to officially meet you without glass and chains being involved.

Follow the yellow brick road.

Also, watch out for the crazy weather.

Your future brother-in-law.

To say that I was confused by that email would be an understatement.

I’d met my sister’s soon-to-be husband several times now, and in no way, shape, or form did he sound like this in person.

Maybe he was a few screws loose?

Just as that thought occurred to me, another email popped up.

I hesitantly clicked on it, wondering what I would find in this one.

It was much easier to follow and straight to the point.

Apollomijames@noname.com

Subject: You think too much

* * *

Romeo, you’re about to be set free. By me. I guess I’ll have to be blunt since you look so gloriously confused.

Be ready to go next Wednesday at midnight. There will be several power failures. Your cell will be unlocked when the clock strikes midnight. Your cellmate will also be receiving a hefty dose of sleeping pills to ensure he sleeps through the night.

When I open doors, you walk out of them, capisce?

Also, don’t mind the dead body you’ll be walking over. He’s going to be a great distraction.

Apollo

P.S. These emails will disappear in the next thirty seconds.

He was right.

Just as I was going to click on the last email to see if I could decipher a little bit more information, the email thread disappeared, leaving me with an email opened from my money market account manager.

This email was even more confusing.

According to the financial advisor I’d once used, I now had six million dollars in my bank account.

I hadn’t seen the likes of it before in my life.

Earlier, before the emails from Apollo, this email did nothing but make me angry.

Because why would I be happy about having six million dollars when I couldn’t spend the money?

Now, I seemed to have a completely different mindset.

Apollo had hinted at breaking me out.

If anyone could do it, my future brother-in-law, and resident computer genius, could make it happen.

But I hadn’t thought he was serious.

I mean, why risk the possibility of getting put into jail?

I certainly wouldn’t be doing it for anyone.

Though, I think I might do it for my sister.

I’d do anything for Dru.

“Rossi!” the guard bellowed from the door. “Your time is up!”

I looked at the clock on the computer screen and saw that I still had well over fifteen minutes.

But I got up anyway, logging out as I did.

It wouldn’t matter if I logged out.

The prison system could look at all of my online activities if they wanted to.

But the next inmate who used this computer would definitely have an advantage.

“You’re in the yard,” the guard said. “Your cell was chosen for a random search.”

Of course it was…

“Yes, sir,” I grumbled as I moved past him.

He tried to shove me as I got close to passing him, but I didn’t go anywhere. Which only pissed him off.

He didn’t like not having the upper hand when it came to his job.

I, on the other hand, had spent my entire teenage years turning myself into a person that didn’t take shit from anybody. Not even prison guards that could make my life miserable if they wanted to.

He shoved me in the back again, and I hurried faster.

If this motherfucker wasn’t careful, he’d see just how far he could push me…

One

Petition to change Thanksgiving dinner from turkey to brisket. No one likes dry bird.

—Mable to Cody

Mable

“Mother!”

“What?” she asked innocently.

I didn’t believe that innocent “what” for a second.

“What is it, exactly, that you wanted me to do here?” I pushed.

“I wanted you to join Birdee and me for lunch,” she said demurely. “Is it too much to ask to want my two girls together?”

Yes, yes it was.

Mostly because I couldn’t fucking stand Birdee. I wouldn’t sneeze on her if she was on fire.

I certainly wouldn’t choose to have lunch with her when I wanted nothing more than to bend her over the table and smack her head against the fine china a few times just to make her cry.

My mother had said that it would just be the two of us today, but, like always, she’d lied.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if my mother forced us to spend time with each other because she genuinely wanted to mend the breach—as if it could ever be mended—or if she was just trying to rub it in.

I was betting on the latter.

My mother was never that nice of a person.

Or, more accurately, my stepmother.

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