Red Bridge Series by Max Monroe – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

Red Bridge Series by Max Monroe – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:15:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 http://www.books2020.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Red Bridge Series by Max Monroe – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.books2020.com 32 32 When I Should’ve Stayed (Red Bridge #2) Read Online Max Monroe http://www.books2020.com/when-i-shouldve-stayed-red-bridge-2-read-online-max-monroe Wed, 09 Jul 2025 19:15:32 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/when-i-shouldve-stayed-red-bridge-2-read-online-max-monroe Genre: Alpha Male, Angst, Contemporary, Tear Jerker Authors: Max Monroe Series: Red Bridge Series by Max Monroe
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Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)

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He may have let her slip away, but he never stopped loving her.

Josie: Before the Moment

There are ghosts at every corner. In the stolen kisses while I waitressed at the diner, in the town festivals at the square, in the many jokes about Betty Bagley and her pie at the Fall Farmer’s Market, and in the countless nights watching Clay make drinks with that handsome smile of his while I sat on a stool at his bar.

It should all feel familiar and comforting, and yet, it just makes it hard to breathe.

Tonight will be a defining moment for the rest of my life. I have to end it now…before it ends me.

Clay: After the Moment

When Josie and I said “I do,” I thought it’d be us against the world forever. But I wasn’t expecting the world to be so against us. I know I should’ve stayed that night. And I definitely should have gone back sooner.

Because I don’t know how to be here. I don’t know how to be anywhere. I don’t know how to be without Josie at all.

She’s fun and fiery and strong-willed and stands up for the people she loves—even when it borders on reckless. She’s everything good about humanity—my perfect person.

She might say we’re done, but it’s not over. We’ll never be over

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

“In each loss there is a gain,

As in every gain there is a loss,

And with each ending comes a new beginning.”

-Buddhist Proverb

The Moment I Should’ve Stayed: Part 1

Josie

Tuesday, December 20th

Fresh ink stains my fingers, and a sharp ache stabs my heart as I tuck the large envelope into my purse and swallow the very real and ragged pill of what I’ve done.

Of what I’m about to do.

I rush out of the library, heading straight for the streetside parking, and climb into my car as quickly as possible in the hopes that no one will see me. Gossip runs like an Olympic sprinter in Red Bridge, and right now, I need to fly under the radar more than I need my next lungful of oxygen.

I should be cold, freezing my ass off, in fact, but adrenaline is pumping so hard through my veins that it’s impossible for me to notice anything but my heart galloping like a racehorse out of the gates. With a hard crank, I start my car, and the cold air makes the engine rumble with hesitancy. When it finally revs with life, I pull my seat belt across my chest to secure it in the buckle.

A year ago, I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d be here. A year ago, I was happy. I was healthy. I was hopeful and invincible.

But more than any of those things, I was incredibly and painfully naïve.

Life isn’t the version we view through rose-colored glasses, and love, sometimes, isn’t even close to enough.

Love, in fact, can be the very thing that hurts us the most. It steals our breath and makes fools of our actions. It sinks its teeth into our innocence and begs for happy endings when there aren’t any to be had.

It robs us over and over, and, at some point, you have to stop feeding yourself to it as a victim.

I don’t want to leave, but I can’t stay. I can’t.

My legs are numb, unable to move even with the proverbial train coming right at me. I know Clay would reach out a hand—would sacrifice himself if he had to. But that’s exactly why I have to do this.

With my hand on the stick shift, I glance over at my purse, and the large envelope sticks out poignantly. A stark reminder of why it’s there in the first place, and the D word sits heavy in my mind.

There’s no other option.

I back out of the spot and drive toward Grandma Rose’s house, my vision a blur of routine and simple objects. I see the courthouse and The Diner. I see Earl’s Grocery Store and Fran’s flower shop and Melba’s bakery and the Red Bridge Police Department. And, of course, I see Clay’s bar, The Country Club—the brick-and-mortar that make up nearly every aspect of my life.

But the only thing that registers is heartbreak.

There are ghosts at every corner. In the stolen kisses while I waitressed at The Diner, in the town festivals in the square, in the many jokes about Betty Bagley and her pie at the Fall Farmers Market, and in countless nights spent watching Clay make drinks with that handsome smile of his plastered on his face while I sat on a stool at the bar.

It should all feel familiar and comforting, and yet, it makes it hard for the person I am now to breathe at all.

I wish I’d been stronger. I wish I’d been wiser. I wish I didn’t have to do this.

I wish.

But wishing doesn’t matter anymore, and I can’t turn back time even if I want to.

I have to go. I have to get out and not turn back, and I have to do it as soon as possible.

Sorrow and guilt and grief and shame claw at my throat, and the scratches are deep enough to bleed. My heart tries to compensate, but the loss is too much.

It’s all too much.

I turn into Grandma Rose’s driveway, shut off my car, and go inside to wait.

Tonight will be a defining moment for the rest of my life.

I have to end it now…

…before it ends me.

Before the Moment: Part 1

The Start of It All

1

Clay

Saturday, May 24th

On a scale of one to ten, how bad is it to make yourself a third wheel on a date with strangers?

Generally speaking, I’d rate it at an eleven. It’s tacky and borderline narcissistic—something I’d watch the wealthy pricks from my old life in New York do with sickening confidence and something I’d ride them for every time.

But this isn’t New York, and this date I’m considering cutting in on isn’t just a date.

“Oh, Drew! You’re too much.” Blond curls fly over her shoulder as she turns coy eyes to the schmuck in front of her, and I lean into the bar to watch her in action.

A real-life man-eater, this unbelievably beautiful woman I know through town lore as Josie Ellis, has been inside my bar every Friday night for the last four months, each time with a different man. She teases and taunts and flirts, her siren’s call luring them into the calm waters of overconfidence.

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Advertisement What I Should’ve Said (Red Bridge #1) Read Online Max Monroe http://www.books2020.com/what-i-shouldve-said-red-bridge-1-read-online-max-monroe Sun, 02 Feb 2025 19:14:43 +0000 http://www.books2020.com/what-i-shouldve-said-red-bridge-1-read-online-max-monroe Genre: Alpha Male, Chick Lit, Contemporary Authors: Max Monroe Series: Red Bridge Series by Max Monroe
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Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)

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When grumpy, muscled-up artist Bennett Bishop bothers to speak, it’s usually to say something you’re not ready to hear.

When he first speaks to Norah Ellis, a rambling runaway bride who hitchhikes a ride from him, it’s to tell her to get out of his truck and walk because she’s a pain in the a-s-s.

By appearance, Norah Ellis is a fancy fashionista who’s spent the last several years living the good life in the city—expensive apartments, highbrow events, and a fiancé with wealth and good looks. The only problem is that she didn’t choose any of it for herself.

On the day of her July wedding, thanks to a letter from a stranger, Norah’s world turns upside down. She runs for the hills of Vermont to start a new life, but what’s waiting for her, between her estranged sister, the townspeople, and bad-boy Bennett Bishop himself, is way more than she bargained for.

Enemies turn to lovers, strangers become friends, dark secrets bust open like cans of worms, and most of all…Summer will never be the same.

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

Prologue

Norah

Sunday, July 25th

The bride couldn’t remember what her soon-to-be husband looked like or why she was marrying him in the first place.

I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, willing the features of Thomas’s smile to come to me, but all I see are black words on a gray page—a New York Times article I once read that compared two types of people: the ones who remember faces and the ones who remember names.

For the life of me, I can’t recall what the study proved or what it meant to be one or the other, but I do know the premise of the article speaks to me.

I’ve always been a face person.

Eye color, nose shape, the depth of a smile—even a tiny, obscure dimple in someone’s chin. I see it all so well, the details imprinting on the soft surface of my brain.

But a name? I can never remember a name. For six months, I thought my round-jawed neighbor’s name was Sally, but her name is really Margaret. Her dog, on the other hand, is Sally, and is a Jack Russell Terrier with wiry white hair and a snobby-looking, pointy nose. Don’t ask me how I found this out—Margaret and Sally running away from me every time I see them is trauma enough.

But today, on my wedding day of all days, there’s a glitch in my matrix, and I can’t remember what the man I’m supposed to marry looks like.

I try to picture him in my mind, but all I see is a foggy, blurred-out image of a man with great hair.

Thomas, my fiancé, does, in fact, have great hair. But he also has a face. One I’ve seen many, many times, and yet cannot for the life of me remember.

My reflection in the bathroom mirror reveals red splotches covering my chest, and my heart feels like it’s doing jumping jacks inside my throat. I wet a paper towel with cold water in an attempt to ease the angry welts down, but it does nothing, because on the inside, I feel like a terrible storm is coming. Flight-or-fight engaged, everything inside me wants to seek refuge somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I hope the truth will set you free.

My eyes dart to the bathroom counter, landing on the manila envelope bullseye. The script on top is feminine and delicate and the exact opposite of the cataclysmic bomb of truth that lies inside.

When I walked through the giant doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral today, journalists and photographers from Page Six were already here, taking pictures of my entrance and wishing me an early congratulations.

They don’t expect cold feet when you’re marrying someone as important as Thomas, and for as much as I can’t seem to remember what I ever liked about him right now, neither was I.

This cathedral, the very spot I’m supposed to get married, is a New York icon. Mariah Carey got married here in the nineties, and it sits smack-dab in the middle of Rockefeller Center and Saks on Fifth Avenue. It screams big money and big dreams and a one-in-a-million chance at happiness for a girl from a little bitty town in Vermont.

But the contents of that envelope prove it’s all just smoke and mirrors to hide the dirty, appalling truth.

Because not only do I not know what my fiancé’s face looks like today, I don’t know who my fiancé is at all.

“Apparently, your whole damn life is a lie,” I mutter to myself and brace my hands on the edges of the porcelain sink. In the mirror, my stupid bridal face stares back at me. All thanks to the beauty team my mother hired, my naturally curly, light-brown hair is in a perfect chignon, and my makeup is an elegant combination of light pinks and neutral tones that highlight my features.

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