The Ex Trials (Falling for Autumn Book 3) Read online

  Minutes later, I marched back to the deck chairs where Autumn and Blake were holding court. I pushed my way through the group while purposely not looking Cole’s way. I took Autumn by the hand and hoisted her out of her seat. She gave me a wide-eyed, startled look.

  “Well, boys this has been fun and all, but last I checked we were supposed to be having a bachelorette party. So the rest of the girls and I are stealing this little lady away. In the meantime, you boys run off and do all your alpha male stuff. I believe I saw a gym on the top deck,” I said brightly.

  Autumn gave me a wink before turning to face Blake. “She does have a point. Catch up with you later?”

  Blake gave me a penetrating look, his green eyes unflinching. I was unshakeable, despite the fact he was over six feet of pure muscle and could crush me in a single shot. “What are your plans?” he asked.

  “None of your business,” I said briskly. When he continued to stare, I added in an annoyed voice, “Nothing that will end up on TMZ, I promise.”

  Blake finally cracked a smile. “Well, have fun. Call me for bail money.”

  I laughed drily. “Who us? Why the four of us would never get in trouble,” I said in a falsetto while fanning myself with my right hand.

  I heard Cole smother a laugh in the background, but I chose not to respond. The vacation was Autumn’s last chance to get a little wild as a single girl and I wouldn’t let my own drama get in the way of my mission.

  I would ignore the disturbing realization that a single platonic touch from Cole had awakened my long dormant sex drive. And every time I glanced his way, I felt the reckless urge to say to hell with my reasons for not being with him and find a private corner so I could have my way with him. Fate was funny. Because of course my luck would lead me to desire the one man who would never want me again.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh god. Yes! Don’t stop!”

  I giggled. “Christ, Autumn, you sound like you’re in the middle of an orgasm. Have you and Blake been abstaining before the wedding?”

  “Hey, little sister in the room, so please don’t make my ears bleed from hearing about my brother’s sex life,” Delia piped up.

  I leaned back in my chair and relaxed as my feet were treated to the most spectacular pedicure ever. I had made advance arrangements for our spa treatments in order to relax and feel beautiful before we set sail. Delia and I were getting pedicures while Autumn and Lexi were booked for massages. The four of us were together in a single treatment room, making it ideal to gossip while being pampered. The spa had large picture windows with a view of the ocean. The lighting was soft and twinkling new age music played quietly in the background.

  I rolled my eyes at Delia. “As if you should talk, Del. No one comes off of the airplane with a glow like that unless they joined the mile high club.”

  Delia snorted. “Have you ever seen plane bathrooms? Or smelled them for that matter? No thanks.”

  “Such a girl,” I laughed. “Well, I guess as the only single girl on this trip, you’ll all have to live vicariously through me.”

  Lexi laughed from her spot across the room. “Do you mean live vicariously by pining for Cole?”

  I sat up straighter in the salon chair. “I am not pining!”

  Autumn poked her head up to stare at me. “You still like Cole?”

  The feeding frenzy had started. I was too obvious about how I hadn’t gotten over him. If the breakup had truly been mutual, then I wouldn’t be on the defensive every time my friends brought up Cole. “No,” I practically shouted. “He’s conceited, arrogant, immature—”

  “I think you’ve changed him,” Delia broke in.

  “What?”

  Delia shrugged. “When I met the twins, they were complete man whores. I told Levi that their apartment probably looked like a crime scene if anyone ever shone a black light on their beds. Evan hasn’t changed, but Cole is different since the two of you dated. He used to eat up the attention after their performances, but now he pretty much orders a shot and sits in a corner all by his lonesome.”

  “Oh my god, Casey, Cole is brooding over you!” Lexi said with shock.

  “He is not brooding over me. Men like Cole do not brood. They fuck and then they move on.” The salon woman working on my feet let out a surprised gasp. I offered her a shaky smile. “Sorry, I mean they make sweet love and then they leave you behind.”

  “My belief is that men who sleep around are trying to fill up an emptiness inside of them,” Lexi said thoughtfully. “But when they find the right woman, they no longer have the urge to have sex with anyone else.”

  “I knew I should’ve canceled your subscription to Psychology Today,” I grumbled. “Look, I’m happy that my three best friends have found love. But I don’t need a man to be happy. I’m starting grad school in the fall while still managing Lucky’s. My plan is to have a fulfilling life with or without a man.”

  “I feel like we should play some Beyoncé after that speech,” Delia said drily.

  Lexi laughed while Autumn remained quiet. I looked to her for help. “Don’t you agree with me, Autumn?”

  “Absolutely,” she said with a dreamy sigh. “Although this massage is so wonderful, I’m probably compliant enough to give away my firstborn.” She opened her eyes and her soft brown eyes turned serious. “I just want you happy, Casey. You’re one of my best friends and I hate seeing how distant you’ve been lately.”

  “I blame your mom. She’s the one who has messed with your head about men,” Lexi said.

  “My mom is fine. She did the best she could,” I said, suddenly feeling protective of the woman who birthed me. My mom—Kelly Silvers—former Miss New York and currently on husband number four. My mother’s piss-poor relationship track record had more to do with her drive to marry for money instead of love. My father was husband number two, a New York-based entrepreneur, who according to my mother loved his job more than his family.

  My dad and I had a strangely formal relationship. He called exactly once a month to check on me and sent me four checks a year to help pay for college. Our relationship worked because I didn’t ask him for more than he was willing to give. My mom had excelled at teaching her daughter the art of conformity for a man’s benefit.

  My mom and I were better as friends than mother and daughter. I’d be more likely to hear from her about a lipstick emergency than to have her offer me heartfelt advice about life and love.

  Granted, my mom had her issues, but between husbands, she was a single mom trying to do her best by her daughter. She didn’t have much in the way of life skills and her beauty queen status had a tendency to attract the wrong kind of men—men who wanted arm candy and not much else from their wife. She was destined to be endlessly disappointed. I hadn’t been so liberal with my views as a teenager, but college gave me the distance I needed to be more accepting.

  “I love my mother, but I went to college so I wouldn’t follow the same path. She was always dependent on a man and that’s the last thing I want,” I added.

  Delia nodded. I wasn’t surprised she could relate. Delia and Blake won most fucked-up parents award all day long. Delia said, “I felt the same way after my mom told me to go into modeling. My own success is important to me, but if Levi gets a record deal I’m not going to feel as if I’m only riding on his coattails. We love and respect each other enough to be happy over any and all our victories.”

  “She’s got a point,” Autumn agreed. “Blake celebrated just as much with me over my acceptance into grad school as when he got drafted to the NFL.”

  “Why do I surround myself with best friends who are the marrying kind? You’re all going to be smug in the suburbs with your kids before the age of twenty-five. You’ll introduce me to your children as their crazy and wild Aunt Casey,” I said with a deliberate sigh.

  To be honest, I was still struggling to find myself. As far as my career, I liked managing Lucky’s and I could see myself opening my own place one day. The independence of run
ning my own business appealed to me and I knew a master’s program would help me get a handle on the ins and outs of the food and restaurant industry.

  Getting my love life on track was my biggest hurdle. In college, I never imagined myself settling down with one guy. It wasn’t that I was opposed to monogamy, but I found myself easily bored. Obviously I wasn't in love if I found myself zeroing in on a guy’s smallest flaws. I stopped seeing a guy once because he would repeat a funny line in a movie, word for word, immediately after it was said on screen. Drove me up the wall.

  With Cole, I thought it was all about the chase for him. I resisted his charm and he wanted what he couldn’t have. But then one night, I looked up at him on stage and saw my mental barriers begin to collapse right before my eyes. Why was I denying myself? Even if I only had him for one night, why not make it a memorable one?

  What was supposed to be one night turned into seven weeks. We were insatiable for one another. Seeing the sun was a rarity for the months we were together since I spent the majority of my time in Cole’s bed. We rarely left his apartment, even for food, opting instead to rummage his fridge between our sexcapades. Cole taught me a lot about myself in a short time. More than just how crazy flexible I could be if I put my mind to it. He taught me that it was possible to only crave a single person. To be so addicted to a man that everyone else pales in comparison. I never thought I would give him up so easily. For a girl who never knew love and who stumbled upon it for the very first time, I should have fought tooth and nail to keep what was rightfully mine.

  I was stuck in the past with Cole because the past had been so damn good.

  Chapter Five

  Eight Months Earlier…

  Holidays could be treacherous for children of divorced parents. Once a kid can speak her own mind, the parents may find themselves in a head-to-head match. Who will be chosen? Which house did she want Santa to come to?

  I never had that luxury of choosing. My dad was never around and my mother’s holiday efforts depended solely on her latest conquest. When I was twelve, we had skipped Christmas altogether because my mom was hoping for a ring from a Jewish businessman and had told him we were in the process of converting.

  As soon as I left for college, it was clear I was on my own for Christmas vacation. My mom preferred to spend the holidays sunning in the Caribbean than putting on a false front of holiday cheer. I was fine with our arrangement. I could avoid feeling like the third wheel and spend the break with my friends. Classes wouldn’t resume until January and I had told my boss at Lucky’s I could pick up extra shifts.

  Since Lexi and Autumn were back home, I spent a lot of my free time with Delia. Her home life was definitely more hellish than mine and she had no plans to leave Fairfort or the sanctity of Levi’s arms. The Warriors had made the playoffs and Blake wasn’t expected to be home for several more weeks. According to Delia, her brother had been the only one who had made the past holidays bearable. Her confession made me wish I’d been lucky enough to have a sibling.

  Trojan Jedi was playing a show at Stucky’s, a mid-sized local bar that was popular with Cook University students. I’d been there several times on college nights and had seen the bar over capacity with drink wait times well over twenty minutes. Delia had insisted we come out as a show of support. She had been nervous that the crowd would be thin because of Cook’s winter break. I wasn’t as worried. The band had steadily been playing bigger venues with more vocal fans popping up online. Not only were the bandmates all incredibly talented, but they were also serious eye candy. The lead singer Rain had major sex appeal and a smoky, hypnotic voice. And although I would have never admitted it within their earshot, the three Caldwell brothers each had different aspects of the hot rocker Adam Levine thing going on.

  I had met Levi’s older twin brothers Cole and Evan several times since Delia started dating Levi the past spring. I wouldn’t lie and say the brothers hadn’t given me a female boner the first time I saw them. The twins set off fire alarms when they walked by. Cole had especially piqued my interest. There was something that set him apart from his brother. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what about him intrigued me. Maybe it was the way he smiled in a certain way just for me. Or how he never seemed to take the world too seriously. There was something appealing about being around someone who truly didn’t seem to give a fuck what anyone else thought. As the offspring of a hyper-critical mother, I found his attitude both baffling and endearing.

  And I had toyed with the idea of a fling with Cole. He had come on too strong the first night we met, scaring me off with his sly charm. After my initial refusal, every night thereafter he had continued his intrepid pursuit of me. Although I was flattered and to be honest, horny as hell, I had turned him down each time and had plans to continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

  If I had met Cole a year or two earlier, I wouldn’t have resisted temptation. I’d have let him take me in any which way until we were both sated. But I had other Coles in my past—more than I wanted to admit. And although the sex had been mostly phenomenal, orgasms weren’t everlasting. They faded quickly and I was left feeling empty all over again. With all my friends coupling off, I was getting the itch to start looking for the real thing. And I was willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that Cole Caldwell was about as far from boyfriend material as I could get.

  Stucky’s was built less than five years earlier, so it had yet to transform into another rundown Fairfort bar. The floors were not scuffed up and the bathrooms didn’t make me feel like I needed a shower after using them. After getting carded at the door with Delia receiving her charming under twenty-one yellow wristband, we checked out the crowd.

  Delia flipped back her long straight platinum hair and let out a low whistle. The dance floor in front of the stage was full as well as the tables along the sidelines. The bar wasn’t as obnoxiously busy as I seen it in the past, but Trojan Jedi had brought out the groupies for sure. And despite the revealing clothing of the female clientele, I was going to keep the judging to myself and assume they were all big fans of the music.

  The band was already setting up on stage so I ordered a drink before we pushed our way closer to the front. I handed Delia a water while I took a pull of my beer. “So, has Levi written any more songs?”

  Delia was as gorgeous as a supermodel, so her blush amused me. “Yes, he’s actually an amazing songwriter and it could be the band’s chance to step away from only performing covers. But it’s slightly embarrassing since he says all the songs are about me.”

  I tried to hold in my laughter since Delia was giving me such an earnest look. I’d been a friend to her for a while now, so I had a tendency to forget how young she seemed. I felt like her opposite. Lately, I’d been finding myself relating more and more to my grandmother who lived in Florida. She was a chain smoker with a crackling sounding voice who was always complaining that men were useless pieces of shit. At our last visit, she lamented over how she kept herself thin for “twenty goddamn years" by skipping dessert every night while all the while my grandfather had been “diddling that dirty whore Louisa June.” She found out about the affair with his secretary after his death and for good measure, drove to his grave once a week just to spit on his tombstone. Really, warm and fuzzy stuff.

  I went to reply to Delia, but was quieted by the strum of Evan’s guitar. The lights dimmed and before the band could play another note, the bar lost its collective shit and the screaming began. We elbowed past young women who were shrieking at full volume as well as middle-aged mom-types jumping up and down in excitement. Evan did a few more solo notes before I heard Cole’s bass and Levi’s drums jump into the song.

  Rain winked at the audience before grabbing the microphone and caressing it slowly. Rain was fearless with her stage wardrobe and I could only wish I were able to pull off her black leather pants and black and white checkered leather bra top. Rain was intimidating on stage, but the couple of times I met her, I found her to be good people. She treated the Caldw
ells like her brothers and the four of them had an easy camaraderie. She didn’t hang around a lot after the shows, especially since last I heard she had a serious girlfriend.

  Her rich, sensual voice drew me in as she began to sing Hole’s “Violet.” Trojan Jedi stuck mostly to 1990s cover songs and they were all crowd pleasers. Since the audience was made up of mostly women, I knew we could all relate to Courtney Love’s lyrics about being used up and tossed aside.

  And the sky was made of amethyst

  And all the stars look just like little fish

  You should learn when to go

  You should learn how to say no

  Might last a day, yeah

  Mine is forever

  Might last a day, yeah

  Mine is forever

  When they get what they want, they never want it again

  When they get what they want, they never want it again

  Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to

  Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to

  Rain strutted over to Cole and ran her long red fingernails up and down his tattooed, muscled forearm before playfully pinching his cheek. A girl standing next to me seemed possessed after the move.

  “Cole!” she screamed in my ear. She was a tall, busty brunette wearing a Trojan Jedi t-shirt shredded to pieces in order to show off her perfect abs. She continued to screech at full volume. “Get off my man, bitch!” Her redheaded friend elbowed her in the ribs and they both laughed.

  I was taken aback by the sudden surge of jealousy coursing through me. For a split second, I seriously considered reaching over and pulling out the busty brunette's hair. I turned to Delia, who was making eyes with Levi as he drummed away on stage.