Friends with Benefits (Friend Zone Series Book 3) Read online

  Friends With Benefits

  Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Blanchard

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Bolero Books LLC

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  All rights reserved.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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 recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover: Octopi Covers

  Editing: Joy Editing

  Dedication

  For the men who don’t run away

  no matter how much crazy you throw at them

  Contents

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  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Nicole Blanchard

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  Chapter One

  Ember

  I got the text message while I was in the home improvement store trying to figure out which carpet to buy to replace the one my sisters had ruined.

  I ignored it for a few minutes as I decided between sandcastle and brilliant beige. The last thing I should be doing is putting more stainable, light-colored carpet in their room, but these were the only two options in my price range, and my budget was already stretched to the max. My parents should be attending to this particular responsibility, but asking them to do anything responsible was like trying to pluck a star from the sky: impossible.

  “How much is this one?” I asked, pointing to the beige. The clerk stretched to check the printouts as I dragged out my phone to read the text.

  At first, my heart lifted at the From: indicator. It was Chris, my boyfriend, who was away at college in Miami. It had been a couple of days since I had heard from him, and although I wanted to talk to him more often, he’d made it a point to let me know I was smothering him, so I had backed off.

  Apparently, I hadn’t backed off far enough.

  CHRIS: Hey pretty lady. Wassup?

  It should have pleased me to hear from him, but an indescribable weight seemed to take up residence on my shoulders. Anxiety bubbled in my stomach. All I wanted was for us to work out. Our relationship had become more work than anything else, but that’s what relationships were—or so I told myself. If I kept working at this, it would pay off.

  ME: Getting carpet for the twins’ room. How are you?

  Somehow, my relationship with the man who I thought I loved had turned into a carnival reflection of itself. I didn’t recognize it when I looked in the mirror. Chris and I had met when we were in high school and then reconnected when we were at the same community college. I had been training to be an EMT; he had been finishing prerequisites to transfer to a four-year university. To be honest, I’d had a crush on him for as long as I could remember, and when he had reciprocated interest, I had thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.

  It had been a long time since I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.

  Ever since things had gotten more serious and the time began to draw near for me to either stay in Tallahassee or join him in Miami, he’d begun to retreat. The more I tried to make it work, the more he pulled away. In my heart, I knew what that meant, but I didn’t quite know how to give up hope.

  It didn’t matter. Reading his text told me all I needed to know about our future together. As the words began to sink in, my tongue went as dry as the Mojave, and my thoughts blurred together.

  CHRIS: Look, I think I need to be upfront about something with you. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’ve met someone. I thought I should tell you.

  My fingers went numb where they clutched at the phone. Even though I had an inkling it was coming, the reality was so much worse than anything I could have dreamt up. My vision went white, and, dramatic though it was, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

  I’d never been the type of girl who went gaga over any guy, but I guess there was a first time for everything.

  It shouldn’t hurt so much to have my suspicions confirmed. I hadn’t wanted to say my fears out loud, afraid that it would make them too real.

  But here it was, in black and white. The undeniable truth.

  The guy I loved, the one I’d trusted and believed in for so long, wasn’t who I thought he was.

  The poor clerk who was reading off measurements, colors, and prices gaped after me as I dropped the other supplies I’d been considering in the shopping cart and then abandoned it in the middle of the aisle.

  Normally, I loved this store. I loved the possibilities of it. The little apartment I rented for my family wasn’t in the best shape, and fixing it up was one of the most rewarding things about my somewhat dismal life. But suddenly the sky-high shelves of paint chips and caulk didn’t feel reassuring. Instead, the winding aisles became a maze from which there was no escape.

  I texted a response blindly. I was sure to read it back later and regret it, but if the only weapon I had was words, I wanted to aim for his heart and make it hurt.

  ME: Then I guess all the promises you made about wanting to be with me forever, all the times you said you loved me meant nothing. All those were just lies? I’m not a perfect person, but I deserve better than this. I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am, but I actually believed the bullshit you spun to me about it being us against the world. Lose my number. I don’t ever want to hear from you again.


  As tears flooded my vision, I blocked his number and navigated through the aisles to the front door. I don’t know how I made it back to the apartment complex without wrapping my car around a pole, but I did. Sheer will, I suppose. All those late nights driving an ambulance, high on adrenaline, must have paid off.

  An indeterminable amount of time later, I found myself in the shower, the hot spray beating down on my naked body and hot tears streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t know a person could hurt so much. It felt like I was dying, except there was nothing I knew in my repertoire of life-saving skills that could resuscitate me.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, wallowing in self-pity. It could have been minutes, but it felt like years. The water began to run cold, although I could barely feel it. My brain seemed to have disconnected from my body. It was probably a good thing. The flashes of pain that radiated down to the marrow of my bones were almost too much to handle.

  I’d never believed in broken hearts. Get over it, I’d think to myself when friends of mine would go through a breakup. Even when Liam and Charlie or Layla and Dash had split, granted it was only for a short time, I didn’t think it was so bad. They’d gotten back together, after all. I’d been with Chris so long it had never occurred to me what would happen when we broke up. Not even when things started to get so rocky a couple of months ago.

  What a fool I was.

  My laugh echoed off the dingy subway tiles, and I peeled myself off of the tub floor to turn off the water. My hair was matted to my head, but I couldn’t find the energy to care. Any concern aside from surviving had leaked out of me in the torrent of tears and had seeped down the drain.

  The twins still had another couple of hours at school. Mom was probably off with whatever bum she’d hooked up with over the weekend, and my father, who didn’t seem to care who she slept with, was no doubt glued to a barstool down the road at his favorite haunt.

  I was alone.

  I doubled over as the implication stabbed through me.

  I was alone.

  I had my family, but they were more of a responsibility than a comfort. I’d get through this for them. I had my friends, but they had their own lives, and I didn’t want to burden them–not yet. It wasn’t in my nature to lean on others. I provided for my family, working myself to the bone without any help from my deadbeat parents. I would survive this, even if it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

  For now, it felt like the pain encapsulated everything, blotting out my surroundings until it contracted to a dull ache in my chest. I staggered to my bedroom with a towel wrapped loosely around my body and water dripping from my saturated hair onto the worn wood floors. I didn’t care. I couldn’t scrounge up the energy to do more than throw myself onto the bed and pull the mussed covers around me.

  My phone was hauntingly silent, which only made the tears fall harder. There were no social media notifications. No emails. I knew, somewhere deep down in my soul, that he wouldn’t try reaching out that way.

  He’d found someone else.

  I’d supported him through his father’s death the year before. When he didn’t think he could pass his finals after the funeral, I stayed up after two double shifts and helping the twins through a stomach virus to quiz him. For his birthday, I’d driven down and taken him to his favorite restaurant, even though I was barely making enough money to pay rent and support my sisters.

  I would have done anything for him.

  I did do anything for him.

  Was that where I went wrong? Had I made it too easy? Was I one of those women who got boring in a relationship because I wasn’t exciting or sexy enough?

  My thoughts spiraled down a black hole, and I covered my face with a pillow until I’d cried myself dry. I must have dozed off at times because a sudden realization would jerk me awake, and then it would start all over again.

  One day, I told myself. I’d give him one day of being upset, and then I’d push it away, bury it deep, and never think of this—or him—again.

  It was wishful thinking, considering we’d been together for a long time. But the thought of feeling this way forever, of giving in to the temptation to give way to a despair so all-encompassing, was overpowering. I was afraid I wouldn’t survive it.

  The front door slammed, and pattering feet bounded into the apartment. The twins were home. I shot to my feet and winced as a headache throbbed insistently behind my eyes.

  “Ember!” one of them called.

  “Shh!” said the other. “What if she’s sleeping?”

  The first scoffed. “She’s never sleeping.”

  It made me laugh. They always made me laugh. Raising them never should have fallen on my shoulders, but it had. Even with the burden of taking care of my sisters, they were the lights of my life. The sound of their innocent debate drew me from the shelter of blankets, and I glanced at my phone to find it blinking 3:24 p.m. I must have fallen asleep after my crying jag.

  “Do you think we should check on her? What if she’s sick?” the second asked.

  “Maybe we should get the therbombiter, Tillie.” Which meant it was Molly speaking.

  “Do you know how to use it?” Molly asked with clear interest.

  “Sure. All you do is stick it in her mouth and push the button. I’ll get it from the medicine cabinet. You get a glass of water and the throw-up bowl in case she’s stomach sick.”

  Matilda Leanne was the oldest of my twin sisters—by a whole twenty minutes. It may as well have been twenty years for how she bossed around her younger sister, Molly Elizabeth.

  The patter of their feet echoed down the hall, and I decided to wait for them to return to see what they would do. Besides, I didn’t have the energy to get back to my feet quite yet. As I contemplated getting up, I heard them return.

  “You knock, Tillie,” Molly said.

  “No, you knock,” Tillie replied.

  “You always tell me what to do,” Molly whined, but a rapping sound followed anyway.

  “Ember, are you ‘kay? It’s us.”

  My face felt like I’d been repeatedly punched as I smiled and raised my voice to say, “Come in.” I wiped away any evidence of tears and tried in vain to straighten my hair and look like I hadn’t been crying for hours.

  Two orange-headed girls of six bounded into my room. Tillie’s curls were soft waves that floated around her shoulders. Molly’s were tight ringlets that bounced with each step. They were both the terrors and the lights of my life.

  “We brought you some water and a therbombiter. Are you sick?” Tillie asked as she sat on the side of the bed. Molly climbed up and around to my other side.

  “Just a little tired,” I said, edging around the truth. “The water will help.”

  I took the glass Molly offered, amazed she hadn’t spilled it during her climb up. The water was tepid, but wet, and after crying for hours, I felt like a wrung-out rag. I was probably a little dehydrated.

  The girls stared at me, expectantly. “Thank you, babies,” I said with a squeeze. “This is perfect. Do you have homework?”

  Tillie wagged her finger at me, and Molly giggled. “No work until you feel better. You always let us watch TV when we don’t feel good.”

  I didn’t have it in me to argue. Homework could wait. I pulled the girls close, sighing as their little bodies fit into my side.

  Who needed a man when I had them?

  Chapter Two

  Tripp

  Freshmen Year

  “Hey, hotshot,” a voice called out.

  Looking up, I glowered at the source and then felt a jolt go through my body. A beat-up sedan was stopped behind the car of the girl I was hitting on. The driver leaned out, her glossy red hair tumbling over her shoulders. Her eyes were spitting fire, even over the short distance. They made me forget my original goal—the pretty little brunette sorority chick I’d been eyeing for weeks.

  “There are other people in the world, you know,” said the redhead. “Do you mind?”

  R
ed gestured to the sorority girl’s car, which was blocking her way in the parking garage.

  I straightened and sent Red a winning smile. “Not at all, angel. Why don’t you come and join us?”

  “In your dreams,” Red retorted. “All I want from you is for you to get out of my way. I’m kind of in a hurry here.”

  “Do you know that chick?” the sorority girl—I think her name was Gemma—asked, attitude on full display.

  “Not yet,” I said under my breath.

  Red must have heard. “Not ever.”

  I heard a thin wail that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. She turned to the backseat, and I saw through the windshield two tall backed car seats strapped in on either side. This caused me to straighten. She was a mother? That certainly made me do a double take. The sound I’d heard was a kid crying.

  “Great,” I heard Red mutter when the second kid’s ear-piercing cry joined in. “You think you could take your seduction routine somewhere else?” she snarled.

  “I should get going,” Gemma said. “You wanna call me later?”

  “Sure,” I said absently. My eyes were all for Red, who was still turned around, comforting the writhing bundles in the backseat.