Timeless Love

“I let my inhibitions go, and they fell in the wrong place. I didn’t know he would be my unraveling. I didn’t know he was twenty-five.”

A single mother often lives by certain rules, and Angela Petrov has made certain to adhere to hers: Mom first, career second, and no man will meet her child unless they will be in her life long-term.
However, with her daughter now in college, the company she has worked at for over a decade facing major changes, and no lover in sight, Angela’s life has lost all its carefully construed and configured organization.
When news that the annual, employee, Labor Day party in the Hamptons will still be held, Angela tries to bail out. However, her best friend and coworker, Autumn, convinces her otherwise.
Turns out that, while attempting to enjoy the elite Hampton nightlife with her coworkers, she meets a much-younger, tall, dark, and sexy man who offers her an escape for the long weekend. So, throwing caution to the ocean breeze, she accepts his offer of a true time-out in life, focusing only on time between the sheets with no … strings attached.
What happens when you allow yourself to let go of life’s stresses, release inhibitions, and embrace desire?
You chase regret.

My dreams were always in black and white, once in a while, I’d be gifted something gray.

Until her.

Then, I broke her. I tore her up. I shattered her. But she was breathing, living, and I knew damn well, she was on the verge of loving, but it couldn’t be me.

I turned from her for the red white and blue. Because war, destruction, hell even death was more welcome than the possibility of hurting her.

I didn’t deserve her, and she sure as f*@^ didn’t deserve me.

"It isn’t supposed to hurt."
We don’t always choose who we fall in love with.
It just so happened that I fell in love over a box of crayons and a smile.

Growing up, it was always the three of us: Elijah Donahue, with his genius IQ and a smile he only shared with me. Our best friend, Aaron Esposito, with his crystal-blue eyes and a smile he shared with everyone. And me, Stella McCarty, the girl with the chapped lips and unruly hair. Then we grew apart, which is putting it mildly.

I felt the loss, though my heart belonged to Elijah and his to me.

When my father passed away, we grew back together again. I couldn’t have gotten through that time if not for the both of them. But then, when I graduated from college and moved back home from London, it became obvious that I had been oblivious to the fact that they had never stopped hating one another.

Elijah and Aaron’s hate for one another had apparently been hindered by their love for me.
Only, I didn’t know that they both loved me in the same way.
And I wished I never did.

Love isn’t supposed to feel like this.
It isn’t supposed to hurt.

What happens at De La Porte’s annual Labor Day weekend party in the Hamptons—
never stays in the Hamptons.

After my marriage to my high school sweetheart ended, I made a list of all the things I “desired” the next time around. After all, marrying for love had failed me. One year single, and I had all the love I needed in an amazing career and great new friends — the ex got the old ones in the divorce. I was only lacking in one department …

Hot, passionate sex

-Taller than me
-Fit, bulging, biteable arms
-Six-pack abs
-Suit and tie
-Chiseled features
-Tattoos
-Gentleman on the streets, freak between the sheets
-Oral AF
-Smells delicious
-Gives me chills
-Can buy the occasional meal out
-Not an employee of De La Porte

That’s it. That’s all I wanted. Easy, huh?
WRONG!
Have you ever tried online dating?
Shit. Show.
No one’s honest or up front, and when you are, they slither back into the dark hole they momentarily climbed out of to rub one out.

Standing at the bar with my best friend, the weekend of our annual Hamptons company getaway, a man who checked all my boxes magically appeared.

I will admit it was the best weekend of my life …

Until I found out he was still in college … and that his father was on the board of trustees.