1
Camden
Nine Years Ago
O
aklyn fucking Rose
I thought as I walked into my sister’s bedroom after having just seen Hannah’s best friend in a bikini for the last hour, a bunch of us hanging out in our hot tub. Holy shit, that girl gets hotter by the day.
Tight body.
Nice rack.
At this age, I was sure she was a virgin-most of the girls in our sophomore class were.
And that was the reason I’d come into my sister’s room after the little party we had. Everyone had already gone home, Mom and Dad were due back any minute, the empty beer bottles were hidden in the trash, and buried beneath those was a jar of water with all the cigarette butts swimming inside. We hoped the bath would drown out the smell of ash.
My sister and I were always careful, hiding all the evidence.
Except for now, apparently. Her drunk ass had a beer and was sipping on it while she sat on her bed, still in her wet bathing suit.
“Wanna share that?” I took a seat next to her in my soaked swim trunks and held out my hand.
If she didn’t care about getting her bed wet, then neither did I.
She handed me the bottle. “Tonight was the best time ever.” She had a solid buzz-I could hear it in her voice.
“Good time, for sure.”
And the perfect opportunity to bring up her best friend.
“Hey, you know your girl, Oaklyn? She’s really turned into quite a hottie.”
She laughed. “She’s always been a hottie. Maybe you need glasses. When was the last time Mom took you to the eye doctor?”
“Hannah, that’s not what I mean.” I took a drink and handed the beer back to her. “What I mean is, what do you think about me asking her out?”
She tapped my arm like it was the top of our golden retriever’s head. “You’re funny.”
“I’m serious.”
“No. No. Nooo.”
“Why not?”
She faced me, crossing her legs, her hair clinging to her cheeks, which she eventually tucked behind her ears. “You’d crush her. I can’t let that happen.” She wiped her mouth after she took another drink. “Oaklyn can’t handle someone like you.”
I pointed at my bare chest. “Someone like me?”
She nodded. “My brother is the ultimate heartbreaker. I can’t lose my best friend because of a shattered heart.”Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.
It was almost like I wasn’t even in the room and she was talking about me, not to me.
My brows rose as I stared at her. “Are you being serious?”
She gave me the beer back. “Heck yeah, I am.” She then held out her pinkie. “Make me a promise, Camden Dalton, that my friends are forever and ever off-limits.”
Shit, she was being serious.
But just to confirm, I said, “All of your friends?”
“Just my super-close ones, like Oaklyn, Suz, Tracy, and Justine.”
Fuck.
When my sister gave me her pinkie, that was our solemn promise to each other. We didn’t do it often, but when we did, nothing could break that promise.
Therefore, I had no choice.
I couldn’t fight her on this.
I had to fold.
And that meant I could never touch Oaklyn Rose.
Damn, that sucks.
I locked our pinkies together and gave her the words she wanted to hear. “I promise.”
Camden
T
here was no way in hell that my twin sister, Hannah, should leave me alone with her best friend in their apartment.
That was rule number one.
Rule number two was that I shouldn’t be mentally stripping the jeans and sweatshirt off Oaklyn’s perfect, tight, lean body. I shouldn’t be fantasizing about wrapping those gorgeous legs around my waist and slowly burying my dick into her pussy. I shouldn’t have this desire to make her scream so fucking loud that the neighbors on both sides would come banging on the door.
But that was what I was doing.
Because, goddamn it, she was so fucking hot.
So enticing.
So sweet. I just wanted to twist her long brown hair around my wrist and dirty her up a little.
Oaklyn Rose was the one girl I’d always wanted and the one girl who had always been off-limits.
The twin brother couldn’t touch the twin sister’s best friend.
And normally, I didn’t break rules.
But rule number two had been shattered a few hours ago when I came over to their place for dinner and immediately caught sight of Oaklyn bending over to take a pizza out of the oven, showing me that spicy, heart-shaped ass. And rule number one was about to be broken since my sister had just been called into work.
“Shit!” Hannah shouted as she got off the phone with her boss, sprinting into her room to get changed. “Have I mentioned how much I hate him? Because I do. With a passion I can’t even describe.”
My sister was bitching about Declan Shaw, her boss at The Dalton Group and the top litigator in the state of California. After meeting him this past weekend, I’d learned he wasn’t just a pit bull, but also one that fucking snarled. You would think that when you interned for your family’s law firm, like Hannah, you would get to choose your mentor. Not at The Dalton Group. They didn’t play that way. But there was an advantage to working under someone as skilled as Declan, which Hannah would eventually realize, and I hoped once I graduated law school this spring and moved back to the West Coast, I would become a clerk on his team.
After what sounded like a mini tornado erupting in her room, my sister returned to where Oaklyn and I were standing.
Oaklyn placed a soft-sided cooler in Hannah’s hands. “Take this.”
“What’s in it?” Hannah asked.
“Brownies. Fruit. The leftover pizza we had for dinner.”
Oaklyn knew Hannah could be at the office all night and didn’t want my sister to go hungry.