Stand (Black Addiction Book 3) Read Online Free

ironically—I’d committed to getting into shape. Yes, I know, save the eye roll, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Jules—my roommate and co-conspirator in this stupid plan—and I had been drinking cheap pinot grigio straight from the bottle and eating nachos while sitting on our couch. Of course unless you counted an occasional sprint to the subway as a workout, we hadn’t even attempted getting fit before, but surely it couldn’t be that hard. It seemed like a solid idea, what could possibly go wrong?
    Jules lasted exactly two weeks before she waved the white flag of defeat, while I continued defiantly more to prove I wasn’t just another cliché. Enter the hot guy who ran beside me on the treadmill almost every single morning.
    Yep, another freaking cliché.
    Believing the gym gods were rewarding me for my diligent commitment, I flirted shamelessly with the hot specimen of man while I ran beside him. Like Rocky, but with less coordination and no theme song. He was stunning.
    So, I took the flirting a little bit further and suggested we go out. I mean, I’d been seeing him for months, no rings, no jailhouse tattoos—what could possibly go wrong?
    Unfortunately, it didn’t start well with my promising night taking a nosedive the minute we met in front of the gym. He’d arrived late, picked a hideous restaurant and talked about himself for most of the evening. I should have heeded the signs, the ones that told me to say goodbye and find my good times elsewhere.
    While usually I wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of girl, I figured it didn’t count because technically I’d known him for weeks. Technically, you could count our shared workout time as dates , right? And, my love life was in such a funk I thought what the hell. Besides, I was trying to remain optimistic and hoped there might be some redemption in between the sheets. A body like that looked to deliver promises of a good time and I didn’t care it seemed shallow; surely everyone deserved a little no-strings fun? And he was my reward remember?
    Let’s just say that my reward came up a little short in the pants department.
    As in, it was tiny.
    Like, I wasn’t even sure it had been inside me.
    How I wish I were joking.
    So after faking a terribly overacted orgasm, and trying not to make eye contact with his microscopic penis, I hightailed it out of his apartment and back to wine. I mean, mine . Where I consoled myself with wine . It took a while, which is why I feel like I’d licked the floor of a public bathroom. Oh, and now I needed to find a new gym as well. Which proved nothing good came of New Year’s resolutions. And my alcohol tolerance had been substantially lowered in the last three months.
    “Beth, did you die?” Jules knocked tentatively on my door, the sound of her knuckles against the wood making my head pound.
    “Yes, I’ve perished,” I mumbled, praying that if I kept my eyes shut the room would stop spinning.
    “So I assume your night didn’t go so well?” She ignored my corpse imitation and sat on the bed beside me.
    Jules was not only my roommate but had grown to become one of my closest friends.
    Deciding a few years ago the best thing for me was to get serious and leave my party-girl days behind, I moved away from my home in the Bronx. Not only did I finally get to use my college education for what it was intended, scoring a teaching position at a swanky elementary school in the Upper East Side, but I also gained a new BFF who not only taught at the same school but was also looking for a roomie. While her original place had been small—the second bedroom really just a glorified closet—we found a newer place with more room that was still in the budget. And the location was outstanding. Everything pointed to me making the right decision, and while I still loved seeing my friends and family from the old neighborhood, those parts of my life stayed very separate.
    “ Not go so well is an understatement.” While his