The One Who Got Away (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Read Online Free

investigations that one did after a bad breakup, but when the heir to a massive fortune takes the reins of the family business right out of college and the profits skyrocket to the moon (and you look the way Lincoln Carraway looks), you become a household name. CNN, Forbes, People —everyone wanted a piece of the twenty-something billionaire.
    “Everyone but me,” I clarified to no one in particular. To myself, in case I was forgetting that I hated his guts. But I didn’t hate him. It would be easier if I did. If the name ‘Carraway’ was enough to make me sweat and seeing his smile, paired with the naughty gleam in his stormy gray eyes glittering on the front of a magazine, was enough to make my heart quicken in my chest...the sight of him would do me in.
    I clenched the steering wheel, memories bombarding me with no mercy. I should have known that when something was too good to be true, i.e. he hung out with a group of guys who were known as the ‘Quit It Crew’ that we were destined for failure.
    The ‘Quit it Crew’ was Rhoades High’s best. They were all involved in sports: football, basketball, and baseball. They all had charm, good looks, and a hefty dash of confidence that often slipped into cockiness. They sauntered through the halls of our high school like they owned them. The sick truth was, they did. Everyone worshipped them, from the teachers who overlooked missed assignments and outright defiance to the kids who got picked on for not fitting in. Those kids still gazed at them with wistful longing, a tiny bit of hope that if they tried hard enough, they could be popular too. Popular, the ‘Rhoades Mold’ meant good, down-home Southern-ness where sports were religion, boys did what boys did, and the girls stayed quiet and always had their face on.
    I nearly rear-ended the person in front of me when the light flickered green, trying to outrun the past. But the past was everywhere, even after all these years. I carried it inside like poison, and it seeped into my blood and soured everything. The tears that scalded my cheeks were just an unwelcome reminder that no matter how many days, months, and years passed, Lincoln Carraway still had a hold on me.
    I pointed my car onto campus, cruising down the scenic front drive. Meredith looked even more beautiful than it did on the website. Everything held the warm colors of fall. Oak trees sighed and let loose a trickle of orange, brown, and yellow leaves. The grass was green and plush and I spied an amphitheater to my right, a chapel standing on the left. Straight ahead was a fountain that tossed and spun water in a hypnotic way that made me want to apply like, yesterday. Even from my car I could feel the energy of the students, all backpacked and Kate Spaded with pearls. I hadn’t felt such an urge to join a group, to be accepted since I said ‘screw that’ in middle school.
    “Something in the air,” I said to myself, pulling into the visitor’s lot. That was the only explanation because my best friend, Ashton, was just as alternative as I was. We banded together, sisters in every way except blood. Back in middle school, these two cheerleaders, Mindy and Cindy (no relation, but you’d never know it since they always wore complementary outfits and had the same mean ass streak) started in on me and my black dress, laughing and joking that I looked like I was headed to a funeral. Ashton piped that if they didn’t fuck off, I would be heading to a funeral...theirs.
    They never said anything to either of us after that. If they’d been willing to take their head out of their asses, they would have seen that me and Ash couldn’t hurt a fly. We were just trying to figure out who we were...and who we weren’t.
    My awe at the Meredith experience dimmed as I stepped out of the car and a mom parked beside me in a minivan gave me a once over and a ‘Bless your heart’ smile, like I was clearly lost. This was a place of color; of preppiness and white teeth