One Last Shot (Pub Fiction #3) Read Online Free

‘whatever’?” I ask, getting annoyed.
    “Don’t give me that bullshit. I know you, Claire. I know you think this is the life you want. But it’s crap, and the sooner you admit it the quicker you can move on to where we both know you belong. You’re twenty-four, not fourteen,” Kat huffs, and I admit I’m a bit taken aback by her comments, and the tone she’s using.
    “This has nothing to do with him , Kat, I hope you know. Don’t even try to go there with me.”
    I’m a liar and she knows it. It always has something to do with him .
    Matt Bishop.
    The one for whom all my rules fell to shit in my final year at Brock University. The same man I secretly want today—two years later—just as much as I wanted him back then. The one I won’t admit to wanting out loud.
    Matt Bishop has remained a thorn in my side, the starring role in all of my dreams, and a source of pain in my heart from the day he marched his sexy-as-fuck self up to me and uttered a stupidly amazing pick up line. He’d tricked me with his good looks, wittiness, the promise of no strings, and all kinds of sexy fun. Damn him.
    “Yes. It does too have to do with Matt.” Kat intrudes into my train of Matt-thoughts. “It will always come back to him. You still love him. You know it and so do I. You’re just in denial, chica. And you’re afraid, for whatever reason you’ve concocted in that beautiful head of yours.”
    Kat’s right. She’s so fucking right it’s not funny. Matt Bishop just might be the Froot to my Loop, the frosting to my cupcake, the cork to my wine bottle…the one for me. I had never intended to put myself in a position to let my guard down, to break my one solid rule. But with Matty, it happened naturally without a second thought or any realization on my part… until it was too late . Matt got to me like no-one else and I’ve never quite been able to shake him off. Even after I left town, he still affects me.
    It’s because of that sexy-hunk-of-manflesh in the form of Matt that my well-rehearsed plan of never falling in love, of never risking being hurt again, began to unravel. He taught me that I can love. I just didn’t want to, and I was way too much of a chickenshit to hang onto it. Matty is responsible for putting the first and only chink in the armour I’d put on to protect my heart after my parents’ deaths.
    Matt, all tall and muscled with his sexy olive skin and strong chiseled jaw lined with enough scruff to give him a subtly rugged look. That high-and-tight way he wore his sandy-coloured hair. And those brilliant light brown eyes of his—eyes the colour of the oldest pages of the most cherished books, knowing eyes, that saw right through my bullshit from the beginning. Yeah, Matty Bishop was the wrench in my plan, all right. The nail in my coffin of non-commitment and “hell, no, I don’t need love” way of thinking. I never even saw him coming.
    Matt made me forget my own damn rules. With that one cheesy-ass pick-up line, I was done. A pick-up line that still, two years later, brings a smile to my face and warmth to my heart.
    “Hey, beautiful. Do you believe in love at first sight or do you need me to walk by again?”
    With such obvious talent for pulling off the worst lines accompanied with an irresistible grin to drive it all home, how could I resist?
    After that night, Matt and I were inseparable, and for months it was bliss. For the first time since I was fourteen, I’d let in someone new. I had let a man make an imprint on my heart, and boy, was it one hell of a lasting impression. I was in a committed, healthy, loving relationship for the first time, and I was happy about it. The negative thoughts were slowly evaporating and the feeling was freeing. I was healing—putting my insecurities aside and focusing on the positive.
    Everything was going perfectly until Valentine’s Day, when a knock on the door of the university village residence that I shared with Kat would change Matty’s and my