With Any Luck (The Improbable Meet-Cute, #5)

by Ashley Poston

We are fated, like my grandmother, my mother, my sisters, and me, to be the person before. The rebound, the partner at the beginning of rom-coms who is rarely named because they are always what the main character doesn’t need. They are the utterly forgettable Before.

I sucked in a breath between my teeth. “Oof, sorry, can’t do, champ. You just friended the wrong girl. This brain? Full of Twilight quotes and omegaverse lore, not math.”

No. If my best friend’s going to jump, I’m at least going to be his spotter.

She came from a family that had fuck-you money, the kind of rich that own a house on the coast of Connecticut and look like they could play extras in the background of Taylor Swift music videos.

I pulled myself out of the memory and averted my eyes to my shoes. “What are you doing here?” Those green eyes turned playful. “I’m here to kiss you.”

I’m too young to be too old for this.

“Sometimes when you love someone, you both have to do shit you don’t want to.”

“You’re a copyeditor. You always write in a green pen. Your favorite food is a s’more, and your favorite word is ‘susurrus.’”

“Rhett wouldn’t shut up about you when I first met him. You should’ve heard the way he talked about you—like you hung the moon, the sun, and all the stars. I couldn’t wait to meet you in New Orleans, and when I did, I realized he didn’t even tell me the good parts.”

“I wasn’t joking yesterday when I asked you to kiss me.” My bottom lip wobbled. “So you can find your t-true love, too?” “Fuck that,” he growled and took my face in his hands and kissed me. Crushed our mouths together, our breaths intertwining in the cold.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked. “About kissing me?” He felt so hard against my middle, and I hadn’t had anything intimate in so long I wanted it. So, so badly. “Because it’d be you,” he said. “I knew it’d be you.”

Because the way he kisses feels like the way I fall in love, sharp and quick and deep.