Into the Tide (Cottonwood Cove, #1)

by Laura Pavlov

I’d always called her Snow for as long as I could remember, because the girl had watched Snow White more times than any one kid should, and her dark hair and all that sweetness made it an easy nickname to hold on to.

“Bear?” I called out, because I didn’t see anyone in the bar area. I’d called him that since we were kids. He’d called me Snow, and I’d called him Pooh Bear, but he’d insisted I drop the Pooh when we got older. I still laughed when I thought about the way he’d tried to gently ask me to just use Bear because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

I didn’t know when Lila James grew into the sexiest woman I’d ever seen, but she had.

I tugged open the door, climbing in, and I reached for the seat belt and pulled it across her body. “What are you doing, Bear? I can buckle my own seat belt.” She shook her head and chuckled.

I glanced over to see she looked a little nervous, and my finger wrapped around her pinky instinctually, to comfort her.

“I see how it is, Gracie girl. You’re jumping ship on Uncle Hughey?” I grasped my heart like I was wounded, and she laughed some more before turning her attention back to Lila and petting her hair and smiling at her like she was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Trust me, I understood it. Gracie wasn’t the only one gaping at my best friend’s little sister.

“Sorry about that. It’s a morning thing.” I smirked. It’s actually a Lila thing.

Because she was my girl, wasn’t she? Maybe I couldn’t have her, but she was mine.

I didn’t know when it happened—when I’d fallen completely in love with this woman, but it had happened. I’d finally experienced what my father had always talked about. What my brothers and I had teased him about for years. It wasn’t that the hair on my arms stood on edge like what had happened to my father, or that I knew I would marry Lila James. It was a repeated clarity that I experienced day after day with this woman. My heart no longer belonged to me. It was hers. No one else would ever have it—that I was certain of.

#13. Tell Hugh Reynolds that I love him. Not a friendship kind of love. That I-can’t-live-without-you, people-write-poetry-about kind of love. The real deal.