Showing results by author "Heather Long" in All Categories

Our feelings for her were like wild animals finally freed from their cage. But my sparrow, she was the most brutal fighter of us all. She’d had to be. The battles she’s survived, she’s done in silence and alone. Not anymore. Never again.

From the moment I learned she was coming to our school, I had a gut feeling it would end in disaster. Out of all the schools in the world, why did Kaitlin Crosse have to choose ours? Her presence confused my brothers and created tension between them, but I soon realized my initial assumptions about her were completely wrong.

My name is Frankie Curtis, the four men I love more than anything else in this world want me to marry them. They want forever.

Emersyn Sharpe is more than just the girl we watched over. She’s very much the woman who fits us. The last thing we should have done was take her and the worst thing we did was keep her, but she needs us. I think more than one of us - myself included - needs her. The secret wasn’t ours to share, and the lie? I bought into the lie that keeping her was saving her. The lie that persuading her to trust us was needed. The lie that falling in love with her was as natural as breathing. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t alone in falling into this trap.

When the year started, I had one goal - make my AP classes count and keep my grades up. Both my focus and my grades started wobbling. Dating my best friends came with perks like hugs, kisses, and invitations to dances, but it also came with cons in the form of vindictive posts, hate mail, and vandalism of my car. I asked if it could get any worse, and I guess I got my answer.

One-hundred-seventy some odd days left in my senior year, and everything has changed. I went from untouchable to dating my best friends to making out to being betrayed. Why can’t they understand humiliating and controlling me doesn’t say I care?

It’s a new year. It’s a new me. Or maybe I should say a new us. We’re out there. We’re not hiding the fact that I’m dating all of them. PDAs are back on the table. The final semester of high school kicks off with a bang. I have to keep my eye on the prize though - make every AP class count, keep my grades up, and find a way to balance life with my guys. My best friends. My boyfriends. My lovers.

Jake, Archie, Coop, and Ian were my best friends, and three of them still are - but they’re also now my lovers, my boyfriends, and pretty much the anchors keeping me from getting washed away. I’ve had great moments, and I’ve had horrible ones. One thing is for sure, I’ll never forget my senior year. It’s the year everything changed. It’s the year I found them. I lost one, and now he wants me back, but I have no idea how to trust him again.

My name is Liam O’Connell. Hellspawn is mine. Emersyn is ours. We aren’t going to wait around for the next attack. No, we’re taking the fight right to them.

Life doesn’t come with a script, but some moments don’t need one. Senior year pushed us all. It dared us to embrace wonder and chase love. It challenged us to find out who we were as people, as partners, as a family. We’re so much better together. Graduation isn’t the end of our story by any stretch. It’s the next chapter.

My name is now Rick Drew. Fresh out of a facility they called a hospital and I called a cage, I wasn’t looking for redemption. I wasn’t looking for anything. Then I found her bleeding in an alley, and everything I thought I wanted burned to ash.

I’d been called so many names over the years. None of them mattered. My mirror cared more than I did. But he never treated me as less. None of them did. My brothers were the Vandals. They didn’t always understand, but they never judged and they always had my back.

Grandfather tried to prepare me for everything… Yet, how could anyone prepare me for this? Kidnapping. Blackmail. Deception. Grief. Vengeance. The Royals have always been about blood. Blood lines, blood relations, and the spilling of blood. I didn’t ask for this war. I didn’t go looking for it. But I will let nothing and no one keep me from the men I love and we will find what was taken from us. No one will ever steal from us again. They say desperation makes for strange bedfellows, fortunately, the men in my bed are far more dangerous to everyone else.

In the course of a year, I have had my heart broken, re-forged, only to be shattered again. The tears won’t come. Not anymore. No more looking back. No more asking what if. Coop wants me to let myself feel it. Jake wants to distract me. Archie wants to put the world at my feet. Ian wants me to not make choices, until I’m ready. I’ve got family ready to catch me, but I refuse to fall. No more waiting. No more holding my breath. The future is now. We have a chance to forge the path we want, and I’m all in.

It’s not true. It can’t be. Four DNA tests. Only one positive. The man claiming to be my father is quite literally the worst option imaginable. This isn’t happening to me. For the first time in my life, I know who I am and where I want to be and, in the blink of an eye, everything is spinning so utterly out of control. I thought the fight with Maddy was the worst thing I faced. It’s not. I’ve grown up in a house of lies, and it’s all crashing down on the five of us, and I have no idea how to protect the ones I love best from the fallout.

I was born into this world. Power and wealth are the keys to controlling it, but they aren’t everything. They are a means to an end when it comes to protecting the people I care about. I’ve known my destiny since I was old enough to sit at the table. Everything in my life has been focused on preparing me for the future. Know your enemies, your allies, and the people in the middle you can buy. When he first appeared in my life, I had no idea who he was, but I never forgot his pretty face. While it’s been years and I barely recognize him, I can’t get enough.

My name is Mickey James. Little Bit is everything. I fought to stay away, and I’ll fight to keep. Our enemies are going to learn that my skill at healing broken bodies makes me damn talented at damaging them too. They drew blood, we’ll bury them.

I’m Cash Morgan. Special Agent Cash Morgan. They trained me to track killers. To find the cracks in their masks, the patterns in their chaos. I was the quiet voice behind a badge, the profiler with a near-perfect record, the one they called when things got dark and twisted. I didn’t flinch at blood. I didn’t blink at bodies. I just hunted. And then I met her.

I’ve worn a lot of labels over the years. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to escape. I hid in my dance. I ran away from my life as much as I could. I fought to be somewhere else, even if I couldn’t be someone else. One night, after my partner lashed out at me and I’d been hurt, the Vandals took me and never looked back. They introduced me to a world I had no idea existed and a family so much greater than the one I’d been trying to survive.

Do you ever lie to yourself? I do. Making friends has been the cruelest choice I ever inflicted upon myself. I like to say I don’t regret it, and for the most part that’s true. I resent it. I despise him because he left me behind, following another battle in this war we’ve been waging. I thought we were partners, best friends, allies, and that he would always have my back as I’ve fought to have his. I hate her because she’s perfection and everything he’s ever wanted, untouchable, brilliant, and capable. Yet, I want her too. Need her. Still, she gave herself to someone else.