Bet on Love

  Copyright © 2020 A.F. Zoelle

  All rights reserved.

  Sarayashi Publishing

  2852 Willamette Street, #144

  Eugene, OR 97405

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by Adrijus of Rocking Book Covers

  Editing by Pam of Undivided Editing

  Proofreading by Sandra of One Love Editing

  Layout by A.F. Zoelle of Sarayashi Publishing

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-7324473-6-3

  RHYS HUNTINGTON

  I went to Las Vegas to marry my fiancée but ended up married to my best man instead. Considering I’m a straight man, I never imagined I would wake up in bed with a husband. We obviously need to get an annulment to undo our mistake. The only problem is, it turns out my feelings for my best friend Luci aren't quite as platonic as I thought.

  What are the odds that my bad idea ends up being the best thing to ever happen to us?

  LUCIEN “LUCI” ST. AMOUR

  After Rhys and I secretly shared our first kiss as teenagers, I spent years suppressing my confusing feelings for him. But now that he’s my husband, it exposes the truth about the depths of my love for my best friend.

  Could I really be lucky enough that he feels the same way about me?

  Bet on Love is the first book in the Good Bad Idea series. This novella features a friends to lovers second chance romance. Full of cute sweetness and sexy fun, every story ends with a satisfying HEA and no cliffhangers. Each book can be read as a standalone or as part of the series in order.

  For the fun of trying something new

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilogue

  Thank You

  About the Series

  Next in Series

  Also by A.F. Zoelle

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  In less than twenty-four hours, my best friend was getting married. I should have been excited for Rhys, but I wasn’t. How could I be when Olivia was all wrong for him and I was losing him forever?

  She had insisted on a daytime bachelor party so the groomsmen wouldn’t be hungover at the rehearsal the next morning. While partying with our friends had been fun, it had been a struggle to get through it, knowing Rhys would commit himself to a loveless marriage soon.

  Once evening came, everyone else headed to the strip club, while Rhys and I went to his room to hang out alone together. We sat next to each other on the bed in our rumpled suits, our ties loosened, resting against the bed’s headboard as we drank beer. I wondered how many more nights we could spend like that after he got married. An impending sense of loss crept up on me in the silence between us.

  Rhys interrupted my thoughts. “Luci, am I making a mistake?” He always called me that, which had led to countless people mistaking me for his girlfriend. The only person who that had bothered was Olivia. Well, her and most of our ex-girlfriends.

  “Yeah, if you keep drinking, Olivia will lose her shit when you’re hungover tomorrow,” I answered.

  “I meant do you think I’m making a mistake by marrying her?”

  He shouldn’t have dated her to begin with, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that. I needed to choose my words carefully, but being drunk made that difficult. I took a long sip to delay answering. “It’s a little late in the game to be questioning that now.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. If she didn’t kill me for standing her up, her mom definitely would.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t want to get on Sharron’s bad side.”

  Rhys tilted his head back against the bed and looked at the ceiling with a heavy sigh. “I wonder how many miserable Christmases I’ll have to spend with her asshole parents before they convince Olivia that she’s too good for me?”

  “If you ask me, it’s the other way around. You’re awesome and funny, not to mention way smarter than her.”

  “Don’t forget sexy as fuck,” he reminded me with a cheeky grin.

  My gaze drifted over Rhys's stretched-out legs crossed at the ankles, over his lithe body, then up to his ridiculously handsome face. While his chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw were attractive, his gray-blue eyes were his most striking feature. It was probably weird that I was a straight guy who thought my best friend had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen, but it was an objective fact. His sandy-blond hair always had a mussed look, making you want to run your fingers through it. That was probably a weird urge, too. Shit, I was drunker than I thought.

  Something stirred inside me as I continued studying Rhys. I blamed the alcohol, but that didn’t stop me from agreeing, “And hot as hell.”

  He grinned at my comment. “Damn right I am.” He killed the last of his drink, then leaned over to grab another one off the nightstand.

  “Slow down, or else you won’t be able to walk in a straight line down the aisle at your rehearsal,” I warned. “At this rate, you’ll still be hungover on your actual wedding day.”

  He ignored me as he flipped the cap off the bottle. “Maybe I don’t want to go through with it.”

  I tried not to get my hopes up that he was getting cold feet. “You don’t have to get shitfaced to call off the wedding. If you want to walk away from this, you know I’ve got your back.”

  He twisted the glass bottle in his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. She’s hot, but she’s not…”

  I had never heard him question his relationship with Olivia before. It took an effort to not get excited that he may back out of the wedding before it was too late. “She’s not what?”

  “She’s not you, Luci.”

  It took a moment for his comment to process through my sluggish mind, but I decided it was too weird. I confiscated his beer bottle. “You’re talking crazy, so I’m cutting you off.”

  Rhys laughed and grabbed his drink back from me, sloshing some on the sheets. “I meant she doesn’t get me like you do. I can tell you anything, and you won’t judge me for it. Olivia judges me about everything.”

  “In fairness, she judges everyone about everything.” I made another attempt to steal away his drink but failed. “It’s not just you.”

  His grin slid into a sad smile that pained my drunk heart. “It’s not fair.”

  “What’s not?”

  “I wouldn’t have to marry Olivia if you were a girl.”

  “Seriously, give me your beer.” I held out my hand to take it from him. “You’ve officially had way too much to drink.”

  He refused to comply. “I’m being serious. I would have married you years ago if you had been a girl. When you think about it, we’re perfect for each other. We tell each other everything, and we have the same sense of humor. Plus, I’m man enough to admit that you’re good-looking and I’m happiest when I’m with you.”

  “That’s just your cold feet talking.”

  Rhys pinned me under his intense gaze. “You don’t agree?”

  The longer he looked at me, the more flustered I became. I was sober enough to realize our conversation was hea
ding in a dangerous direction, but too drunk to get things back on track. The truth was too embarrassing to admit out loud. I nervously adjusted my glasses. “It’s hard to claim we’re perfect for each other when you’re forgetting that whole ‘we can’t fuck each other because we’re straight’ part.”

  He crooked his finger and used it to lift my chin up, forcing our gazes to meet. “It’s not like we haven’t kissed.”

  I was in a free fall as Rhys stared at me with his hypnotizing eyes. We never talked about the fact that we were each other’s first kiss and not Tara Robinson like everyone thought. Our attempts at practicing kissing to prepare for being with girls was something I had locked away deep inside my soul. It was far too dangerous to remember, because I had enjoyed it more than I should have. It had confused me for years why making out with girls had never made me feel the same sparks that kissing Rhys had. I had written it off as romanticizing the magic of my first kiss, because that’s all it could ever be.

  My heart pounded as I desperately tried to stay out of trouble. “It was one time.”

  Rhys’s voice dropped lower, sending a shiver through me. “No, it wasn’t. We’ve pleasured each other before, too.”

  The memory of us experimenting with jerking each other off one summer night was another thing I had repressed to preserve our friendship. It was the first time in years I had thought about it. Remembering it even now still made me hot and bothered. “Once, and my sister interrupted us before we finished. It doesn’t count.”

  Rhys ran his thumb against my lower lip. “I was leaning in to kiss you when she interrupted us, remember?”

  Oh, I remembered. I remembered I wanted it so much that it had terrified me then, and that fear never went away. Especially since that same stupid part of my heart I had spent years ignoring yearned for Rhys to make a move on me. I couldn’t force myself to move away like I should. I could only whisper, “You’re getting married.”

  “Olivia cut me off six months ago so that our honeymoon would be ‘special’ for her.” His tongue darted out to lick his lips, drawing my attention to them. “That’s why I’m alone in this room and not with her in the honeymoon suite. Shit, I’m so fucking horny. It’s not cheating if it’s with a guy, right?”

  “Yes, it is,” I argued, even as my blood rushed south at the unforgivable idea. “You’re better than that. We both are.”

  “Come on, we’re two grown men. It’d just be a mutual hand job, not sex.”

  My dick perked up at the offer, but I shut it down. “I’m not risking Olivia banning me from ever seeing you again when she finds out.”

  “She’ll never find out,” Rhys promised, weaving a dangerous entrapment spell on me. “It’ll be our little secret. After all, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, right?”

  “We’re not having this conversation.” It was too much of a threat to our relationship. The only way to maintain the status quo in our friendship was to get drunk enough that I wouldn’t remember anything in the morning.

  The sultry fire in Rhys's expressive eyes was seductive as he trailed his fingers down my neck. I trembled with confused desire when he asked, “Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like if we hooked up?”

  I couldn’t admit that I had imagined it in the past—had even gotten off on the fantasy—before I banished the memories when I was a teenager. He was my best friend, so I refused to imagine him like that. No, I only liked women—despite how long it had been since I had slept with one. That had to be the reason he was swaying me in my inebriated stupor. It couldn’t be because my dumbass heart had secretly been longing for him since we were teenagers.

  “Why did we never try again?”

  “Because it was a mistake,” I insisted, attempting to convince him as much as myself.

  “Was it?”

  Rhys leaned closer, making me tense. Instead of kissing me, he rested his head on my shoulder, draping himself over my chest, careful not to spill his drink. My free hand embraced him, devastating me with how right it felt. His hardness pressed against my thigh, causing my cock to stiffen in response. It made me want things I could never have.

  “If it’s so wrong, why does being with you always feel so right?” Rhys wondered, echoing my own traitorous thoughts. “Why do I want tonight to last forever with you so that tomorrow never comes?”

  They were questions I didn’t have an answer to, despite feeling the same way.

  “Am I the only one who feels like this?”

  Without having to look into his bewitching storm-colored eyes, it was easier to admit, “No.”

  “Luci.”

  Rhys moaned my name like a physical caress, arousing me more than it should have. I bit my lip to hold in the noise that wanted to escape, fully erect in an instant. “We can’t do this. Stop for both of our sakes, before we do something you’ll regret.”

  “Why would I regret it?”

  Our conversation was too fucking weird to be okay. I reminded him, “You love Olivia, remember?”

  “But I love you more.”

  Although he didn’t mean it romantically, his words hit me hard. The fluttering of his long eyelashes and lips ghosting against my neck made me quiver with a misguided desire. It confused my heart. I sounded unbearably sad when I countered, “It’s not the same thing.” No, he would never love me like that. I wasn’t supposed to want that, either. So why did it hurt?

  “We lose all plausible deniability of ‘no homo’ when we’re both this turned on.” He laughed, but I couldn’t do the same.

  “It’s the beer’s fault,” I argued, refusing to acknowledge that my hard-on had more to do with Rhys than the alcohol. “It means nothing.”

  He sat back up and downed the rest of his bottle. “I guess we should keep drinking until we get whiskey dick so I don’t give Olivia another reason to complain I’m ruining ‘her’ wedding.”

  I finished my drink. “You can’t get whiskey dick from drinking beer.”

  Rhys grabbed two more bottles from the nightstand, cracking them both open before giving me one. “Fine, drunk dick.”

  It didn’t escape my notice that his gaze dropped to the noticeable tent in my pants, causing my cheeks to burn as I did the same to him. What the hell were we doing?

  Rather than commenting on it, he held his bottle out to toast. “Does my best man have anything to say on behalf of his groom?”

  I got hung up on Rhys saying he was my groom. It made it sound like I was the one marrying him. I raised my drink up, wracking my brain to come up with something appropriate. “I wish you a lifetime of wedded bliss.”

  “Cheers!” Rhys clinked his beer against mine. After we both took a sip, he started to laugh. “I need to marry someone else for your wish to come true, though.”

  “It’s not too late. I mean, it’s Vegas. There are twenty-four-hour Elvis wedding chapels everywhere,” I joked. “All you need is someone willing.”

  “God, can you imagine the look of Olivia's face if I did that?” Rhys asked, cackling with laughter. “It would almost be worth it.”

  I laughed along with him. “I guess it depends on who you’re stuck with after eloping.”

  “Yeah, that would go over real well.” He snorted, before mimicking a conversation with his fiancée. “Sorry, babe, but they let me walk down the aisle to an Elvis impersonator singing, ‘Just a hunk, a hunk of burning love,’ instead of that stupid wedding march song. You can see why I had to marry them, right?”

  I chuckled. “That would be hilarious, but I doubt she’d see the humor in it.”

  “Hey, I could set her up with the Elvis impersonator afterward so she doesn’t kill me for ditching her at the altar last-minute.”

  “She’s more interested in having a wedding than being married, so it might work.”

  “You’re not wrong,” he agreed with a wry grin. “Plus, she loves shiny stuff, and most of the Elvis impersonators are pretty blinged out, so it’d be a match made in heaven. I’d be doing us both a huge fa
vor. You know, I think I’m onto something here.”

  “I’m about two beers away from this being a great idea,” I retorted, guzzling most of mine in a single swig.

  Rhys chugged the rest of his beer, before grabbing another from the dwindling supply on the nightstand. “Oh, it’s on!”

  My competitive streak trounced the last shred of common sense I had left that night. “Challenge accepted.”

  That proved to be a huge mistake.

  I regretted waking up in the morning. The pounding in my skull felt like someone had borrowed my brain for their timpani drums practice, keeping time with every beat of my heart. My mouth was dryer than the Sahara Desert and tasted like death. I had sandpaper in my throat when I swallowed. When I opened my eyes, the rays of light streamed through the windows and stabbed my retinas like it was a personal attack.

  With a whimper, I closed my eyes to surround myself in darkness once more. It caused me to burrow closer to the warm body I had curled up against, resting my head on their shoulder. The arm holding me protectively was the only good thing about existing right now. Everything else hurt like hell. I wished I could sleep off the worst hangover I had had since college. Why did I drink so much last night?

  My first sign that all was not as it should be was when the person I was using as a pillow groaned—a deep and masculine rumbling. In my drunken stupor, I had assumed I was sleeping with Olivia. However, as my hand glided up a very naked and flat chest, I realized I was mistaken.

  “Luci?” I croaked.

  His hand resting on my hip twitched as he rasped, “Yeah?”

  “God, I feel like shit.” I sagged against him. I should have moved away, but I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of it at the moment.