Free First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances by Julia Kent

that Evan wasn’t doing better.
    The past four years of my life seemed like something out of Groundhog Day —at least when it came to my relationship with my mom. In the saddest moments, I felt sorry for myself, which is really laughable when you think about it. Here I was, a good, safe, loved woman from the Boston suburbs given everything that you could imagine we were supposed to have in this part of our world.
    I’d gone to college with friends who had told me stories about physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional torture, at the hands of their parents. Some of my friends had five or six jobs just to scrape by, and a few talked about living in their cars during spring break when the dorms closed. It’d been a shocker to learn how many people were taking out thirty-, forty-, even fifty-thousand dollars a year in loans to get the right education, to get into the right job, and to climb.
    I knew the drill—the same phrases and sentences came out of the mouths of all of my friends, and their parents, and of course, mine. But...to hear it in the context of people growing up with mentally ill moms or alcoholic dads, or of the occasional friend in school who already had a baby and was there on some special grant program, it made me realize that feeling bad because Mom was so fixated on the golden child—and it wasn’t me—was a form of indulgence. Kind of pathetic, really. Who was I to be upset when so many other people were suffering far worse than I was?
    On the other hand, I had the right to my own emotions, whatever they might be, and suddenly everything going on with my mom on the phone disappeared in a pinprick when I realized that my life was intertwining, again, with Sam’s.
    I hadn’t sought him out this time, had I? This was just me walking around Boston Common with my coffee, chatting away with my nattering mother, and boom! There he was.
    I was deep in my thoughts when I heard my mom. “Amy. Amy? Amy, you there?” she asked.
    “Yeah. Yeah, I am, Mom. I- I- I’m fine, I’m good. Yup,” I stumbled.
    “OK, well, I gotta go, because Evan is on his way.”
    “That’s fine, Mom. I understand.”
    And then, standing right in front of me, was the one guy I least expected—and it wasn’t Sam.
    “Hey, Mom, gotta go. Bye.” Click. I’d pay for that later, but that was OK because right now, standing right in front of me was a fine old friend. A giant piece of sex perched on flesh and bone.
    “Liam!”
    Was Boston Common suddenly hot guy central? How had I not known this? I licked my lips involuntarily—it wasn’t on purpose, but it made Liam grin.
    “Amy,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
    “Are you looking for Joe and Sam?” I asked, and then bit back the words, wishing I could swallow them. Now Liam knew that I had seen Sam, and Sam might know that I had seen Sam.
    “Not looking for them but if they’re around I’d...” he craned his neck, looking. It gave me a chance to take him in even more. He was just as fine as he’d been four and a half years ago—even better—filled out with broad shoulders, rippled with muscle in that way that cloth can form to and tell you everything you need to know about what someone looks like naked, and yet, still want to see them naked.
    The feelings that Liam triggered in me were so different from the ones I had for Sam. There was nostalgia, there was a sense of gratitude, and then there was a full blown lust like a light switch being flipped on. Liam had that quality in him and I had to temper it with the knowledge that he would never feel the same way for me.
    “You know we have a gig next week? Will you be there?” No hint of anything other than basic friendliness. Liam’s hair was a wild mess, the sun bouncing off the soft waves that framed his temples, his body warm and strong, like a large lion, as he folded himself onto the bench to sit next to me.
    Distracted and flustered, I stammered out, “Um, sure. Maybe. As long as I don’t take a