Excerpt + Giveaway || The One that Got Away by A.J. Pine

Synopsis:
How far will one man go for the woman he’s loved since high school?
Jamie Kingston has been Brynn Chandler’s best friend since middle school. Only once was their friendship tested—when Brynn gave Jamie a single kiss. Since then, they’ve had an unspoken agreement never to cross that line again, and she’s ready to let go of the past and move on.
But Jamie has loved Brynn for as long as he can remember, and now that he’s ready to tell her, she has her sights set on someone else. Knowing this is his last chance, he asks Brynn to go on a two-week road trip. But their time alone brings old hurts to the surface, and Brynn has to decide if the one that got away lies at the end of the journey or if he’s been by her side all along.

     He winked at her and stepped through the door.

     Jamie checked his voicemails on the office phone when Brynn stepped in front of him and rubbed her finger over the fading scar on his chin.

     “She does do good work,” she said.

     He closed his eyes for a brief couple of seconds, and Brynn held her breath. Then he jerked his head back, a totally acceptable reflex now since she’d stabbed him in the face with a letter opener.

     “Thanks,” he said, his voice unusually strained.

     “You’re still mad at me,” she said. “It was three months ago, and it was an accident. Plus you got a girlfriend out of the whole deal, so you really should be thanking me. I did you a favor.”

     He laughed. “Can we take a poll tonight to see how many people would like the favor of you impaling them in the face with a sharp object?”

     She threw up her arms, her right hand knocking a shelf above Jamie’s desk where his coffee mug, the one that read SHHH…THERE’S BEER IN HERE, held all his multicolored dry-erase markers. Brynn caught the mug as it toppled from the shelf, but the markers scattered across the desk and the floor.

     Jamie raised his eyebrows, and she groaned. At least she wasn’t gesticulating with anything other than her hands. No danger of drawing blood. And it’s not like she was some bull in a china shop, either. That day in her office, Jamie had sneaked up on her while she was opening bills. When someone pokes you in the ribs and yells, “Boo!” you react. And Brynn reacted much like right now, her arms flailing. Only that time, Jamie’s face got in the way instead of a shelf.

     “First of all, you weren’t impaled,” she said. “It was little more than a scratch.”

     She stepped away from the desk, then stopped short before she erased his calendar with her back. How Jamie worked in such a cramped space was beyond her. He must knock stuff off shelves on a daily basis.

     Brynn sighed. Wild gestures weren’t Jamie’s thing. He was too even-tempered, too controlled for something like that.

     “It required stitches,” he argued.

     She laughed at his use of the plural. “Two,” she reminded him. “Two stitches and a girlfriend. You’re welcome.”

     She did feel bad about him having to take a taxi to the ER, but Annie, her friend and owner of Two Stories, had just run to the bank to make a deposit. Brynn couldn’t leave the store unattended. Now she wondered what would have happened if she had gone, if she’d been with Jamie when he met Liz. Would it have been anything more than an ER visit? This line of thinking wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

     She set the mug on his desk and helped him collect the markers.

     “Sorry,” she said. “About almost killing your mug.”

About the author:
AJ Pine writes stories to break readers’ hearts, but don’t worry—she’ll mend them with a happily ever after. As an English teacher and a librarian, AJ has always surrounded herself with books. All her favorites have one big commonality–romance. Naturally, her books have the same. When she’s not writing, she’s of course reading. Then there’s online shopping (everything from groceries to shoes) and, of course, a tiny bit of TV where she nourishes her undying love of vampires and superheroes. And in the midst of all of this, you’ll also find her hanging with her family in the Chicago burbs.

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