Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

X avier is so close to me that I feel his breath on my cheek. My hand reaches out and touches the warm, smooth skin of his bare chest.

"I only want you," he whispers seductively into my ear. "I've been waiting for you for so long. I will claim you for my wife." I feel his kiss on my ear.

"Oh, yes," I gasp. I know I'm wet. I want him so bad that I feel my core heating up. "You are the one for me, Xavier!"

Crash!

I startle from a dead sleep. My body lurches off the couch, my plump ass cushioning my fall. Jax, my cat, meows loudly in protest as he jumps off me.

Eww.Back to reality.

"Shit." I hate waking up from these dreams. I wish I could just stay asleep. Touching my lip, I wipe the drool running down my chin and rub my ear where Jax had placed his nose a moment ago.

I fell asleep on the couch again; my book lays sprawled on the floor, the hardback spine splayed open on its back, the pages moving to the beat of the ceiling fan. Xavier was about to make love to me when I was rudely interrupted. I try to hold onto the feeling of the dream as I rub my throbbing butt cheek and mourn the orgasm I need.I need a rug for this room; falling asleep on the couch must stop.

Dreaming of Xavier . It's the only love life I will ever have.

I pick myself and the book off the hard tile and examine it for damage.

"Nope, still in perfect shape." I clutch it to my chest like a lifeline. There is no romance like a Xavier romance, and this is a first edition. Technically it's epic fantasy or something, but the romance thread is what I love the most. I realize no one will ever be as good as him; he's not real, but a girl can dream.

Sighing deeply, I slide the book back into its place of honor on my bookshelf. "Until next time, my love. Nap time is over."

My stomach growls.

"Dammit," I mutter as I make my way to the fridge. "I will never lose weight if I keep being hungry." The same old standbys of dietary dysfunction greet me as the light pops on while I open the door. Chocolate Slimming shakes, carrot sticks from three weeks ago, a block of cheese, and a salad from yesterday that no longer looks appetizing hold their places on the shelves. Grabbing a shake, I walk to the coffee table and sit down on the loveseat, the brochure for my upcoming girls' camping trip laying open to the colorful pictures of happy hikers and green pristine mountain ranges.

All my friends from school scattered to the wind about five years ago, and now I'm excited to have them coming back together. I'm the planner of the group and the practical one, not the prettiest of them, and yes, the boys called my friends the "hot mares" while they attributed me as the "pack mule." I can't help my maybe-a-little-thick thighs and ability to carry things. While everyone else huffed and puffed up the hills of our childhood town, I was running up them carrying everything. The memory makes me smile; I haven't smiled in a while. We were all excellent friends back in the day. Truth is that being from the foster system, they were the only real family I had. I need that connection again.

I lift the chalky drink to my lips; it slides reluctantly down my throat. I only have one more day until I drive to the mountains and meet everyone. I'm down precisely five pounds, which is not enough to notice, but at least my jeans aren't leaving a significant mark on my hips anymore. Hopefully, everyone will be as glad to see me as I will be to them. I hope they don't ask me too much about my life; things haven't been the best lately.

The promised promotion at Fit Wear fell through again. I have no idea why I still work there. After four years as assistant manager, they keep promoting new and skinnier managers.They never stay longer than three months before they leave. I may not be the thinnest or prettiest of the employees, but I know how to sell leggings and exercise gear to the bigger girls, and I can lift a lot more weight than most of the skinny guys they hire.Last month, I hit the top sales quota in one day. They threw me a pizza party; go figure.

My stomach lurches and growls again with hunger, and I wonder if that block of cheese is still good.

Standing up to check my theory, I hear the funny honking noise on my phone, which means a text came through. Picking it up from the coffee table, I look down as it lights up; the words "I miss you," with heart emojis assaulting my eyes, fill the screen. Exasperated, I throw my phone back down on the couch.

Steve will never get the message, it seems. How many times do I have to tell him it's over? It's been months, for God's sake. How can a man who never had a faithful bone in his body think I would ever be so desperate to take him back? Tempted, I reach for the device to text him another scathing reply, but I leave it there; it's not worth it. I'm so angry with him for what he did to me, but I gave him enough of my time. Whenever I think I have found love, I end up with a loser like Steve. At least he's not the type to come unglued like some of my other exes. Progress, I suppose.

I chuckle to myself. I think I've had it with dating at this point. Why can't I find a man like Xavier, someone strong and kind who will claim me for his own and forsake all others? I shake my head to clear it of the thoughts that race through my mind. I need to find something to distract me. I look around the room; I've already packed my backpack, and my car is loaded with everything I need; what can I do to pass the time?

My eyes scan the bookshelf, rest on the Xavier book, and then track over my dusty tarot card collection until they rest on a more recent impulse buy from my favorite bookshop. Love Spells for Dummies .

I walk over as if in a trance and pick up the large yellow covered paperback.

"This is stupid," I say to myself as it falls open to a page titled, ‘Find your soulmate now.'"Sure," I say out loud as I dubiously follow the steps.

The spell is simple enough.

Find a quiet place to sit with your feet firmly planted on the ground. Clear your mind while you place your right hand on your heart and breathe in and out slowly. Allow yourself to feel all the emotions this person in your life will make you think. Breathe those emotions in and out until your body radiates with pure love.Do this for ten minutes, keeping your feet planted. Within a week, your love will find you.

My old couch creaks as I sit back down on it. I'm sure this doesn't work, but I'll do anything to stop thinking about my failure to attract a decent man. I remove my fuzzy old slippers, place my large tens on the cold tile floor, close my eyes, and breathe. After two minutes pass, I start to doubt myself, but then I feel what could only be described as sparkling chills running up and down my back as I imagine Xavier and my love for him. Imagine what it would feel like to be loved in return. The feeling intensifies and runs through my entire body.

Suddenly, I almost believe I can really feel it! What if I can be loved, and a strong, kind man is out there just waiting to claim me? I will find him in a—

My cell phone goes off in the high-pitched shriek I chose for unknown reasons.

"Shit!" The spell is broken, and I am staring at the lit-up screen. My old best friend Beth is on the other end.That at least brings a smile to my face.

I pick it up quickly, but it's hardly what I expected. Instead of her usual uber-perky excited tone, her voice is uncharacteristically somber on the other end of the line, and my heart sinks.

"I can't make it," she tells me. "Something came up, I'm sooooo sorry."

"But we've been planning this for months," I hear myself whining, the abandonment trauma from years ago playing through my voice.

Beth is super apologetic, doing her best to assure me she will make it up to me. I don't want to seem like a total loser and let on just how disappointed I am, so I quickly adapt my tone to sound like I don't care. "Okay, honey, well, we will really miss you."

"That's the thing," Beth says, taking her apologetic tone to new levels, "Tammy, Pat, and Ally can't make it, either. They would have called themselves, but things have been crazy. You know, modern life and all…"she tries to explain in her typically chirpy optimistic tone.

"What? All of them?" I interrupt her as I push through the tears forming in my eyes and my throat starts to close.

"Tammy's son is sick with the flu, Pat's fiancé surprised her with a nonrefundable weekend getaway in Mexico, and Ally…" Beth pauses. "She's just Ally, flaky as always."

"Oh." My heart drops into my stomach. "I see, okay." I should be yelling right now; I should be mad, but I don't have the energy. "I guess that's that. But what about you? I was so looking forward to catching up…"I am still doing my best to match her cheery tone.

Only Beth could be cancelling on me and make it sound like a good thing.

"Yeah, I'm so sorry, Alex. Tickets to Rob's favorite band fell into my lap, and it's only this weekend, and he will just be so excited! I'm going to surprise him. But you'll have fun. It will be like your own getaway! A whole week in nature! But we'll get together soon, okay?"

There she goes spinning this as a good thing, in typical Beth fashion.

"Okay, next time." It would be too humiliating to admit how important this weekend was to me. To them, it was apparently just one of many options. I press the red button, ending the call without a goodbye, dropping my phone back onto the couch with disgust.

There won't be a next time.Once again, in my group of one-time best friends, it seems I am the odd man out. They all have real lives and are just being too polite to tell me the truth. They have better things to do than waste a week with me. I heard Beth, who's always their spokesperson, make their excuses, but I'm not sure I even believe they are real. I now wonder if they were ever my real friends in the first place. Or maybe, to them, we were just casual friends. But with all the abandonments I dealt with in the foster care system, they were much more than that. To me, at least. But time to grow up. I won't give anyone the chance to abandon me again.

Choking down my tears, I pick up the brochure on the table. The hikers smile up at me from the glossy pages with their brand-new backpacks and designer hiking clothes, and the green mountains behind them taunt me.

"Screw them," I mumble out loud. Screw them and their perfect full lives. I'm going by myself.