What do you do when you wake up in a hotel room beside a tattooed man with a face that makes Tom Hardy look like the bottom of a shoe?
You fight through your tequila-induced haze, trip over his designer suit crumpled on the floor, and run. After all, you're 1,500 miles from home. It's not like you'll ever see him again. Unless you're me.
Six months later, I somehow find myself in the middle of a bet with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Tattooed that includes me owing him four dates. A handful of dates with an arrogantly charming man whom I know little about, what could possibly go wrong?
I'll tell you what's going wrong, my falling asleep in his arms on date three and realizing I'm in love with a man who doesn't even know my real name.
Once upon a time, while vacationing in Cancun, I let loose-I think. Limbo dancing and sunburns and some pretty foggy memories. But the one thing about Mexico I'll never forget is the guy with the rugged jawline, designer suits, and tattoos.
The cliche in love stories is that the good girl falls for the bad boy who smells of leather and exhaust from his motorcycle, and at the end of the day love conquers all.
The stories make it seem so easy. Life, on the other hand, makes it hard. The awful truth is: sometimes love leaves you in ruins.
Elias Black may have had a sleeve of tattoos and grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, but he didn't have a true bad bone in his body. I loved him from the moment he kissed me, when I knew I no longer owned my heart, until the world pulled us apart.
And then I wanted nothing more than to unlove him, and he wanted nothing more than to unlove me.
I was just a girl who fell in love with a boy who fell in love with me until . . .
We all have guilty pleasures.
Mine was the boy my father took in. The guy everyone said I was too good for. The one I knew would ruin me.
The way Noah Greyson's voice sounded when he sang whiskey lullabies to me in the dark; how perfect his arms felt wrapped around my stomach with his nose nuzzled in my hair-that's what made me fall. That intimacy was what made me weak.
But now millions of women drift off to sleep while Noah sings the love story we wrote, and it was never meant for the world.
The worst mistake I made wasn't loving him, it was thinking he loved me, too. At least that's what I thought, until now . . .
