Risk Me Read online

  You can never judge the depths by the surface...

  For Cohen Rodriguez, getting dumped by his girlfriend was bad enough. Being told he’s “not impulsive enough” was just the cheap parting gift. Still, he takes a break from his über responsible ways and dates his way through Silver Strand. Except it’s not exactly turning out the way he thought...

  On top of that, there’s Maren Walshe, whose combination of sexy and down-to-earth is everything Cohen wants in a girl. But while they’ve recently been talking on the phone and texting every day, they’ve never actually met. Now Maren wants to meet. In person.

  Faced with turning his oh-so-safe fantasy girl into an uncertain reality, Cohen and Maren are both about to dive head first, ready or not.

  Previously released under the title Depths March 2013, and has been enhanced with new material.

  Table of Contents

  The Silver Strand series Hide Me

  Risk Me

  Own Me

  Deserve Me

  Crush Me

  Chase Me

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover the Silver Strand series… Hide Me

  Discover more New Adult titles from Entangled Embrace… Getting Lucky Number Seven

  Pretty Smart Girls

  Eyes Turned Skyward

  Foolproof

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Stephanie Campbell and Elizabeth Reinhardt writing as Lexi Scott. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Previously released under the title Depths in March 2013, and has been enhanced with new material.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Embrace is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Robin Haseltine and Liz Pelletier

  Cover design by LJ Anderson

  Cover art from iStock

  ISBN 978-1-63375-354-9

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition July 2015

  The Silver Strand series

  Hide Me

  Risk Me

  Own Me

  Deserve Me

  Crush Me

  Chase Me

  To Tracey,

  Who appreciates the beauty of nuance and authenticity in her books as well as her friendships.

  Can’t wait to split another bottle of wine (or three…) in Little Italy and laugh until it hurts.

  Chapter One

  Cohen

  It’s surreal sitting here on my bed, listening to my girlfriend talk, because I’m pretty sure she’s breaking up with me—while wearing my favorite Dodgers T-shirt.

  The same one she pulled on after she screwed my brains out and collapsed on my chest¸ sweaty and giggly, before falling asleep in my arms last night.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I ask, sitting up straighter in the bed and watching her pile all her silky hair on top of her head as she looks at herself in the mirror.

  She actually takes a second to check herself out from the side before she bothers to turn and acknowledge me again. Not that I can blame her, since she’s hot as hell, but can the girl focus for two seconds?

  “Kensley, I don’t even understand what you’re saying. Last night you were on top of me in this bed telling me how much you love me, and now it’s all over? I’m… This makes no damn sense. At all. So explain it to me.”

  She comes over to the bed and sits on the edge carefully. She looks at me, her big brown eyes wide and innocent. It’s a face she makes when she feels guilty.

  Come to think of it, it’s a face she made last night. When she stripped her black lacy bra and panties off and pushed me back on the mattress. Just before she straddled me, asked me to talk dirty, then slid my dick into her. While she was whispering that she loved me and always would, she flashed me that sorry look.

  My mind flips back to a few hours before.

  “Cohen,” she panted, her hips pumping up and down, her gorgeous tits shaking with every bounce. “I’ll never forget you.”

  I thought it was a weird thing to say, but my mind wasn’t really focused on her words. I was reaching up to feel the soft, full swell of those perfect tits. Sometimes Kensley says crazy shit. She wants to be an actress, and she’s into role-playing and all that, so I basically ignore most of what she says because we both tend to get wild in the sack. I say lots of things no one who knows me from work or general life would imagine me saying when I have a beautiful girl in bed with me.

  “Cohen.” She takes my hand and looks up, every move so deliberate, it’s like she rehearsed it all.

  Fuck.

  “Last night was… It was my way to say good-bye,” Kensley explains, her voice soft. Theatrically soft. Like she’s gunning for best sympathetic breakup with a pathetic boyfriend.

  Double-fuck.

  “Good-bye?” I sputter. “Really? Good-bye? We looked at puppies last week. This week you’re ready to say good-bye?”

  “Let me go down on you,” she offered. It was a nice gesture, but Kensley didn’t go down on me unless she was saying sorry or she wanted something.

  Since I wasn’t pissed at her, I asked, as she sank to her knees, “What do you want, babe? I know a while ago you made that registry at the jewelry store that friend of yours owns, but our anniversary is in a few weeks. I promise, you’ll be happy.”

  Her eyes flipped up to my face and she looked…guilty. “Can’t I just do this to be nice?”

  I wasn’t going to say no to that. “Of course. And th-th-ank…good freaking God, Kensley.”

  And then I didn’t say anything else, because my girlfriend’s tongue was doing crazy, amazing things to my dick, and I wasn’t about to stop that.

  “You know I’ve been wanting to move to Hollywood. Now’s my chance, and I know you’re not into it—” She lifts her hand when I open my mouth to protest. “Saying you’ll give it a few months isn’t good enough. I need you to be 200 percent behind me. Actually I don’t know if that would even be enough. I guess I really just need to be on my own to pursue my dream.”

  “I get that,” I say through gritted teeth. “But I don’t get why you think breaking up is going to make things easier. What about having me around makes things harder for you in any way?”

  “It’s really not even you,” Kensley says.

  I’m trying my damndest not to roll my eyes at the clichéd breakup that is happening. Right now. To me.

  “Don’t roll your eyes.”

  I
guess I didn’t try hard enough.

  “I don’t understand then. If it’s not me… We’ve been together for years. Since high school. I told you my dad had a store branch near Hollywood, if you want to go. I’ve said that for years. What’s so wrong about things now?”

  Kensley pushes her hand into her hip and puckers her mouth, twisting it around like she’s thinking about how to say whatever it is just the right way.

  “Fine,” she says, stepping forward and putting her palms on my chest. It feels weird, because she’s closer and touching me, but at the same time, I feel like she’s pushing me away. “It’s not just the Hollywood thing. This hurts me to say, Cohen, but… It is you. You just… You haven’t grown since we were in high school, that’s what it is. We eat at the same restaurants, we go to the same movies, we go to your mother’s—Every. Single. Sunday. We watch the same shows on that damn DVR religiously. You just… You never want to try new things. And what I’m about to do, who I’m about to be? That’s going to be nothing but new experiences. And I just don’t feel like… You and I don’t fit anymore.”

  I can’t help but think of just how well we fit last night.

  And apparently, won’t ever again.

  “Kensley, I just got back from a goddamn real-life treasure hunt. How much more adventurous can you get than that? And what’s wrong with my mom? She makes a killer matzo ball soup and carne asada that will change your life. How much more excitement do you need out of life than a half-Jewish, half-Mexican household? And if we move, there will be new places to eat, new things to see, and I’ll try them. You and me, being together, that’s the adventure. What more could you want?”

  “I don’t know. But I do want more. And you’re not giving it to me.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  She takes three steps back. One for each letter of the answer she’s working up the courage to give. Because I can see it in that faux tortured look on her face that there’s more to this than me not wanting to go bungee jumping off the Great Wall.

  She waves her hand around like she’s brushing off the question as ridiculous.

  “So, there is?” I push.

  “Not exactly. But there could be. And I need to be open to that. Not stringing you along when neither one of us is happy.”

  “I’m happy,” I say. And I am. Things aren’t a thrill around my place; I’ll give her that. But I work long hours at the furniture store my family owns— It’s a nice, comfortable, stable life. I’m hoping to keep saving and have a nice, comfortable, stable future. Until five minutes ago, I thought Kensley was part of that future.

  “Cohen… Don’t make this hard. Please. I want us to stay—”

  “Don’t say it. Don’t say ‘friends.’” I wipe my palms on my jeans. I’m a man, I’m not going to cry, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shaken up. “We’re done here, Kensley. I’ve got to go to work.”

  I half expect her to try to stop me. But when I’m all the way to my car, hand on the door handle, and she hasn’t so much as called my name, I realize I just did her a major solid by walking away. I made it easier for her. There was no chance I was going to change her mind. Kensley was already gone before we woke up this morning.

  I took her to dinner after work last night. And then the Whole Foods store where we stocked up on all that clean-eating crap I’ll never touch. Then we went back to my place for the night. I guess she did me a solid, too. She knew she’d be breaking it off with me, and we still had incredible sex. One last time before what I’m sure will be a long, dry spell for me.

  A pity fuck before she left, stomping on my heart on the way out the door.

  I look back and squint so I’m able to see through the high sun, looking for Kensley. But she isn’t there.

  An hour later I storm into my family’s furniture store, smack my head on the bell that hangs above the door, and curse the fact that my dad let my sister, Cece, hang the damn thing during her “Feminists With Power Tools” movement. I’m all for women’s rights, but when the woman in question is a full foot shorter than my six-feet-two-inches, it means I’ve hit my head on that damn bell roughly six million times.

  Right now I just want to rip it down and stomp on it until it stops being so damn cheery.

  “You’re late,” my drama-queen younger sister, Genevieve, says. She flips her long, dark ponytail over her shoulder and raises her eyebrows at me in a dramatic way that lets me know one wrong word could send her into a hissy fit or make her burst into tears. We usually all walk on eggshells around hypersensitive Gen, but I’m not in the mood to deal with her today.

  “Sue me,” I say, ignoring the way her jaw drops open. Despite her crazy mood swings, she and I have always gotten along okay at work, mostly because I pretty much ignore her when she’s being a pain in the ass. Today’s just not a good day for me already, and it’s barely eight o’clock.

  “Just go clock in, Cohen. We’ve got inventory to do.” She’s younger than me, but she rides my ass like she’s the older, more responsible sibling. Probably because she secretly wants to get the same respect our older sister, Lydia, does in our family. Ever since I dropped everything last year to go sail the Pacific Ocean with my best friend, Deo, for a few weeks, Genevieve acts like she’s the only stable member the family has to depend on for the business. Which is hilarious, since she’s the one best known to fly off the damn handle. “And consider shaving! Mom would be pissed if she knew you were talking to customers with that crap on your face.”

  I rub my hand against my cheek. There’s a day’s worth of stubble, but that’s it. It’s been a day since I’ve shaved. One day.

  Get over yourself and your sense of authority, Gen.

  I toss my keys and iPhone under the register and go to the back room to punch my time card. I went to school and got a degree to end up working for my folks at their furniture store. It wasn’t the plan, but they needed me, and, for now at least, it isn’t half bad. The hours are good, there’s a decent benefits package, and my place always has nice furniture… To impress all the women that aren’t there.

  That doesn’t stop me from keeping up my resume and scouring employment sites. I want to get more business experience and just be out on my own for a little bit. I feel like I could handle eventually taking the business over for my father as long as I’d had some time on my own, to figure things out for myself.

  I slide the cardstock into the time clock and chuckle, as I do every morning, like a ritual. It’s an ironic kick in the balls that my own parents make me a slave to the man.

  There’s an intense looking guy pacing our front foyer, hands shoved in the pockets of his neat khakis, eyeing Genevieve in the kind of pointed way that makes me pretty sure he’s not interested in a sectional.

  Genevieve is showing some newlywed-looking assholes the mattresses, and I want to tell them to run, that once you’re with someone too long, they get tired of you. They want more. Even if the sex is earth shaking, and you help them with their car payments, and even pick the onions out of their enchiladas because they claim to be allergic. But none of that is adventurous enough. Fuck my life. So instead of breaking their love spell, I deal with the pacing guy.

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  “Hi. Hello. I’m… Uh, my name is Adam. Adam Abramowitz. I’m…uh, tutoring Genevieve in Physics.” He clears his throat nervously, and I’m willing to bet he would whip out his ID if I asked. “You must be Cohen.”

  I glance down just to double check and make sure I’m not wearing my Rodriguez Home Furnishings badge. Nope, didn’t put it on yet. “You know my name?”

  “Your sister likes to talk, and she talks about work a ton. Plus there’s a pretty strong family resemblance, and I know your other brother, Enzo, is traveling right now.” He winces. “Wow, sorry. I probably sound pretty insane. I feel a little like a Rodriguez family stalker. I swear, I’m just a tutor trying to keep a very talkative student on track.” Adam holds his hand out like an olive branch, and we shake
.

  At first glance, this dude strikes me as the polar opposite of the dregs of society Gen tends to drag home. My initial reaction is that he’s a dork, but, when I look closer, I realize he’s pretty damn ripped and clean-cut in the way that makes me think more ex-military than geek. Also his handshake is firm as hell. That’s always a good sign.

  “If only my sister knew as much about Physics as you know about my crazy family, she’d probably have her PhD by now,” I say with a laugh. The guy—Adam—seems to relax. “Hey, no worries about knowing my whole life history before we officially met, man. My sister is definitely a talker.” I gesture to the couple she’s chatting up like they’ve been best friends for years. “It’s great for furniture sales. My sister could sell bunk beds to horny newlyweds, no sweat.”

  It’s a lame industry joke my father breaks out at furniture expos, but Adam laughs, which is stand-up of him. Gen stops her endless chatter and looks up when she hears it. For maybe the first time in her entire life, my smartass little sister is totally silent.

  “Gen, Mr. Abramowitz is waiting for you. Can I help you folks wrap things up?” I wink at my sister, who’s smoothing her hair, tugging on her skirt, and blushing like crazy.

  I keep a smile on my face as I work up the couple’s order, watching Gen and Adam talk awkwardly for a few minutes. I can’t hear what they’re saying—I’m sure it’s totally boring school stuff—but it would be clear to a blind man how desperately they want to jump each other’s bones.

  I wouldn’t usually take any interest in Gen’s love life, but this is a good thing for two reasons. One, my sister needs some stability in her life, and dating every strung-out, foul-mouthed ex-pro-skater with a chip on his shoulder in Silver Strand definitely isn’t providing that. Two, Gen’s been nursing a serious crush on Deo, my best friend, since we were all kids. Considering he’s found the love of his life in his girlfriend, Whit, and they tend to spend a ton of time hanging with my family, I’d love if all that residual awkwardness could be ironed out before my baby sister attempts to interrupt their wedding with declarations of her undying love—or something equally dramatic.