Read Online Live for You by Marquita Valentine - Free Book Online Page A

know she means the best. So, for her
and for me…I’ll take a chance on Cole Morgan.
    *** *** ***
    Cole
    My head snaps back with the
force of Wyatt’s blow.
    “ Pay attention,” he
snarls, smacking my face with a boxing glove.
    Over the past couple of
days our original four o’clock “appointment” has turned into a
series of me getting my ass handed to me and not giving a
shit..
    I shake off the blow and
the smack from Wyatt, sweat flying everywhere. The gym is hot as
fuck and it’s packed. Men and women are getting their boxing on in
every inch of the place. Wyatt and I occupy a ring off to the
side.
    “ Let’s go again,” I say
around the mouth guard, then bang my gloves together.
    Wyatt leans his neck to one
side, then the other. “Your funeral.”
    We go another round, my
best friend doing all his dirty moves and pinning me to the floor
and against the ropes. Then we climb out of the ring, grab our bags
and plop down in the nearest chairs, squirting water into our
mouths and drinking like it’s our last taste.
    Wyatt wipes his mouth with
the side of his arm before he pulls one glove off with his teeth,
then he sets to work on the other one. I do the same, neither of us
saying anything as we cool down.
    “ Plan on telling me what
got you so off your game?” Wyatt asks, leaning back in his chair as
he stretches out his legs.
    I rub a spot above my ear,
not sure if I want to share. But this is Wyatt and he knows
everything about me. Unfortunately. “Met a girl.”
    “ Nice.”
    “ Yeah.” I drink more
water, then set the bottle in the floor beside my chair.
    “ Anyone I
know?”
    There’s a very real
possibility that he does know who Violet
Lynn is, but I made a promise to Rae. And
unlike some, I keep my fucking promises. “Nah.”
    “ Bringing her to my
party?”
    “ Thinking about
it.”
    “ Good.”
    “ You?”
    “ Asked Lacey.”
    “ Don’t keep me in
suspense.” Lacey has never come to one of our parties. Ever. I
doubt she would have come to The Double Deuce last night, if she
hadn’t known ahead of time Wyatt would be there.
    “ She said yes.”
    I glance at Wyatt. The
smile on his face is so wide that I think it might split it open.
“Who’s she bringing as her plus one?” The Tanakas had had formal
invitations printed and mailed out to all of their son’s friends as
well as family.
    “ Rub it in, why don’t
you?” His smiles falls. “I’m more worried about Lacey changing her
mind between now and then, or my parents conveniently forgetting
that they scheduled her to work that night. Hell, I wish it were
this weekend instead the end of the month. Twenty- three days is a
long damn time.”
    “ I thought you were taking
over.” Ever since Wyatt has come home, his parents have promised to
let him run their restaurant in Forrestville. They have three more
locations in Charlotte and are loaded as hell, but they make their
son work. Yeah, he’s got it easier than I do, in a lot of respects,
but the dude works his ass off for them. And he’s just come home
from a fucking war.
    He waves his hand in the
air. “New conditions. I have to re-enroll in college and find an
appropriate girlfriend.”
    I blink at him. “Are you
kidding me?”
    “ No.” His mouth flattens.
“They caught me and Lacey together.”
    “ You were with her. At work? Holy
shi—”
    “ Get your mind out of the
gutter.” He shoots me a look of disgust. “She was holding my hand.
We were doing nothing more than talking.”
    If it had been nothing
more, then his parents wouldn’t have made new conditions for him.
“Sucks to be you.”
    He grabs his water bottle
and stands. “I don’t know about that.” He glances around, then
looks me right in the face, eyes serious as hell. “First time she’s
ever touched me, on purpose anyway. So, I’d say it was worth
it.”
    I stand, then follow him to
the locker room. “But you still can’t date her.” Well, he could,
because he’s an adult and not to