Text copyright ©2020 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
One day I’m going to get to the point where I know what to put here. I’m not there yet, though. Happy Mother’s Day.
If it’s not Mother’s Day when you’re reading this, it was here when I wrote this particular dedication, so that still counts, right?
Acknowledgments
Chase Ketron - Model
Golden Czermak - Photographer
Ellie McLove - My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors
Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist
My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Kendra, Diane, Sarah, Kathy, Penney, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Castiel and Turner
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care (4-14-20)
May Contain Wine (5-12-20)
Jokes on You (6-9-20)
Join the Club (7-14-20)
Any Day Now (8-11-20)
Say it Ain’t So (9-8-20)
Officially Over It (10-13-20)
Nobody Knows (11-3-20)
Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)
Valentine Boys (early 2020)
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Table of Contents
Blurb
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
What’s Next?
What Else is Next?
Blurb
Candy Ray Sunshine’s—yes, that is my real name, thank you very much, Mom and Dad—knew two things.
One, she was going to work her butt off and open her very own coffee shop, even if she had to die doing it.
Two, Banks Valentine was the world’s worst ex-boyfriend in the history of ex-boyfriends. Even if they were only boyfriend and girlfriend for one evening. She wouldn’t sneeze on him even if he was on fire.
***
Banks Valentine also knew two things.
One, he was an immature jerk when he was in high school, and Candy Ray Sunshine probably could open a coffee shop if she put her mind to it. But he still thinks that she should shoot a little higher, anything that gets her the heck out of Kilgore, Texas.
Two, he likes riding bulls. It’s a dangerous job, and when he gets on the back of one of those thousand-pound death machines, he can finally feel his head clear enough that he can think.
***
Candy and Banks would never get along. Not after what he said, and definitely not after what she did.
Then again, neither one of them expected that night to happen, either—the night that both of them refused to talk about the next morning.
Part I
Chapter 1
Have you ever put two and two together and come up with fifteen reasons to smack a motherfucker?
-Banks to Callum
Banks
Fifteen years ago
“Come on, let’s do it,” I said as I humped the massive thing into the hallway of the school.
It was eerie being here after hours.
Honestly, if I hadn’t been so pissed off at my big brother, I probably wouldn’t be doing this right now.
But Ace had said that I wasn’t allowed to pull off a senior prank since I wasn’t a senior, and shit had gone downhill from there.
Which was how it led me to now, standing in the middle of the senior hallway at school, with a three-foot-tall, two foot in diameter, massive dildo. It was even skin-colored, paired with quite a few veins, as well as the biggest pair of balls that I’d ever seen.
“You got the lube?” I asked Callum.
; He rolled his eyes and produced about four bottles from his pants pocket.
“Excellent,” I said, unearthing the massive dong from my box. “Spencer, you got the glue?”
Spencer held up the glue. It was super, super glue. Or so I was told. I asked the guy at the hardware store what would be the best thing to stick silicone to tiles, and he’d pointed me in the direction of that particular type of glue.
So, it was my hope that the glue wouldn’t be coming off very easily. They’d have to chop the dick apart before they could unglue it. Or so I hoped.
I didn’t want to make it easy for them.
What would be the fun in that?
“Let’s do this.” I turned the dildo up and gestured to the rather large suction cup at the bottom.
“Do you think that someone would actually use this for what it’s intended for?” Callum asked.
I looked at my younger brother and shrugged. “Who knows?” I said. “I’m sure there has to be a need for it. According to Amazon, it’s the number one best-selling dildo in ‘big dildos collections.’”
Spencer snorted and twisted the lid off the tube of glue, then squirted the entire thing onto it, using the tube itself to spread it in.
Once done, he tossed the glue into the trash can at the end of the hall and came back.
I looked for the best place to put it.
“Right there.” Callum pointed. “In the middle of the hallway. Right in the middle of the ‘G’.”
I walked to where he pointed and agreed. It was the perfect spot.
The first thing anybody would see as they entered the senior hallway was the dildo on the floor.
Five minutes later it was stuck to the floor and Callum and I were lubing it up.
“This is gonna be hilarious,” I declared once we were done. “Let’s go wash our hands and go.”
Or we would have had the bathroom doors not been locked.
“Well shit,” I said as I looked at my hands, then at the pole we would have to climb to get out of the school. “This is going to be fun.”
***
The next day at school was nerve wracking. After thirty minutes of stacking shit to help us get out, we’d made it home just in time to help with chores and turn around and go back to school. Luckily, I was able to grab a shower first.
I was fairly sure I had lube in places there shouldn’t be lube.
The first thing I saw as I got to the school was the crowd.
They hadn’t even made it inside yet seeing as the seniors had managed to pull off their prank yesterday, too.
They’d put a cow—a live one at that—on top of the gym. Fortunately, they’d corralled the beast, because I could see the animal walking straight off the side of the building.
“The bell has rung!” Principal Matthews called out. “Get inside!”
My brother rolled his eyes at his fellow seniors’ prank.
“Amateurs.” He snorted as he elbowed me. “What’d you do last night that had you out so late?”
The tardy bell rang and everybody started to run. It seemed like the entire school was outside staring at the cow, even the teachers.
That was why everyone was in school and in their classes by the time Principal Matthews came over the loudspeaker and announced the school was in lockdown.
“And to whoever decided to glue the massive dil… eeeeep, sex toy—whatever—to the tile in the middle of the senior hallway, we will find you,” Principle Matthews declared.
Callum and I exchanged looks, but neither one of us were worried.
In fact, there was no way in hell they’d know it was us.
***
Okay, so they somehow found out it was us.
Well, they’d narrowed it down to about ten students, three of which had actually done it.
How they’d narrowed it down, I didn’t know. But they did, leaving us all sitting in the middle of the senior hallway as Principal Matthews stared at us with annoyance written all over his face.
“Who did this?” Matthews asked for the fourth time.
Nobody answered.
“If you do not answer, I’ll be forced to call your parents and make sure they realize that you were involved in a prank that’s going to cost us about five hundred dollars to fix.”
Behind Matthews, two custodians tried in vain to get the dildo off the tile. At first they’d likely just tried to grab it. Now they had a massive crowbar through the middle of the cock, making it appear to have a piercing, as they tugged on it in vain.
One custodian, the dick that liked to report when kids were sneaking around in the hallways when they should be in class, slipped and fell on his ass.
I didn’t laugh, but it was a close thing.
Served the fucker right. He was the reason Spencer, Callum, and I had a chance to come up with this prank in the first place.
“Shit,” Lorvall muttered as he picked himself off the ground. “Stupid fucking kids.”
Matthews cleared his throat in reproach.
“Sorry,” Lorvall muttered again. “Not coming up. We’re going to have to break the tile.”
Matthews growled.
“I’m about three seconds away from calling parents,” Matthews declared.
That was when I saw Candy, who’d been in detention with us as we’d come up with this master plan, shift and open her mouth.
I couldn’t help what I did next. I threw her ass straight under the bus.
I didn’t feel bad about it either. Not until much, much later.
“That wasn’t me,” I said, shrugging. “It was her.”
I pointed at Candy Ray Sunshine.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have done it.
I’d, of course, considered what was going to happen the moment that I said it. My friends would all back me up, and the blame would go from me to Candy.
Candy, the goth girl in class that did her best to become part of the wall, gasped in outrage. “I most certainly did not!”
“She totally did,” my best friend, Spencer Morris, said.
“She did. I saw her.”
Chapter 2
I’m having one of those days where I’m holding a stick and everyone looks like a piñata.
-Candy’s secret thoughts
Candy
I glared at Banks and wished that my glare could produce something other than just a glare. Fire. Death rays. Something, anything really.
God, I hated Banks Valentine. With a passion, really.
It’d been two weeks since the ‘incident.’ Two weeks since having to tell my parents that I owed five hundred bucks to the school for something that I didn’t do.
Not that my parents cared.
Honestly, they were happy.
I’d, apparently, ‘put forth the effort’ and they were happy that I’d tried to ‘fit in.’
I hadn’t tried to do shit, but if it got them off of my case for a while, I’d take it.
That didn’t mean that I forgave Banks goddamn Valentine, though.
I seriously wanted to pick up my textbook and knock him straight over the head with it.
I halfway wanted to do it just to see what he would do.
Though, detention wasn’t my favorite place to be.
And, honestly, I wasn’t sure that I’d just get detention. My luck, I’d probably get suspended and have to spend even more time with my parents than I already did.
“Ms. Sunshine,” I heard the teacher call. “Can you answer the question?”
I turned to Mr. Feeny and smiled.
“I’m sorry, what was your question again?” I asked sweetly.
Not sweetly enough, because he scowled at me for not paying attention.
“I asked if you would like to come up here and solve the equation,” he repeated.
I shrugged and got up, walking carefully to the front of the room, being damn sure not to touch Banks Valentine who had his goddamn leg and ha
lf his body in the aisle.
I picked up the marker and started to solve the equation on the board, not stopping until I had it neatly wrapped up at the bottom of the board.
I handed the marker back to him and tried not to look smug.
Math was my thing.
However, science wasn’t.
Which was where I was headed after this particular class. A class which Banks also shared with me.
Where Banks would shine, and I wouldn’t.
“Very good,” Mr. Feeny said.
Mr. Feeny was much like the Mr. Feeney on an old television show I used to watch. He was wise, old, and always treated every student he had with kindness.
However, he was also very calculating and intimidating when he wanted to be.
Which was why, when Banks tried to trip me on the way back to my seat, Mr. Feeny called him up to solve the next question.
I almost smirked at the damn boy-man as I glared.
His stupid tight Wranglers and even tighter black t-shirt were stupid… and hot.
I hated him for it, too.
People that hot shouldn’t be so mean.
At least, in my opinion they shouldn’t.
“Mr. Valentine, today,” Mr. Feeny ordered.
Banks’ friends started to snicker, knowing that Banks sucked at math.
I would’ve smiled, too, had he not looked absolutely terrified to go up there.
“Actually, Mr. Feeny,” I said, taking pity on Banks. “We already did that one today. You have the answer right there on the other side of the room.”
The room itself was set up college style with the front walls covered in dry erase boards. We’d taken over an old lecture room for the time being since our room had black mold in the walls.
We really had solved that problem already.
Or I had.
Yesterday.
Because I was the only one who would voluntarily get up and solve any of the equations in front of the class.
Mr. Feeny turned to survey the problem he’d been about to have Banks solve, and I saw Banks flash to the answer.
I saw the wheels turning in his head as he stared at the problem.
Feeny erased the problem, then gestured for Banks to come up and solve that one anyway.
Banks had enough time, though.
See, Banks had a picture-perfect memory. He could see something once and memorize it, and never have to look at it again.