Fact or fiction: proposing to your best friend so she can inherit her family business is a great idea.
When Addison “Roe” Monroe tells me she’s going on a husband hunt at the local lumberjack competition so she can inherit her father’s lumberyard, desperate times call for desperate measures.
She’s sworn off romance. Says she’s been through enough tragedy. So I offer myself as an alternative, 'cause that’s what best friends are for.
But my stubborn friend, who would rather drive a forklift than get her nails done, refuses to accept my help, and now I find myself training to become a lumberjack.
I refuse to let Roe hitch her wagon to some hulking ax wielder who might be a serial killer. She means too much to me.
And I swear there are moments where she looks at me like I mean something more to her, too.
On the surface, I’m offering a marriage of convenience to protect her. But the truth is…I’m hopelessly in love with my best friend.
So if I have to marry her and move her up to Fletcher Mountain just to see if she could love me back, so be it.
Because my only regret would be losing her forever, and that’s a fact.
Why You Should Read This Book
Tropes
Trigger Warnings
Honeymoon Phase
“I’m not lost at all. I have a growing new business and a girlfriend who tells me she loves me and my cat all the time. I’m in fucking heaven.”
“I’m really grateful to you, Jo. I don’t know most of the details of this wedding and I already know it’s going to be one of the best days of my life.”
“Trust me, Addison Monroe, when I kiss you with intention, you’ll know it.”
“Now it feels like if I don’t give it everything I’ve got, I could lose her to someone else and will spend the rest of my life regretting it.”
“Because when a woman has her claws all over you like you’re open territory, it pisses me the fuck off. We’re married, Luke.
“Casual sex with my husband sounds just crazy enough to work. Bring on the loggers!”
“The truth is, Addison, I love you so much I would have just been your friend through all of this if that’s truly all you ever wanted from me. But the past couple weeks have proven we are more. We can be everything to each other if you just allow yourself to love me back.”
“I’m fucking terrified of losing you all the time.”
“You’re my husband and I want to feel all of you.”
“So whether you two are just friends or truly married, this shit is real on some level, she cares about you for some reason I can’t figure out. Which means if you break her heart, I swear to Christ, I will grab my side-by-side shotgun and rain so much buckshot in your ass you won’t be able to shit right for the rest of your life. You got me, boy?”
“I’d rather you saddle yourself with me for a year than put yourself at risk with a stranger, Roe. I will lose my mind worrying about you.”
“I saw you as someone I wasn’t willing to lose, and with who I was back then, if I would have taken you to bed, I would have definitely lost you.”
“We’re better together. You’re in this with me and it’s going to hurt if you lose me now or if you lose me fifty years from now when we’re old and gray and sitting on my front porch looking at our grandkids and marveling over the life we made. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like option two.”
“It’s fucking exhausting to live with the what-ifs.”
“The marriage is real for me, by the way. I don’t want out. It’s real and it always has been for me. I don’t think it’s the same for your daughter, but I’ll be whatever she needs me to be because that’s how much I love her . . . for whatever that’s worth to you.”
“When I forgave you for not showing up and we started hanging out again, I realized that’s what love is. It’s tolerating things you might not like from someone you care about because you know their essence. You know them at their best and their worst and you love them through it.”
“Looking at me like that will only get you fucked.”
“To elope and not even tell me is unforgivable. I’m heartbroken. If your father were here right now, I would make him kick your sorry ass!”
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