Page 1 of The Love We Make

Chapter 1

Madison

I stood in the doorway to my bedroom staring at the man sleeping soundly in my bed.

He wasn’t supposed to be there. He had his own apartment and his own bed. But for the last month, that is where he’d been—my bed.

All it took was one crazy girls’ night out. After being teased and hassled by my friends for way too long, I got drunk and decided I would lose my dumb virginity to the first willing man that wanted to take it. I was over their lame jokes about how chaste and lacking I was. And instead of telling themthat, I announced I was going to “fix” myself once and for all.

My master plan: I would take a random man to the bathroom at a bar and just do it.

Then I drank more.

A few hours later, the man currently in my bed picked me up from outside the bar and gave me a ride home. During which I stupidly told him my master plan of random hookups and bathroom sex.

Stupid.

He had been in my bed every night since.

I started walking closer to the bed, trying to decide what to do next. I needed to do something. We couldn’t go on like this.

I sipped the coffee I had made as I took in his bare back and trim waist. His arms were under the pillow which made the muscles in his sides and shoulders flex. He was in sweatpants on top of my covers. His feet were bare. His dark hair was a mess from sleep.

Truthfully, he was a sight that a girl could just look at all day. Swoon over, all day.

Every day.

But not me.

“Ethan!” I yelled, deciding to kick his feet. “Wake the hell up!”

“Shhhh. I got in late. I have to be at the field again at noon.”

“What do you mean, shhh? You got in late? Ethan, you don’t live here! Wake up!”

“Shhhh,” he repeated, before shoving his head under the pillow and going back to sleep.

My best friend, Ethan Jones. Pitcher for the Atlanta Kings. His pro baseball status meant he was used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it.

But he was getting on my damn nerves.

I loved him, more than anyone else in the world. We had been friends for as long as I could remember. Practically brother and sister. Our parents were best friends. They still lived in the same town, across from each other on the same street we grew up on in Oklahoma.

Ethan is the reason I ended up in Atlanta. Just like best friends, we wanted to go to college together and party together. Sew our wild oats.

However, Ethan skipped college when he got drafted out of high school to the Kings. Therefore, we improvised—I went to college in Atlanta while he played baseball.

Didn’t bother me at all as long as we were together.

That was four years ago. Now, I had graduated from college and chose to stay in Atlanta when jobs started falling into my lap. Meanwhile, Ethan was now the number one pitcher for the Kings.

Through the years, Ethan and I had built our own circles and our own lives outside of each other. I had my own friends and my own routines. He had his. But when it came down to it, we were still best friends. We were still as close as ever.

Practically family.

Which is why I called him to come and get me from the bar that night.

Why I told him the truth about wanting to lose my virginity.

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