The Bangover Read online

  The Bangover

  Lili Valente

  The Bangover © 2019 by Lili Valente

  All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, hilarious romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover by Lori Jackson. Photo credit to Wander Aquiar. Editorial support from Help Me Edit.

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  THE BANGOVER

  By Lili Valente

  Contents

  About the Book

  Also by Lili Valente

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Tell Lili Your Favorite Part!

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Lili Valente

  About the Book

  Dear Self—Do not pass Go, do not bang your oldest friend in the limo on the way to the swanky Vegas hotel. Just get back on the plane, fly home, and forget you almost had co-ed naked best buddy fun time with the one man who is completely off limits.

  I give myself very good advice.

  Too bad I suck at taking it.

  Not that Colin Donovan, my bad boy rock star best friend, is any help. Walking around looking ridiculously sexy, telling me I’m beautiful and fun and perfect the way I am and somehow making me believe it.

  If only we hadn’t drunk so much whiskey that first night, if only I’d kept that red bikini in my suitcase, if only his evil ex-girlfriend hadn’t come sniffing around making me feel all territorial and protective.

  And if only I hadn’t been secretly in love with Colin for years before this Friends with Bennies Vacation got started.

  Who knows? Maybe the high will be worth the fall. Either way, there’s no way I’m leaving Vegas without one heck of a Bangover.

  The Bangover is a red-hot, laugh out loud rom-com featuring two best friends on a collision course with Vegas-flavored disaster—and each other. It stands alone. No cheating or cliffhangers.

  Also by Lili Valente

  Red HOT Laugh-out-Loud Rom Coms

  The Bangover

  Bang Theory

  Learn more here

  The Hunter Brothers

  The Baby Maker

  The Troublemaker

  The Heartbreaker

  The Panty Melter

  Click here to learn more

  The Bad Motherpuckers Series (Standalones)

  Hot as Puck

  Sexy Motherpucker

  Puck-Aholic

  Puck me Baby

  Pucked Up Love

  Puck Buddies

  Click here to learn more

  Sexy Flirty Dirty Romantic Comedies (Standalones)

  Magnificent Bastard

  Spectacular Rascal

  Incredible You

  Meant for You

  Click here to learn more

  The Master Me Series

  (Red HOT erotic Standalone novellas)

  Snowbound with the Billionaire

  Snowed in with the Boss

  Masquerade with the Master

  Click here to learn more

  Bought by the Billionaire Series

  (HOT novellas, must be read in order)

  Dark Domination

  Deep Domination

  Desperate Domination

  Divine Domination

  Click here to learn more

  Kidnapped by the Billionaire Series

  (HOT novellas, must be read in order)

  Filthy Wicked Love

  Crazy Beautiful Love

  One More Shameless Night

  Click here to learn more

  Under His Command Series

  (HOT novellas, must be read in order)

  Controlling her Pleasure

  Commanding her Trust

  Claiming her Heart

  Click here to learn more

  To the Bone Series

  (Sexy Romantic Suspense, must be read in order)

  A Love so Dangerous

  A Love so Deadly

  A Love so Deep

  Click here to learn more

  Fight for You Series

  (Emotional New Adult Romantic Suspense.

  Must be read in order.)

  Run with Me

  Fight for You

  Click here to learn more

  Lover’s Leap Series

  A Naughty Little Christmas

  The Bad Boy’s Temptation

  Click here to learn more

  The Lonesome Point Series

  (Sexy Cowboys written with Jessie Evans)

  Leather and Lace

  Saddles and Sin

  Diamonds and Dust

  12 Dates of Christmas

  Glitter and Grit

  Sunny with a Chance of True Love

  Chaps and Chance

  Ropes and Revenge

  8 Second Angel

  Click here to learn more

  Co-written Standalones

  The V Card (co-written with Lauren Blakely)

  Falling for the Boss (co-written with Sylvia Pierce)

  Click here to learn more

  The Happy Cat Series

  (co-written with Pippa Grant)

  Hosed

  Hammered

  Hitched

  Humbugged

  Click here to learn more

  To Lauren Blakely again. Mwuah!

  Chapter One

  Colin

  “So let me get this straight…” My best friend Kirby’s voice is husky and soft in the darkness beneath her back porch, where we’ve been hiding for the past thirty minutes, preparing for our favorite post-hometown concert tradition—the pranking of Shep, my drummer. “You’re swearing off sex so you can write songs.”

  “Correct. Not fun, but it has to be done.”

  “Does it?” She sounds bemused. “Really?”

  “It does.” There’s a skittering sound on the planks overhead, and we both fall silent, but after a moment a plaintive meow? makes it clear we’re not in danger of being attacked by trash-raidi
ng raccoons.

  It’s just Murder, the evil ring leader of Kirby’s collection of misfit cats.

  “I’ll be in soon, baby,” Kirby calls softly. “Go inside.”

  I grunt. “He’s probably out here looking for me. Fangs bared. Ready to take his pound of flesh.”

  “Probably,” Kirby agrees with a chuckle. “He hates you so much.” She nudges my shoulder with her smaller, pointier one. “But don’t take it personally. He’s just jealous that there’s another creature on earth I like nearly as much as him.”

  “Nearly, huh? Thanks,” I say, a smile in my voice. But I’ve been smiling pretty much nonstop since we took the stage earlier tonight.

  There’s nothing like a hometown show—the energy, the excitement, the noise, and best of all, a crowd packed with people who dreamed an impossible dream with you until the dream came true.

  A lot of the greater Bangor, Maine area fans have been with us from the beginning, when Lips on Fire was just a bunch of high school kids playing all-ages venues on weekends—when Cutter wasn’t grounded for getting caught smoking pot and Shepherd didn’t have to babysit his herd of little siblings. In other words, they knew us way before our lips had ever set a girl on fire.

  The people around here are more than fans. They’re family, tribe, and I refuse to let them down. The new album is going to come out on schedule, even if it means I won’t be coming.

  At all.

  Not a single orgasm until the songs are written, recorded, and in the bag.

  Fuck…just thinking about it is enough to drive me to drink.

  I take the flask from Kirby. Her skin is so white it’s easy to find her hand, even in the midnight shadows. “When was the last time you were out in the sun, Larry? You’re glowing in the dark.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she says in a tone that makes it clear she still loves it when I call her that. I might only see my best girl a few times a year, but we talk on the phone almost every night. I know her better than anyone, including her snot-nosed whiner of an ex-boyfriend, Peter, who I can’t say I’m sorry is no longer in the picture.

  The dude was a dud. If personalities had colors, his would be puce.

  “I’ve been on deadline,” she adds with a sigh. “And the sun stifles my spooky muse.”

  “Maybe you should write a children’s book, instead,” I tease.

  Kirby Lawrence, KJ Lawrence to her legions of horror-loving fans, is about as child-friendly as a rusty razor blade. Sure, with her pale blond hair, bright blue eyes, and permanently pink cheeks, she looks sweet, but Kirby is a dark horse. Emancipated from her craptastic mother at seventeen and supporting herself and her little sister, Bridget, purely with her fiction skills two years later, she’s a legend around Hidden Kill Bay. If it weren’t for the phenomenon that is Lips on Fire—at last count, we’ve sold eight million records worldwide—she’d be our Bangor suburb’s most famous export.

  But Kirby doesn’t care about fame. She plies her trade for the sick and twisted thrill of scaring people to death and the cash to support her cat adoption habit. At last count, she had four of her own and was footing the vet bills for at least a dozen other local felines.

  I used to tease her about having Early Onset Cat Lady disease, but then she went down to the DMV and got a tragically dorky vanity plate that reads MeowUDoin, and I stopped. I didn’t know what she’d do if I continued to yank her chain. She threatened to have whiskers tattooed on her cheeks, and even though I was 95 percent sure she was kidding, I wasn’t willing to risk that 5 percent.

  Kirby’s too cute to go full-on weirdo just yet. We have to get her hooked up with a non-snot-nosed dude who will worship at her love altar, first. She can be a prickly pear sometimes, but beneath her Wednesday Adams demeanor beats the heart of a sweet lady any dude would be lucky to call his own.

  “And maybe you should pass the flask before you break the two-sip rule,” she says, invoking one of our many adolescent rules of honor. Never hang on to the flask for more than ten minutes, and never, ever take more than one sip at a time. “And maybe you can explain to me why you can’t bang and write at the same time?”

  “I’m a man. I’m bad at multitasking.” I pass the flask, adding in my 70s porn star voice, “And when I’m focused on my lady, that’s all that’s on my mind, baby.”

  Kirby snorts. “So focus on your lady for two minutes, or however long it takes rock stars these days, and then get back to writing songs. I’m pretty sure that still leaves several hours of your day free.”

  “You wound me, Larry. I’m a ten-minute man. Sometimes twelve, if I’ve eaten my Wheaties and think of my grandmother’s underwear.”

  She snorts again, and I feel unreasonably proud of myself for making her laugh twice. Kirby isn’t an easy mark. Either I’m getting funnier, or the whiskey is starting to make her feel as fuzzy around the edges as it’s made me, a fact for which I’m grateful.

  Having a killer case of writer’s block is less scary after the buzz sets in.

  Though, pretty soon, that’s going on the shelf, too—no alcohol, no sex, no nothing that might mute the muse.

  “But seriously,” I add in a softer voice. Kirby had her place reinsulated last year, but it’s still an old cottage with thin walls, and I don’t want any of my bandmates knowing how far behind I am. “I’ve got to do something. We’re going into the studio in August to record, and I’ve got one song, dude. One. After a hundred hours in the writing cave.”

  “Fuck,” she says, clearly feeling my pain. But she would. As a fellow career creative, she knows all about the strain of making art on demand.

  “Yes. That. So I’m going to quit fucking before I’m any more fucked.”

  “You seriously think it will help?” She shifts my way, passing over the flask. “I thought only meathead jocks believed their power seeped out of them with their seed. Remember when Coach Brewer made the wrestling team stop jerking off senior year, and they all kept getting hard-ons during the meets?”

  “I do remember,” I say with a laugh-shudder. “It’s not like that for me. It’s just…” I shrug. “My best songwriting years were before we blew up, back when I was a kid right out of high school, writing songs and dreaming of a day when getting laid would be something that happened to me more than once or twice a year.”

  It’s her turn to shudder. “Sounds torturous.”

  “It was pretty miserable,” I agree, “but great for the creative muscles. Yes, I’ve written good songs since then, but never so quickly or with such consistent quality. You know?”

  Kirby hums beneath her breath. “Okay. I can see your point. But what if it was a timing thing? I mean, maybe back then you were just full of that early fire. I used to write a lot faster, too. Five thousand-word days used to happen all the time. Now I get two thousand, and I treat myself to ice cream.”

  I take a long swig of whiskey, chest burning as I swallow. “You could have a point. But I prefer to believe that I’ve been distracted and can course correct, not that I’m washed up at twenty-nine.”

  “Aw, there, there.” Kirby’s hand lands on my shoulder for a series of awkward pats. “Don’t have a quarter-life crisis. It’s going to be okay.”

  “You’re such a dude,” I say with a laugh.

  “I’m not a dude.” She sniffs. “I’m just bad at offering meaningless words of comfort. I’m better at action. What can I do to help? You want to stay here and write for a while, now that the tour is over? The Garret room over at the bed and breakfast is empty until August, when it goes on the rental calendar again. It’s hot as balls up there on sunny days, but it’s quiet.”

  “You’re really going to rent it out?” I say, surprised. “I thought you loved being the mad woman at work in the attic.”

  “I did, but it’s time for a change of scenery.” She looks at the weathered boards above us. “I’m thinking of selling this place, too.”

  “What? Why?” Kirby bought this cottage just off the square with her first big roy
alty check. It’s been a fixture in our lives since we were barely old enough to buy liquor to fill up our flask.

  She’s silent for a moment before she adds in a voice almost too soft to hear, “Peter is all over the place here.”

  I turn to her, squinting in the shadows, but it’s too dark to know if she’s wearing a “let’s talk” expression or her “mention feelings and I’ll cut you” face. But any mention of her ex is rare enough that I can’t let it slide. “So how’s that going? The getting-over-Peter project?”

  “Shitty.” She reaches over, her cool fingers brushing mine as she takes the flask. “I mean, ending it was absolutely the right thing to do. If he hadn’t, I would have, but…I don’t know. He was my longest relationship, the guy who knew me best in the whole world. And then he decided I was too much of a pain in the ass to stay in love with and left. It just…sucks.”

  “He was the pain in the ass. He was clearly threatened by your confidence and success. And that was his problem, not yours. You’re a kick-ass lady, and that’s a scientific fact.”