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Dedication

Para Aimee, Chloe, y Milagros.

1

Rachel

On the day my life goes off the rails, the first sign of trouble appears at 9:18 a.m. That’s when my boss hands me a chocolate-frosted donut and a cup of coffee.

I stare at her, confused, because Hettie has never brought me anything before, even though we share an office in the children’s department of the library. She’s a petite Black woman with corkscrew curls, a no-nonsense manner, and an iron hand. A good boss, but not a donut bringer.

She delivers the bad news quickly, like an experienced nurse giving a flu vaccine. I’ve been laid off, effective next month.

My position has been replaced city-wide by a kiosk equipped with artificial intelligence that can recommend books to patrons and read books out loud to children.

I stare at her with my mouth open. “Are you serious?”

She winces. “I’m afraid so.”

“Does the kiosk wipe their noses if they cry? Does it remind them to wash their hands after they use the bathroom? Can it shelve every book in the YA section without having to look up the series order?”

“I’m so, so sorry, Rachel.” Her face softens with pity and apology. “You’ve been amazing. The perfect employee, on every axis. You work hard, you’re good with the patrons—big and little, I can always count on you, everyone likes you. This has nothing to do with you. It’s all about money.”

“I know,” I tell her, because she looks as miserable as I feel.

“We’ll miss you so much, Rachel,” she says helplessly.

She tells me to take the rest of my notice period as paid vacation and sends me home.

I’m not one of those people who has a ton of stuff to pack up. I leave behind the office supplies, because the library never has enough money for good pens or staplers, and grab my coffee mug, my water bottle, my lip balm, my photos, and the small sign that hangs over my desk.

Stick to the Plan! it says. Then, below, in smaller letters: (First, make a plan.)

Oh, God, this so does not go with the plan!

I toss the donut in the trash can—no appetite—and drive home in a blur of panic. I’ve never not had a job. From the time I was a little kid, I was a good girl: respectful, obedient, high-achieving. I’m careful. I pay my bills early. I toe the line. I make plans. (And stick to them.) I had my first job lined up before I finished my library science program, which was part of my master plan:

1. 4.0 in high school
2. College
3. Grad school
4. Great apartment
5. The library job of my dreams
6. Awesome boyfriend
7. Meet the parents
8. Get engaged
9. Get married
10. Have two point five kids (I can’t decide between two and three)
11. Live happily ever after

Getting laid off feels like getting a C on a test I studied really hard for. I can’t even bring myself to call my parents or my best friend Louisa, because even though I know I didn’t do anything wrong (“the perfect employee,” Hettie said), I still feel oddly ashamed.

Okay, I tell myself, as I circle for parking near the Somerville apartment I share with my boyfriend, Werner (step six). I got laid off, and that sucks. Tonight, however, I will be able to check off number seven on the master plan. I am meeting my boyfriend, Werner’s, parents. And meeting the parents is the perfect stepping stone to number eight.

Werner’s and my one-year dating anniversary is just a few weeks from now, and I’ve been fantasizing that he’ll propose.

Candlelit dinner, champagne, a ring box, or, better yet, a ring atop a chocolate lava cake or a tiramisu… And Werner on one knee, eyes glittering with love, telling me that since the moment he first saw me at the college alumni event and crossed the room to talk to me, he’s known that this was where we were headed…

Then a nine-month engagement, a spring wedding, a year of getting to know each other as man and wife, and the two-point-five kiddos (step ten)…

(I will make up my mind by then. I’m not planning to deal in fractional kiddos, I swear.)

The layoff is a minor setback, I tell myself. As a step in the plan, it isn’t even essential to the success of the next few steps.

Whereas meeting the parents is key. And—silver lining—the early dismissal today gives me plenty of time to finish cleaning the apartment and make a few pies. It’s only 10:22.

I slide my Prius into a skinny parking space and walk the three blocks to the two-family where Werner and I live. As I unlock the door and let myself in, I can smell the roast I left simmering in the slow cooker. And the cleaning products I used this morning as I started the process of making everything perfect for the parent visit.

I take another step and trip over something, a pile of black slinkiness on the foyer floor, a tossed-aside heap.

Absentmindedly, I bend down and pick it up.

It’s a short, black skirt with a lacy hem. Pretty. Sexy.

My mind stops, like someone jammed a stick into the spokes of the hamster wheel.

This is not my skirt.

And then I hear the sounds. Two voices. One low, familiar, grunting, the other higher-pitched, whimpering.

My brain races to provide any possible explanation except the obvious one. And part of me must not want to know the truth, because I start making up reasons I shouldn’t walk towards the grunts and whimpers.

There might be an intruder in our apartment.

Werner might be doing something private (all alone) (by himself) he doesn’t want me to walk in on.

A dying animal somehow got into our bedroom?

Or it’s just the television.

Despite my brain’s attempt to save me from the truth, my feet carry me inexorably toward the bedroom door, past a woman’s blouse and Werner’s shirt, both discarded on the floor. By now, my denial is morphing into a slow-growing rage. I turn the knob. Push the door open.

I see Werner’s pale butt first. I recognize it, somehow, even though I’ve never seen it from this angle. I know what it’s doing, even though I’ve never seen it clenching and thrusting like that. We’re not the type of couple that uses mirrors or makes videos of ourselves. We have plain vanilla missionary sex under the covers, because that’s how we like it.

That’s how Werner said he likes it.

Right now, however, he is standing at the side of the bed, pounding into someone who is on all fours on his—our—bed.

“What the hell?”

That’s my voice. Which is remarkable for two reasons. One: I didn’t mean to speak. And two: I never swear.

Werner yanks himself free of the woman underneath him so fast I’m surprised he doesn’t break something, er, valuable. Which offers me a totally different unwanted backside view—ugh.

It takes the owner of this view a little longer than Werner to realize what’s going on, but when she does, she gasps and grasps for anything she can find to cover herself. Even so, as she clutches Werner’s quilt to her body, tugging it off the bed, I catch the front view: lacy red teddy and breasts pushed up to her chin.

Is that thing crotchless? my mind demands to know, despite the urgency and absurdity of the situation.

I’ve never seen her before, which is very slim relief.

“Get out,” I snarl at her, and, to her credit, she gets, grabbing her clothes as she rushes out. I can hear her beginning to cry as she removes herself.

I’m alone with Werner now. He’s desperately trying to get himself back into his tighty-whities. I guess it’s a survival instinct, covering up your parts when you’ve been caught. He’s red and breathless and saying my name, begging me.

“Rachel, please, it’s not what it looks like.”

“I don’t think that’s even possible.” A weird calm settles over me. If someone turns out not to be the man you thought he was, can you fall instantly out of love with him?

If someone disappoints you completely, does he lose his power to break your heart?

Or am I just in shock?

Shock is the more likely option. But I plan to take advantage of the numbness and clarity of mind while it lasts. “You were having sex with another woman in our bedroom. It’s exactly what it looks like.”

The bedroom I never stopped thinking of as his bedroom, my mind observes.

Shut up, mind.

“Rachel, please, listen. You’re the one who’s meeting my parents tonight.”

“Oh, my God, is that supposed to help? You’ve just shown me your butt. Literally! The butt of a man who’d have sex with one woman on the same day another one is cooking for his parents!”

“Rachel, please. You’re the girl I want to marry.”

Those words stop me cold for half a second. Because they are—were—the prize I coveted.

And then I come to my senses: Werner is not a prize.

He’s a total and complete loser who just did the lowest thing a boyfriend can do.

“Sure.” I barely recognize my voice. It is hard, dark, cynical. “She’s just the girl you…”

But apparently I have used up my ration of curses this morning, and I don’t finish the sentence.

“Rachel, listen to me. If you leave because of this, I’ll never forgive myself. You’re my perfect woman.”

My perfect woman.

And what did Hettie call me at work today, just before I was replaced by a kiosk? The perfect employee.

Perfect.

Perfect.

What horse pucky.

This being perfect thing?

It’s not working out for me.

2

Brody

How does a bad boy end up hosting a book club on his boat?

I’ve asked myself this question several times over the course of this wretched night. We’re on my 30-foot fishing boat, currently anchored in the middle of Sentinel Lake. The sun has not yet dipped behind the mountains. The air is warm, the water still, the birds starting to sing. By most measures, I should be in my happy place.

Yeah. Not so much.

“You’re out of toilet paper!” One of the book-clubbers, a whippet-thin, pale-skinned blond woman named Jennifer, pokes her head into the cockpit as she returns from the head. Jennifer has her mini-poodle-chihuahua mix—Chicklet—in a sporty sling-bag obviously made for that purpose. He has been intermittently yapping and whining, and I feel his pain—he’s zipped up to his ears. “I used the last. Where do you keep the extra? I can swap it in.”

“What do you mean, out of toilet paper?”

“I used it up,” Jennifer says. “Also, the toilet’s clogged.”

I close my eyes. “You’re kidding me. How many squares did you use?”

She shrugs.

“Didn’t you hear me say four squares?”

She crosses her arms. “I thought you were joking.”

I’d given all the book-clubbers a lecture about the perils of too-much TP in a boat head.

Which they had apparently ignored.

My jaw aches from clenching it.

Jennifer tips her head to one side. “Anyway, where’s the extra TP?”

“There’s no extra TP. That should have been enough TP for several book clubs.”

“Seriously?” She raises two perfectly arched eyebrows.

“Seriously. And no one can use the head now. There’s no way I can get that thing unclogged without a snake or a pump.”

Jennifer makes a noise I’d translate as “harumph” and turns to join the other book-clubbers in the bow. I step away from the center console helm, intending to see how much damage she’s done to my head, but before I even reach the cabin door, I hear a sharp ziiiippp, followed by yapping and scrabbling. I turn to see her freeing the doglet for a putter around her feet.

“Watch him,” I say sharply. “I’m not going in the lake after him.”

“Oh, is that service extra?” she snaps back. “Like toilet paper?”

I swallow my urge to engage, and go belowdecks. I take one look at the contents of the head—and oh, fuck, it definitely needs to be pumped. And is that—

Oh, no, she didn’t.

Menstrual pad.

I rub my hand, hard, over my forehead, hoping the pad will vanish, but no such luck. Then, gingerly, I reach in and extract it with two fingers and drop it in the trash.

I wash my hands, frowning at myself in the mirror.

This trip is a total failure. There’s no way to sugarcoat it.

And there’s definitely no way to stave off the inevitable rotten reviews.

How was I supposed to know that I’d need more than two bottles of wine?

Or more than a small bowl of jelly beans and a big bag of Doritos? My clients finished both in thirty minutes and asked me where the refills were. One of them asked if I had any healthy snacks. Another wanted to know if I had sparkling water. I had to choke down the urge to point out the sun reflecting off the lake. Sparkling! Water!

Also, they hate the book, which is by some guy named Nicholas Sparks.

(I would not have chosen a book by a guy whose last name was clearly made up.)

The book choice is not my problem, but I feel like it’s making the situation more dire. As are the mosquitoes—which have been worse in our area in the last few years.

I forgot to bring the nice-smelling bug wipes my brother’s girlfriend bought for this occasion. Also, the sunscreen—Jennifer’s nose is a scary shade of pink, and even with a couple of months of base tan on my white-boy skin, I’m probably hurting too.

I go back to the helm.

The women—my clients—are now talking about me in whispers. Which, unfortunately, I can hear perfectly because of the weird acoustics of the boat on water.

“He was engaged to Zoë Milano, wasn’t he?”

“Mmm-hmm. But he broke it off.”

“I guess that’s not a huge surprise, right? I mean, those tattoos and that leather jacket don’t exactly scream husband material.”

“They scream something. Or maybe screaming is just what any of us would do in bed with him?”

Lots of throaty laughter.

These women on my boat are all mid-thirties to early forties. They’re the yummy-mummy type. If you’d asked me to assess them as they were climbing on board, I’d have said I wouldn’t kick any of them out of bed. But right now? I want this night to end so I can get them off my boat.

I didn’t used to mind being women’s bad boy fantasy. But lately, I do.

Every woman wants to fuck the bad boy, but no woman trusts the bad boy to take care of her and the things that matter. It’s a lesson Zoë knocked into my head.

I fidget with the fishing fly I keep in my pocket. It’s one my dad made when I was a kid. He cut the hook off and let me keep it. Some guys have rabbit’s feet, I have a “woolly bugger,” with most of the feathers worn off.

“He’s the baby’s father, right?”

The fist that never quite leaves my chest clenches a little tighter. That baby they’re talking about is Justin. My Justin.

Not my Justin.

“No,” someone says. “He’s not. That’s what the fight was about.”

I close my eyes, which is one of those dumbass things you do when you really want to close your ears but it’s physically impossible.

“Len Dix is the father.”

The name physically hurts. Like a fishhook through the heart. Barbed.

“Wait. I thought he was the dad.” He, meaning me.

“Zoë told him he was the dad.”

If the news is out, it’s only a matter of time before everyone I know—including all my family members—learns it, too.

I know that means I’m living on borrowed time. I need to tell them before they hear it like this, from strangers at a book club.

I can’t take anymore. I start the engines, throw us into gear, and jam the throttle. There’s a scream, a splash, and, “Chiiiiickleeettt!”

Shiiiiiit.

I guide us to the quickest halt I can and rush to where the women are leaning over the starboard bow, wailing and pointing.

Jennifer is wringing her hands and imploring her friends to go in after her doglet because she can’t swim.

Chicklet, for his part, is treading madly, his bug eyes huge with panic, his little paws scrabbling, his nose barely above water. I whip my t-shirt over my head, shed my shoes—luckily, I am wearing swim trunks and not jeans—and dive.

Moments later, I deposit a shivering and coughing Chicklet over the side and hoist myself back in.

Does Jennifer thank me? No.

She hollers, “You could at least give a girl some warning! Chicklet could have died.”

“If he fell in, he must have been on the gunwale.”

“He wanted to see!”

I close my eyes.

“You started fast on purpose!”

“It’s rude to gossip!” I roar.

I’ve shamed at least a couple of them, if the ducked heads are any indication. But it’s a shallow victory, because Jennifer is pissed.

The reviews I desperately need?

Just got way worse.

And I can’t even bring myself to give a shit.

Except I have to give a shit. All of us—the five Wilder Brothers—are working together to revamp our business, after our rodeo town became a wedding-and-spa destination—overnight. My oldest brother, Gabe, hired a consultant to guide us. The consultant—Lucy, who is now also my brother’s new girlfriend—decided I should expand my charter fishing business to include other activities.

Like book clubs.

I want Wilder Adventures to rebound. I want it to stay in business. I want it to keep feeding my brothers and my mother and my sister Amanda and her husband and three kids and Gabe’s girlfriend Lucy.

I want it to pay my salary so I can give Justin a good life, even if Justin isn’t mine and I have to do it in secret.

So I have to figure out how a bad boy runs a book club. Or whatever it’s going to take to make my part of the Wilder Revamp a success.

The women are murmuring among themselves now. I can tell it’s bad news even before Jennifer approaches me. She’s been appointed spokesperson, obviously.

“We think you should consider giving us all a discount on tonight’s trip. Fifty percent off.”

I grit my teeth, worried that if I speak I’ll say something I’ll regret.

What I finally say is, “That seems fair.”

She’s only slightly appeased. The wrinkles in her forehead don’t smooth out at all. “You’re lucky we aren’t demanding a full refund. The snacks, the wine, poor little Chicklet, a clogged toilet, and no toilet paper?”

I want to fight back—there was plenty of toilet paper!—but I know it’ll only make the review situation worse.

“I’m sorry,” I say, instead, because my mother taught me the importance of a real apology.

I want to beg Jennifer and her cronies not to trash me in the reviews, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Besides, I’m pretty sure it’s a lost cause.

The bad reviews will suck, that’s for sure.

But the worst part isn’t the reviews.

It’s what my brother Gabe will say about them.

3

Brody

“What the fuck, Brody?”

My brother has ambushed me from behind while my best friend Connor and I are cleaning my other boat. A small one, it currently sits on the trailer at Wilder Adventure headquarters, also known as the barn outside Gabe’s house.

Spoiler: Jennifer and her friends’ reviews did not mention that I rescued Chicklet from sure death. Only the lousy snacks, the bad attitude, the lack of toilet paper, and the rapid acceleration.

I slowly turn around to find Gabe standing there with a sheaf of printed papers and a furious expression. My own anger meter goes from zero to highway speed, because with Gabe it’s always like this—there’s nothing I can do that won’t make him mad, and no way for me to win.

“What’re you so pissed about?”

I try to keep my voice level, but it’s a lost cause. Clark, Kane—even Easton—can keep their cool around Gabe. I’m the only sibling who loses it every time. It’s because Gabe and I are so close in age, and we had to compete from the very beginning for our parents’ affections—a battle I gave up on winning sometime around sixth grade.

“This last batch of reviews—what the fuck, Brody?”

“We’ve already established that’s the question,” I say dryly.

There’s a small snort of laughter that only I hear. Connor is hidden behind the boat, out of Gabe’s view, which puts Connor in the awkward position of either being an eavesdropper on a family conversation—or having to pop out in the next few seconds like a jack-in-the-box.

He doesn’t pop.

I can’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to show my face to Gabe if I didn’t absolutely have to.

I wouldn’t have chosen this morning to clean the boat if I’d known Gabe was around. I thought he was in Portland with Lucy, on a marketing research mission.

Gabe scowls. “You deliberately sped up the boat to capsize someone’s dog? They want to know why you’re bothering to offer these nights out, since you obviously have no interest in being a good host. I’d like to know the answer to that, too.”

I only saw the reviews day before yesterday, but of course I’ve known this moment was coming since last Sunday. It’s almost a relief to finally be here.

And I can answer his question, no problem: “I’m hosting the nights out because you told me to.”

The red deepens on Gabe’s face.

“I’ve had it up to here with you, Brody. Clark, Kane, Easton, they’re all doing everything they can to make this work. Lucy’s killing herself coming up with great ideas. Books-in-the-Boat was a stroke of genius.” He throws his hands out. “It’s like you’re hell-bent on undermining everything. Do you even give a shit if this business is successful?”

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