Completely Unexpected

By Alexa Kane

Olivia Van Der Woodson has spent her entire life joined at the hip with her best friend Maddy but a series of events leaves Olivia alone for her senior year of college.
To say she is bored is an understatement.
Loneliness slowly worms its way inside her heart until she finds herself seeking comfort from a boyfriend.
Problem is, casual hooks is her middle name.
However, after determining that she would like to try her hand at a serious relationship, she meets not one but two gorgeous guys.
She instantly hits it off with both men and has to decide who she wants to take a chance on.
On the surface they appear to be genuine guys but one of them is keeping a deadly secret that could leave Olivia’s life in jeopardy.

Will she choose the man who she could end up having a future with or will she fall for the man who will lead her head first into danger?

Completely Unexpected is the second instalment in the Relinquish series. Due to its explicit content, bad language and graphic sexual content, Completely Unexpected is recommended for mature readers of eighteen years and above.
Please note this book ends on a cliffhanger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexa Kane
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005773304

Alexa Kane

Alexa Kane is a contemporary romance author and Secrets and Deception is her debut novel.Alexa lives in Australia with her husband but she calls New Zealand home.

Book preview

Completely Unexpected

Relinquish SERIES BOOK TWO

BY ALEXA KANE

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system – without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or biding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book 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 reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Alexa Kane

Copyright 2021 by Alexa Kane

All Rights Reserved. ©

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

The author acknowledges all song titles, song lyrics, film titles, film characters, trademarked statuses, brands, mentioned in this book are the property of, and belong to, their respective owners. The publication / use of these trademarks is not authorized / associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Because of its explicit sexual content, mature themes and bad language, it is suitable for readers over 18 years of age.

I hope you enjoy reading the second installment of the Relinquish series.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter 1 – Olivia

Chapter 2 - Olivia

Chapter 3 - Olivia

Chapter 4 - Olivia

Chapter 5 - Olivia

Chapter 6 - Olivia

Chapter 7 - Olivia

Chapter 8 - Olivia

Chapter 9 - Olivia

Chapter 10 - Olivia

Chapter 11 - Olivia

Chapter 12 - Olivia

Chapter 13 - Olivia

Chapter 14 - Olivia

Chapter 15 - Olivia

Chapter 16 - Olivia

Chapter 17 - Olivia

Chapter 18 - Olivia

Chapter 19 - Olivia

Chapter 20 - Olivia

Chapter 21 - Olivia

Chapter 22 - Maddy

Chapter 23 - Maddy

Chapter 24 - Tyler

Thank you very much for reading

PROLOGUE

When Douglas Harrington contacted me out of the blue last year after my scholarship was revoked and offered to pay for my college tuition, I thought he was my guardian angel.

He made it seem like it was a common occurrence to help out struggling college students and I was more than happy to take him up on his offer.

It’s not like I had much of a choice though.

I was out of options and if I didn’t accept his help then I would have had to drop out altogether.

Looking back now, it’s obvious why he chose me.

I was desperate.

Desperate people tend to do fucked up things without thinking about the consequences.

It all started off above board but after receiving a few payments from him, he started requesting that I do him favors.

The first thing I ever did for him was track down a fellow student named Olivia Van Der Woodson.

He didn’t want me to talk to her, he just wanted a photo of her.

When I questioned the nature of his relationship with the girl, he told me that he believed she was his long-lost granddaughter but wanted a photo of her to make sure.

I should have listened to my gut and put a stop to it way back then but for some reason, I took a photo of her then sent it to him.

A photo seemed harmless enough and I got the impression that if I didn’t take the photo, then my payments would stop coming.

It put me in a difficult position but at that point I still thought he was a good guy.

How fucking wrong I was.

After the next payment, he wanted to know who the blonde girl in the photo with Olivia was.

It wasn’t hard to find the information out but then I kept getting similar requests after each payment.

I started to realize that unless I came up with an alternative option to pay my tuition then I was completely at his mercy.

Dropping out of college wasn’t an option and I was in too deep with him to back out.

My education means everything to me.

Over the summer, I never heard from him and I wondered if that meant he was reneging on our deal but sure enough on the first day of classes, he had more favors.

And they all had to do with Olivia.

When he asked me to befriend her, I started questioning where he was going with all of this.

What his end game was.

It was all getting a little weird, even for my standards.

I started to get the sense that he was obsessed with Olivia and wondered whether she was even his granddaughter.

Olivia is a beautiful girl, stunning really and I could see how someone could be easily captivated by her.

She has long dark brown hair which normally hangs loose around her waist but I haven’t gotten close enough to her yet to know what color her eyes are.

She’s not overly tall but it’s hard not to notice her figure, after all, she loves to show it off.

Her body is curved to perfection and I feel like an asshole for checking her out as I followed her to learn her movements.

When my suspicions continued to grow, I did an online search for Douglas Harrington and my heart sank as soon as I saw the first result. He’s currently in prison serving a life sentence for committing unspeakable crimes.

He’s already served twenty-one years of that sentence and the only reason that I agreed to talk to Olivia is because he has no chance of parole.

He’ll die in prison which means that he won’t be able to hurt her.

The fact that he has photos of her, presumably on the wall of his cell creeps me out but not enough to risk my future.

When he asked me to gain her trust by any means necessary, I became nervous over what his intentions were and not for the first time, I wondered what the hell I was doing.

He basically informed me that I could fuck her for all he cared, but he wanted me to be a permanent fixture in her life.

As the months passed by, I feel like I am getting deeper and deeper into a mess that I can’t get myself out of.

I’ve debated my decision about befriending Olivia for weeks now and it’s not something that I take lightly.

She is easily the type of girl that I could date or start a real relationship with but how would she react once she found out the truth? Olivia seems like the type of girl to write me off completely if I do something stupid and I have a feeling once I get to know her that I’ll become attached.

She’s just one of those girls that is the full package.

If I randomly met her in a bar then I wouldn’t hesitate to try and talk to her but I feel shady engaging in conversation under false pretenses.

Douglas is hiding something from me, I know he is but I can’t figure out what.

If I wasn’t so desperate to finish college then this would be an easy decision to make but without college, I have no future.

Without my scholarship, I’m finished and Douglas knows it.

He’s using it against me.

I’m not in a position to get financial aid and I have no family to help me out.

What’s worse is that Douglas has offered me a one hundred thousand dollar bonus after I graduate.

That’s if I cooperate.

All I have to do is befriend a beautiful girl and I will graduate college without any debt and have enough money to make a life for myself somewhere.

Douglas has the potential to change my life for the better but he also has the ability to destroy it.

I hate that he has such power over me but I brought this on myself when I lost my scholarship.

Now I have to decide what’s more important to me.

My future or a girl I have only ever watched from a distance.

As I watch Olivia walk back into her apartment building, I finally make my decision.

If it’s not me, then Douglas will just find someone else to do his dirty work.

At least if it’s me befriending Olivia, I might be in a position to help her if the need arises.

If I’m lucky, we’ll both graduate college before anything bad happens and she will never have to know that I deceived her.

Fuck, I hope I don’t regret this.

CHAPTER 1

OLIVIA

I’m about to call out to Maddy to see what she wants for dinner when I remember that she’s not here.

Fuck.

I’ve been doing that for the last month now.

How have I not gotten used to her absence yet?

She told me that I could sublease her room but that’s not something I plan on doing, not yet anyway.

If she ends up changing her mind about finishing her senior year in Italy then I want her to have a place to come back to.

Not that I think she’ll change her mind, she seems really happy over there but I want to be prepared for any outcome just in case.

I’ve forgiven her for keeping things from me and running off to Italy at the start of the summer without telling anyone but only because I ended up spending six weeks over there with her.

The hotel where we stayed was one of the nicest places I have ever been in and it didn’t cost either of us a dime.

All thanks to that disgusting piece of shit Edward Allerton.

It still blows my mind that her biological grandfather she never even knew existed tried to sell her into sex slavery and I thank my lucky stars every day for Blake.

That man is something else alright.

It turns out that he’s a detective who had been planning Edwards’ downfall for like five years or something but Maddy had no idea. He had everyone fooled when he pretended to be her buyer but he literally saved the day when he shielded her body from gunfire.

That’s right, fucking bullets.

Now that’s the kind of dedication that I want in a man.

Not to mention how fucking sexy that is.

Hearing her talk about Blake made me desperate to meet him but after everything that happened, I had to be patient and let her mom fly over and spend some time with Maddy.

As soon as I got the all clear, I was on the first flight over to Rome and I flew back the day before classes started.

Those six weeks I spent with Maddy in Italy were the best six weeks of my entire life.

Blake was everything Maddy said he was and his partner Enzo was equally as handsome but to my utter disappointment, he was married.

Talk about bad luck.

After getting over my disappointment about Maddy and I dating cops for the summer, we spent the whole time exploring the streets of Rome and travelling around Italy.

That country is fucking epic and I can’t wait to go back.

Hopefully when I do, Blake has a new hot partner who is single.

Not that I want Maddy to be in Italy for the rest of her life but I definitely want another holiday over there with her.

While we were travelling, Blake joined us when he could but his job kept him pretty busy so it was mostly just the two of us.

Not that I minded one little bit but Maddy seemed to really miss him when we travelled away from the city.

Seeing Maddy so happy with Blake was the only reason that I boarded that plane back to Boston.

He’s such an incredible guy and I can already tell that she’s falling in love with him.

I never thought I would see the day when she would move on from my brother but Blake seems to be the one she’s been waiting for.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise to me that she would want to finish her senior year in Italy considering if she came back to Boston, her and Blake would most likely break up but I still miss my best friend.

It’s not the same without her here.

I don’t even want to consider the idea of her living in Italy for good if her and Blake become super serious but if that happens then I may have to look at moving over after I graduate.

Maddy and I were always supposed to do everything together.

Where she goes, I go and vice versa but not this year.

This year we are living independently of each other.

Mom thinks it will be good for me to not rely on Maddy so much but that’s basically her way of saying that I’m too unorganized and need to get my shit together.

It’s true that Maddy reminds me to do simple things like laundry and to buy tampons but that’s just the way we are. She likes to mother me and I like to push her out of her comfort zone, getting her doing new and exciting things.

Without me she would just stay in every weekend, which is exactly what I told Blake before I left and he promised me that he would take her out and have some fun.

She sure as hell needs some fun after what she has been through and Blake has been kindly seeing me pictures of Maddy who looks deliriously happy.

Lucky bitch.

Slumping down on the couch, I pull my phone out and dial Maddy’s number.

Just when I think her voicemail might kick in, she picks up the phone. Hello? she says in a groggy voice.

I did it again.

Olivia? she mumbles almost incoherently.

Yeah, duh, didn’t you look to see who’s calling? and should I be offended that she can’t recognize the sound of my voice?

I can hear her shuffling around and I wonder if her and Blake were getting busy before I rang. Olivia it’s like one in the morning, haven’t you figured out the time difference yet?

Oops, sorry. I really need to stop doing that to her.

This time difference thing is a real pain in the ass.

What do you want?

Uh oh, she is not going to be impressed once I tell her that I woke her up in the middle of the night just to tell her something trivial. I just rang to say that I nearly asked you what you wanted for dinner again. Old habits break hard, I guess.

Hmmmm, she mummers sounding like she is already going back to sleep.

I can hear rustling on the other end, then Blake’s voice comes across just as groggy as Maddy’s sounds. Olivia, stop calling in the middle of the night.

Sorry-

Yeah, he hung up on me.

Don’t really blame him though.

That’s about the tenth time I have woken them up in the middle of the night.

I need to start looking up what the time is in Rome before I call. It’s just that I’m so used to being able to talk to her whenever I want, that it’s hard getting used to this new routine.

It’s not like I don’t have other friends, because I do but none of them compare to Maddy.

She’s the best.

Not feeling up to cooking anymore, I order a pizza and scroll through my selection of movies.

I end up choosing some stupid comedy to try and put me in a better mood but it doesn’t work. Neither does the pizza so I rummage around in my freezer for a tub of ice cream.

After finishing off the entire tub, I set my alarm extra early in the morning so that I can go for a run before class.

The last thing I need is to put on like fifty pounds while she’s away.

That would just be sad.

It’s not like we could have spent our entire lives joined at the hip. We were going to move on from each other eventually, I just never thought it would happen this soon.

I always presumed that she would only move out when Tyler finally got over himself and chose to be with her but now they are both in serious relationships with other people and Maddy is in Italy for the next year.

What if she doesn’t come back at all?

I never even thought about what would happen when we graduate college.

Again, I presumed that she would fly home and we would get jobs in the same city but it’s not like Blake would move over here. His job is everything to him which means if they stay together, Maddy might not come back at all.

Great, now I need another tub of ice-cream.

Maybe it’s time I finally got a boyfriend.

I’ve had boyfriends before but mostly I prefer dating as it keeps things light and easy. I like being able to explore my options but having someone to spend my nights with would be nice.

It would keep me from ringing Maddy in the middle of the night and from turning into a crazy cat lady.

Last weekend, I saw a bunch of kittens up for adoption and I was so close to adopting one until I realized how stupid that idea was.

Right, decision made, I’m going to keep my eye out for any potential boyfriend candidates and if that endeavor fails then I’ll just have to get some kind of a hobby.

Like knitting.

I could knit cute outfits for all the cats I’m going to adopt.

Shaking my head to clear my brain of depressing thoughts, I get ready for bed with a new outlook on life.

I’m a strong, independent woman and I don’t need Maddy to get through my senior year.

I can do this by myself.

But preferably with a boyfriend or as a last resort, some cats.

CHAPTER 2

OLIVIA

My run this morning helped to clear my head and I no longer feel like a depressed loser.

Still lonely but not hopelessly so.

I’ve managed to pay attention in all of my classes so far today, especially the last one with Professor Northcott which was impressive.

He’s British and every time he gets on one of his rampages, it’s like his accent tries to lull me to sleep.

I’ve got a few hours before my next class so I start heading towards my favorite café for a cup of coffee.

Lord knows I need it after listening to Professor Northcott drone on and on.

Olivia? Glancing around quickly, I can’t see anyone that I’m familiar with so I keep walking. Olivia, wait up!

Coming to a stop, I turn around to see a guy with shaggy light brown hair running towards me.

I’m not sure if we’ve ever met before but he seems to know who I am.

Stopping a few feet away from me, he smiles brightly. Sorry to chase you down like this but I’m in your English Lit class with Professor Northcott. As an afterthought he adds, Sorry, I’m Bentley.

Hmm, he must sit behind me because I