My Little Secret: Friends to Lovers, #19

By Reba Bale

She's in love with her best friend and ready to risk it all.

Addie and Gretchen have been best friends for a long time. They share everything with each other – the ups and downs of their relationships, work struggles, and all their secrets. Except there's one secret that Addie's never shared with anyone. She's in love with her best friend.

Gretchen thought maybe she and Addie might end up together someday, but now that so much time has passed, she figures she missed her opportunity. Firmly in the friend zone, she contents herself with making her way through Seattle's lesbian dating scene. But with forty fast approaching, it's time to find someone and settle down.

Now that Gretchen thinking about finding a serious relationship, Addie knows she needs to make a decision: risk blowing up their friendship by professing her love or stand by and watch as the woman she longs for finds someone else. She's going to go all out to make Gretchen see her as a woman, not just a friend, and she's not afraid to call in some favors from their matchmaking friends.

"My Little Secret" is part of the "Friends to Lovers" romantic novella series. Each book in the series is a steamy WLW standalone featuring an LGBTQ couple making the leap from friends to lovers and looking for their "happily ever after".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reba Bale
• Release date: Apr 18, 2025
• ISBN: 9798230302070

Reba Bale

Reba Bale loves writing naughty stories where the characters are able to tap into their inner fantasies and experience spanking, bondage, humiliation or other activities on the non-vanilla side of life. When Reba isn't writing she is reading the same naughty stories she likes to write.  Be sure to follow Reba's page and sign up for her newsletter so you don't miss the newest releases.

Book preview

My Little Secret

A Slow Burn Lesbian Romance

Reba Bale

MY LITTLE SECRET

© 2025 by Reba Bale

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No portion of this book may be reproduced, scanned, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system in any form by any means without express permission from the author or publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission contact the publisher at [e-mail].

Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, organizations, or locals is entirely coincidental. Trademark names are used editorially with no infringement of the respective owner’s trademark. All activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s and publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Cover by Paper or Pixels

Contents

1.About This Book

2.Join Reba Bale's Newsletter

3.Dedication

4.Addie

5.Gretchen

6.Addie

7.Gretchen

8.Addie

9.Gretchen

10.Addie

11.Gretchen

12.Addie

13.Gretchen

14.Addie

15.Gretchen

16.Addie

17.Gretchen

18.Epilogue – Addie

19.Special Preview of The Divorcee's First Time

20.Other Books by Reba Bale

21.About Reba Bale

About This Book

She’s in love with her best friend and ready to risk it all.

Addie and Gretchen have been best friends for a long time. They share everything with each other – the ups and downs of their relationships, work struggles, and all their secrets. Except there’s one secret that Addie’s never shared with anyone. She’s in love with her best friend.

Gretchen thought maybe she and Addie might end up together someday, but now that so much time has passed, she figures she missed her opportunity. Firmly in the friend zone, she contents herself with making her way through Seattle’s lesbian dating scene. But with forty fast approaching, it’s time to find someone and settle down.

Now that Gretchen thinking about finding a serious relationship, Addie knows she needs to make a decision: risk blowing up their friendship by professing her love or stand by and watch as the woman she longs for finds someone else. She’s going to go all out to make Gretchen see her as a woman, not just a friend, and she’s not afraid to call in some favors from their matchmaking friends.

My Little Secret is part of the Friends to Lovers romantic novella series. Each book in the series is a steamy WLW standalone featuring an LGBTQ couple making the leap from friends to lovers and looking for their happily ever after.

Be sure to check out a free preview of Reba Bale’s lesbian romance The Divorcee’s First Time at the end of this book!

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Dedication

For Trashy TV and Take-Out nights with the ones you love.

Addie

I need to get married.

My head swung around to stare at my best friend Gretchen.

Why? Are you pregnant? I joked.

When she didn’t answer, my eyes grew wide. Oh my God! Did you get drunk and sleep with a guy again?

It had happened once, way back when we were in college, but that was when Gretchen wasn’t totally sure yet if she was a lesbian. She’d developed a crush on her lab partner and convinced herself that she might be bisexual. One night with said lab partner confirmed for her that she was definitely Team Lesbian.

No, Gretchen laughed. But I’m turning forty soon.

In two years, I protested.

It will go fast. I want to settle down. Maybe have a kid or adopt a pet. Buy a house. You know, grown up stuff. I’ve been living like I’m in my twenties for too long.

Is this your mother talking or you? I asked.

Gretchen’s mom had been bugging her to get married ever since we turned twenty-five. She didn’t care who her daughter married, she just wanted grandchildren.

Gretchen pinned me with a serious look.

It’s me. I’ve seen so many friends and coworkers settling down the last few years and I just… well I want that for myself, you know?

Yeah, I said softly, ignoring the pang of sadness that I felt at the idea of Gretchen settling down with someone. Someone who wasn’t me.

It wouldn’t be hard for her to find someone. She was a beautiful woman who had that ‘girl next door’ vibe even as she approached middle age.

Gretchen had a curvy figure – perfect C cup breasts, a trim waist, gently rounded hips, and strong thighs. Her blonde hair was straight and long, and it had darkened over the years although during those few months when we saw the sun here in Seattle it would lighten with highlights. With her dewy white skin, large brown eyes and perfectly straight teeth – thanks