Page 1 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)

Chapter One

Nathaniel

Fourteen years ago

T oday will change my life. This marriage proposal has been looping figure eights through my head since I decided a ring was the perfect way to show Hollyn I’m completely committed to making us work, no matter where we live, even if I’m only seventeen.

With no colleges in Bellerive, we have no choice but to go off our small Atlantic island for our degrees. Tomorrow she’ll be in New York for art, and I’ll be in California taking business, both of us starting our freshman year of college.

And we’ll be planning a wedding.

As I come down the stairs of my family’s oceanfront mansion, one of my younger sisters, Sawyer, calls out from the main living room, “Mom’s on the rampage. She’s looking for you. Not sure what you did, but I’d avoid her.”

I duck into the open-plan living room, kitchen, and dining room, which takes up almost the entire back half of our massive house and looks out on the ocean.

The huge windows are floor to ceiling, and there’s a cliff about a hundred meters from the back patio.

For some reason, the view catches my attention today when I’d normally gloss over it.

The first time Hollyn was at my house, she said she didn’t understand how there were people this rich.

A lot of the time, I forget that everyone doesn’t live like we do. Most people, in fact.

Despite the world I’m growing up in, billionaires are a rarity. Our Tucker family bubble of wealth kept me from seeing the full scope of how everyone else on the island lives, but that bubble burst with Hollyn’s family. There’s no unknowing what I’ve seen now.

Maren, my thirteen-year-old sister, pops up beside Sawyer on the white leather couch, and she leans over the back, crossing her arms, tanned from the long summer months spent outdoors. “What’d you do?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Mom’s just being Celia Tucker.” Socialite and social-status obsessed, like always.

If she finds out I plan to propose to Hollyn, she’ll be livid, not just because of my age but because Hollyn’s family doesn’t have two pennies to rub together.

She’s been living with her aunt for the last ten years while her parents float in and out of trouble.

Not exactly an ideal match in my mother’s eyes.

Or my father’s, if he was paying attention.

But he leaves us and our troubles to our mother.

In two months, I’ll be eighteen, and there will be nothing Celia Tucker or anyone else can do to stop a wedding. I’ll have access to the Tucker family trust, and I’ll be legally able to do whatever I want. Until then, I just have to ride out her disapproval. Easy enough from California.

“Whenever she gets like this, one of us has done something to damage her social clout. Did you get Hollyn pregnant?” Sawyer asks.

“No!” My response is quick, but if they could read my mind, they’d know I wouldn’t have been upset if that had happened.

Anything that gets me Hollyn forever is just fine with me.

But being a teen mother is the last thing Hollyn would want.

The first time we had sex, she asked me if I could double bag my dick and go with her to get Plan B, just in case. So yeah—not pregnant.

But if she ever was, I’d parent our kids so differently from how Celia and Jonathan have raised me.

I’d give a shit when they succeeded, just as much as when they failed.

I also wouldn’t tell my kids that I liked them best before they learned to talk— Thanks, Mom —which she fully admits is why she had us all so close together.

“Where are you going?” Maren asks, eyeing my outfit.

The jeans I have on are the ones Hollyn loves, and the shirt I’m wearing is the one she bought me. She claims this blueish hue matches my eyes, but other people have called my eyes green too. I never know what to label their color.

“I’m going out. And I’m not telling either of you where in case you sell me out to Mom.”

“Sell you out!” Maren scoffs. “What could she possibly offer us?”

“Easy,” I say, because they think I don’t pay attention to the chatter around the house.

As the oldest of five, I used to be the one helping to persuade Mom that the Tucker name could take a hit or two.

Until I was the one delivering the blows and she stopped listening to me.

“Maren, she could sign the permission forms for you to go on whatever adventure race that teacher has talked you into, and for you”—I turn to Sawyer—“she could let you participate in that sit-in in Tucker’s Town over climate change.

” Excessive exercise and protests are things Celia Tucker finds distasteful and beneath the family.

They both stare at me and then turn to each other, as though they are dumbfounded by my infinite knowledge.

“Exactly,” I say, and I point at both of them before grabbing my keys off the table and heading for the bank of garages. The Range Rover is mine, though my parents don’t care which of the thirty-odd cars I drive as long as I don’t get into an accident. No dents, scratches, or scrapes allowed.

The drive to the campground is short. Nothing in Bellerive is particularly far away—at least, if you’ve experienced enough of the world to know the difference.

An hour’s drive from one end of the island to the other, and about the same widthwise, though that’s more about the hilly, mountainous terrain the roads have to conquer than the distance itself.

Hollyn is meeting me when she’s done with her waitressing shift at The Drunk Raccoon.

Tucker’s campground overlooks the ocean, prime real estate, just like everything else the Tucker family possesses.

Generational wealth is real and prevalent in Bellerive.

Unescapable, which Hollyn has reminded me of countless times.

In Bellerive, you’re either already ahead or you’re behind.

The middle class is a myth or such a minority that it feels like a myth—I’m never sure which.

Cal, my distant cousin, best friend, and the son of the branch of the Tucker family that owns this slice of land, meets me at the front gate.

“Does Celia know yet?” he asks, almost giddy, as I get out of the Range Rover, the ring box banging against my leg as I walk toward the spot I’ve had strung with fairy lights, a blanket, and a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne. Hollyn doesn’t drink.

“Fuck no,” I say with a laugh.

“Celia will need an enema when she finds out. She’ll be constipated for weeks over this.”

“Possibly for the rest of her life.” But I’m not worried about it, and maybe I should be. My mother can be a force to be reckoned with, but I’m so close to getting financial freedom that her thoughts and opinions are less and less important.

She’d tell me that proposing is rash and impulsive.

That believing I know who I want to be with for the rest of my life when I’m seventeen is nonsense.

She’d tell me that Hollyn’s life and upbringing are too different from mine and that those differences will matter more than I think as we get older.

She’d tell me the Tucker name shouldn’t be linked to criminals.

There’s nothing she can tell me today that I haven’t heard every day for the last few months—ever since she found out about Hollyn.

It's just that, from the moment I met Hollyn, I’ve known in my gut, in my heart, in my fucking blood, that she’s the woman I’m meant to spend my life with.

Without question. Without hesitation. The minute her arms slid around me, and our gazes connected that first night, I knew with soul-shaking certainty. Hollyn is mine, and I am hers.

“First love, worst love” and all that trite shit even my dad tried to spew at me—probably after my mom asked him to—doesn’t apply. This is forever. Guaran-fucking-teed.

“I honestly can’t believe you’re doing this,” Cal says, and he slaps me on the shoulder. “You’re already with her. What’s the rush to get married?”

I would have married her the night we met.

Or within the first few weeks if she’d let me.

But where I’m “Fuck it, let’s go all in,” she’s a lot more cautious.

Doesn’t think we’ll survive our long distance.

But once I’m eighteen and have my money, I can fly to her, fly her to me.

Transfer schools, even. Making it work might not be easy, but it’s far from impossible.

Fifty years from now we’ll look back and laugh that we ever thought any of this was hard.

“You know why,” I say because we’ve talked about it for weeks. Cal is the one person I trust with everything. He even went with me to check the final ring design. “Maybe you don’t get it, but you know.”

“To be this sure, though. I just… I don’t know. I have a hard time imagining it.” He rubs the back of his head and then crosses his arms to take in the scene in front of us.

The sun is setting, and the fairy lights are strung along the rustic wooden fence—older than me—that keeps people from accidentally going over the cliff.

“Think she’ll know?” Cal asks.

“Doubtful,” I say, and while I’m sure she’ll say yes, I’m not sure she’ll say yes right away . I’m prepared and determined to be convincing. Every possible objection she could utter I’ve already run through my head, and I’ve got a rebuttal lined up. Debate club has to be good for something.

“All right, well, I’ll leave you to it,” Cal says, clapping me on the shoulder again.

I move toward the view, and I splay my hands along the railing, leaning into the rough wood under my palms. The ocean below is calm tonight, as though it also knows that I’m making the right decision.

In the distance, gray misty clouds hang low, threatening to bring rain. Hollyn should be here, and we should have talked everything through before those arrive. Lots of time before we dash to our vehicles, engaged, full of laughter and hope.

As the sun sinks, I check my watch, and then I pat my pocket for my phone before realizing I left it in the Range Rover.

If I go get it, I might end up meeting her in the parking lot, and that’ll take a wrecking ball to my plan.

The mood I want to set is for her to find all this with me here , not me walking with her into it.

But if she’s running late from work, I might need to be more worried about those clouds in the distance. A rainy proposal gets the job done, but it’s not the memory that’s been playing on repeat in my head.

Fuck it. I need my phone. Her boss is enough of an asshole that he might have forced her into a bit of overtime tonight.

After the third time I called him on his shitty employment practices, Hollyn told me that I had to stop trying to solve all her problems because she’d end up fired, which would lead to more problems. My mother keeps a tight leash on the family funds, or I’d solve those problems too.

I dig around the car until I finally find my phone tucked under the driver’s seat. There’s a missed call and a voicemail, and I click through to play it.

“Nate—it’s me. I can’t make it tonight. I just…

” There’s a deep shaky breath. “Some stuff has come up, and I don’t think I’ll get to see you before I leave.

” Hollyn’s voice catches on the last word, and then she’s gone.

But I’m already climbing into the Range Rover, turning the engine over, putting the vehicle in reverse.

Something’s upset her, and while I don’t know exactly where to find her, I know all the places to look.

As I drive, I click on her name to call her back. When there’s no answer, I don’t bother leaving a message. I press my hand against the box in my jeans pocket.

But as I drive from her workplace to the apartment she shares with her aunt, to the trailer her parents sometimes use, to all the places that are her favorite thinking spots, she’s nowhere to be found.

I’ve texted her, but she hasn’t texted back. In the parking lot to her three-story apartment complex, I sit and stare at the entrance to the building. Worry eats me up in way I never knew it could. The rain is falling in thick sheets all around me, running in rivers down the street.

At the entrance, I huddle tight under the awning and buzz her number—the same way I have countless times over the last few months, the same way I did almost an hour ago when I first tried to find her. Panic swirls in my stomach, and I hit the buzzer over and over again.

Finally, there’s static on the other side.

“Hols?” I ask. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be down,” Verna says into the speaker, her voice resigned.

She’s never spoken to me like that before.

Being buzzed up is a given—not once has she made me wait out here—and it’s fucking raining tonight.

Maybe I’d have to wait in the apartment as Hollyn put on a last coat of mascara or tried to find the purse she really wanted.

This doorstep is somewhere I pass through, not somewhere I stay.

I shift on my feet while I wait for Verna to appear, invite me in. But when she gets to the door, she steps out, wrapping her housecoat around her. She doesn’t let me in.

“She’s gone, Nathaniel. Left early for school.”

“What?” I search her face for the gentle teasing I’ve seen so many times before. Surely, she can’t be serious. “I don’t understand.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t.” She lets out a deep sigh. “She couldn’t do this goodbye in person, so I’m doing it for her.” She swallows and doesn’t meet my gaze.

“I’ll just go see her. I won’t fly to California tomorrow. I’ll fly to her.”

Verna closes her eyes, and when she opens them, her brown eyes are crackling with anger. “That girl is allowed to tell you she’s done, that she doesn’t want what you’re offering. You don’t own her, Nathaniel Tucker. You Tuckers can’t just do whatever you want with people. You hear me?”

I rear back, shocked at the venom in her voice that feels misplaced, unearned. “I’d never—I wouldn’t…” I rub my face, fighting tears. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“You and Hollyn are over. That’s just the way it has to be.”

I want to argue with her, but I don’t even know what to say. So I leave without another word, the rain drenching me before I can get inside my vehicle. But I don’t stop at home to get new clothes or think anything through. I drive to the airport.

Once our private jet is ready, I run through every possible scenario, everything I could say to Hollyn to convince her that ending things between us is silly, unnecessary. A few years of long distance is nothing when compared to a lifetime together.

But she’s not in her dorm room, and when I go to the registrar on the first day of school, they tell me they have no record of her being registered. Her phone number is disconnected, and she never comes back to Bellerive.

She never comes back to me.