Page 2 of Just My Type (The Boston Hearts #3)

CHAPTER ONE

HANNAH

W hen one of your characters steals one of the most famous lines in the entire romcom cinematic universe, it’s definitely time for a break.

“Seriously, Hannah?” I mutter. “ You complete me ? Way to be fucking original.”

I shove back from my desk in disgust, pushing up to stand and eyeing my laptop like it personally wronged me, which, honestly, it kind of has.

Grabbing a Twizzler from the ever-present pile on my desk, I bite into it, letting the sugar soothe me as I ruminate for the zillionth time over where it all went wrong. I used to know how to write books. I was pretty good at it. But for the last bunch of months, I can’t seem to locate my talent.

It’s pissing me off as much as it’s scaring me shitless.

I thought I would find it when I came to Boston a few months ago on a spur-of-the-moment trip to visit my sister, Jo, thinking that getting away from my Pittsburgh home, which had become more like a prison of anxiety and dread, would make my characters start talking to me again .

Then, I thought I would find it when I went back to Pittsburgh and, at long last, shed two hundred pounds of anger-issue ridden manbaby.

And finally, I thought I would find it when I came back to Boston, relationshipless and finally free to make my life whatever I wanted it to be.

Grinning with the joy of it all, I walked in the front door of my borrowed apartment, dropped everything, and made a beeline for my desk.

Excitement thrumming in my veins, I opened my laptop, poised my hands over the keys, and… nothing.

No funny character banter. No witty text threads. Not a single great love confession. No words at all. Not even one.

Instead, I was treated to my ex-boyfriend’s voice in my head and all the subtle and not so subtle ways he used to belittle my writing. Make me feel like what I did was unimportant. Small. Embarrassing.

Your little writing hobby.

It’s just romance, Hannah. Not the next great American novel.

When are you going to start writing real books that people actually want to read?

And on and on.

That was two months ago, and all I’ve managed since then are a few disjointed paragraphs I write and rewrite, over and over again, with Brett’s voice playing in my head, until I have to resist the urge to hurl my laptop straight out the window.

The words are getting stuck somewhere between my brain and the keyboard, and I couldn’t find them with a goddamn map and a neon sign that says YOUR TALENT HERE.

Once upon a time, the words flowed like freaking water.

I wrote six books in a single year, and it wasn’t even hard.

It was a whole entire delight. The best thing I’ve ever done.

But now? I can’t even write a grocery list without stomach-churning anxiety, my readers are feral for the next book in my series, and if I have to go back to working in human resources because I forgot how to be a writer, I’m going to be seriously pissed off.

My phone dings, yanking me out of my existential angst, but when I flip it over, angst turns to fury and a weird kind of insecurity I want to banish from my repertoire of feelings.

Brett

You have to talk to me sometime. I love you, babe. We are so good together. Come on, Hannah. Just come home. I need you.

I scoff, tossing my phone on the desk. He needs me. Of course he does. He needs me to do his damn laundry and have sex with him when he feels like having sex and make sure the cat is fed. I hate that fucking cat. And babe is the grossest, most dudebro nickname on the planet. I hate that too.

Grabbing an emotional support Twizzler, I chew almost violently, trying to banish all thoughts of my ex-boyfriend from my brain.

I wish I could banish him from this planet.

Once upon a time, I loved him. I swear I did.

It was good at first. So, so good. But then everything changed, and when you’re dating a champion gaslighter, it’s easy to miss a slow, incremental shift, until one day it’s three years later and you’re showing up at your younger sister’s almost mother-in-law’s house five states away from home for a spur of the moment visit of indeterminate length with bruises on your wrists, anger that burns hotter than the sun, and no more ability to do the thing that once brought you joy.

Except before it was slow, there was that one moment three years ago where Brett showed me exactly who he was.

The moment I could have said fuck it and fuck you and peaced right out of that relationship.

The moment no one knows about, except for the one person who witnessed it.

The moment that haunts me in my most vulnerable, what the fuck is happening to my life moments.

Hot mess express, party of one.

“Hans, you home? ”

“Bless,” I mutter at the sound of the apartment door opening and my younger sister Jo’s voice. Writing right now is clearly a fool’s errand, and spending too much time with my own thoughts these days never ends well. Jo’s energy and perpetual cheer is exactly what I need.

When I fled Pittsburgh for Boston almost five months ago, I just meant to come for a few days to visit my sister, who had recently moved here to be with her now fiancé, Jordan Wyles.

I figured I would get a hotel room, hang with Jo for a few days, and try to write.

What happened instead was that Jordan’s slightly wacky and possibly psychic grandma, Cece, offered me temporary use of the empty, top floor apartment in the five-apartment Back Bay brownstone occupied by Jordan and Jo, and the other three Wyles brothers, Elliot, Cooper, and Noah.

The apartment I now live in, thanks to Cece, was already furnished with pieces I would have picked myself if I were setting up my own apartment, right down to the floor to ceiling built in bookshelves and big, squashy reading chair in the corner of the living room.

All I had to do was put clothes in the most perfect dresser I have ever seen, and the apartment felt more like home than anywhere I have ever lived in my entire life.

Except the problem is, it’s not home. At least, it’s not my home. It’s temporary, and it’s better all-around if I keep reminding myself of that.

“You in the writing cave?” Jo asks, strolling into the second bedroom that also functions as the place I try and fail to write, popping a Fireball into her mouth and tossing me one.

“Yep,” I say with what I hope is the appropriate amount of enthusiasm, casually closing my laptop before Jo sees the blank page and the cursor that sits there, mocking me.

Jo flops down on the bed, crossing her pink Converse clad feet. “Well, take a break, writer girl. It’s taco night. Elliot’s cooking, so you know it’ll be good.”

“It definitely will. He’s trying out a new chicken recipe and it kills.

” Amelia Sullivan walks into the bedroom and flops down next to Jo.

Wearing spandex shorts and a cropped hoodie with her hair piled on top of her head, she looks nothing like the brilliant, genius-level coder she actually is.

Amelia is the younger sister of our older sister Hallie’s very good friend Gabe, and also, coincidentally, is living with the second-oldest Wyles brother, Elliot, also known as the man who is entirely head over heels in love with her, and she with him.

This brownstone is a bit of a tangled web.

Jo and Amelia became fast friends when Amelia started dating Elliot earlier this year, and when I came to Boston a few months ago, the three of us became a trio of sorts.

Jo and I have always been close, and it’s like we’ve known Amelia all our lives.

I forgot what it’s like to have a group of real, true friends, and I’ll miss them like crazy when I go back to Pittsburgh.

“Are you sure it’s not weird for me to come to dinner? You don’t want it to be a couple’s thing?”

I wince inwardly at the insecurity in my tone. That’s something I never was before I started hearing Brett’s voice in my head telling me I don’t belong anywhere but with him. That I was lucky he wanted me, because who else would?

Fucking asshole.

Jo just rolls her eyes. “Hannah, you’ve lived here for months, and I tell you this every time. When has Saturday dinner ever been a couple's thing? Come to think of it, when has anything ever been a couple's thing?”

“What she said.” Amelia steals a Fireball from Jo’s pocket and pops it in her mouth.

“We’re family, Hans, and Saturday dinner is for family.

Besides, everyone will be there. Cooper finally tore himself away from whatever very important lawyering he’s been doing all day, and Noah just finished his shift at the hospital, so he’s on his way back now. ”

Noah Wyles. I hate that my stomach does a little involuntary swoop at his name.

The oral surgeon who is the gorgeous bane of my existence.

The human equivalent of a puppy dog who lives in the apartment below mine and seems to delight in pissing me off.

The blue-eyed man who knows too much and sees too much and makes me want to throttle him half the time.

And the other half? Well, it’s generally better if I don’t think too hard about that.

I sit down heavily in my desk chair, trying to quiet the voice that says you don’t belong here .

The one that says Jo has Jordan and Amelia has Elliot, and neither of them really need me.

That I’m the odd woman out in their little foursome.

They’ve never made me feel like that. No one in this family has.

The only one making me feel like that is me.

“Okay, dinner sounds good.”

“Yay!” Jo says, unwrapping another Fireball. “It’s always more fun with you there, Hans.”

“It is,” Amelia says. “And you know how Elliot likes to put on a show for Saturday dinner. The more people there telling him what a genius he is in the kitchen, the better.”

“Does his ego really need that kind of stroking?” I ask, thinking of the tall, confident, gorgeous, I’ve got it all handled Elliot Wyles.