Blog Tour & Giveaway:
I Never Knew
By Darla O’Malley

Riverside Town, Book 4

Ryan Hayes wasn’t looking for a distraction from the one in five chance of him being the father to his lying, cheating, “not his girlfriend”, pregnant ex-girlfriend’s baby, but that was exactly what Elijah became. That was until the lines got blurred and Elijah became something to him that he never knew was possible: everything.

Elijah Anderson hid the struggles he faces every day to keep his diner afloat behind a smile, but Ryan saw through it and gave Elijah real reasons to smile. Though Elijah tried to fight it—Ryan may have a baby on the way and was also the soon to be brother-in-law to his best friend—Ryan seeing Elijah in his lingerie and showing how receptive he was to roleplay was Elijah’s undoing…he was hooked! He wanted to lose himself in the gorgeous, demisexual, and bi-curious man in ways he never had before.

Ryan saw how hard Elijah worked every day to make ends meet and how his generous behavior was being exploited. Not anymore.

Elijah saw past Ryan’s candid approach to dealing with his family and understood the love behind his words. They’ll see how considerate you are.

Just as Ryan and Elijah settle into their happy lives together, it gets rocked by a heavily pregnant woman wielding a hammer.

Author note: male/male romance, can be read as a standalone. Contains sexual acts between consenting adults, roleplay, sexy lingerie, and two men who never knew what love was until a heavy box was dropped on one of them.

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Excerpt:

 

Ryan

Clamping my teeth together tightly, I ignored my vibrating phone. It had vibrated from incoming calls thrice in the last five minutes. After two months of ignoring Tammy’s calls and texts, she still won’t leave me alone.

“I think someone’s calling you,” Cam said from behind me. I stood at the cash desk, even though no one was in the store, while Cam did the stock check.

“No shit,” I muttered back to him as the vibrating in my back jean pocket kept going.

Cam didn’t take the bait, though. He’d gotten engaged a few weeks ago to a big fucking tree, so now he was too happy to argue with me. Our arguments were the only times me and Cam even talked anymore, but like I’m gonna dwell on that; I don’t need my stupid little brother to talk to anyway.

The vibrations stopped, only to start again a moment later.

“Is there something wrong?” Cam asked.

Yeah, the girl I was fucking for over a year and who refused to be my girlfriend is pregnant but doesn’t know if the baby is mine. Rather than telling Cam the truth—it wouldn’t help me anyway—I lied. “No.”

“You’ve been ignoring your phone a lot lately…you never do that unless you’re dealing with a customer,” Cam stated.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” I said, not wanting to listen anymore to Cam’s stupid voice.

“But Dad said—”

“Fuck, Dad!” I yelled back at him, knowing what he was going to say. Our dad was mad at me for smoking, but I’ve been smoking for years, and he’s only just noticed.

Even after finishing the whole smoke, I was still on edge. When Tammy told me she was pregnant—by text with an image of a scan of the baby—she also mentioned how she didn’t know if I was the father and to bring her some potato chips.

A whole year I’d spent trying to make her my girl… So much wasted time. We hadn’t been in a relationship—she’d made that painfully clear on many occasions—but I’d stupidly thought I was the only guy she was fucking. I’d been duped. She had been with countless men while I’d thought I was on the brink of getting her to agree to be my girlfriend. The fact she’d thought I’d still drop everything to do something for her, like going to the store to pick her up some potato chips, was the last nail in the coffin. I wasn’t doing shit for her ever again.

When the vibrations stopped but didn’t immediately start up, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, ignoring the notification about having five missed calls from Tammy, and opened a dating app on my phone. It was hilarious that these types of apps were still referred to as “dating apps.” No one went on them to date. No matter what it was called, it was a hook-up app. I uninstalled it after I met Tammy but re-installed it a few weeks ago. After signing into my old account, I flicked through a couple profiles of girls who lived in either Riverside Town or City but still hadn’t contacted any of them. The thought of going back to anonymous hook-ups made me feel like shit, which I knew was ultimately why I’d pursued Tammy for over a year.

I’ve been fucking girls since I was a sophomore in high school. My friends and I had somehow gotten into a party at a senior’s house. I’d always been taller than everyone in my year going through school, so when one of the cheerleaders came onto me, thinking I was a senior from another school, I didn’t correct her. After that, I became known as the king of hooking up among my friends. So, even though I never really liked doing it…I didn’t stop.

It wasn’t until I left high school that I met a girl who didn’t want to immediately jump into bed, so we dated. I never pushed to have sex with her, so the dating part was fun until she started coming on strong on the fourth date. I knew what she wanted. I didn’t feel as wrong after it with her, which was what led me to start looking for relationships rather than hook-ups.

When I met Tammy at a party one of my friends had at his parent’s house, I thought she was different. She didn’t instantly say yes to dating, and I thought that was a challenge, and she wanted me to prove to her I wasn’t a player and could be a good boyfriend. She’d still wanted to have sex, but I’d made myself believe it would get better once we’d dated for a while.

I guess I’d gotten so caught up in her that a year had passed, and she was still stringing me along by my dick. Now she’s pregnant and doesn’t even know if the baby is mine, and I’m praying like fuck it isn’t.

Why the fuck did I spend a year trying to make her my girl? The same question in different variations had been going around my head since she texted me the scan photo with ‘I’m pregnant’ written below it, but I haven’t come up with an answer yet.

Enter the Giveaway:

To celebrate the release of I Never Knew, Darla is giving away an e-set of Books 1-3 of the Riverside Town Series!

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