Never Letting Go

Never Letting Go An Enemies to Lovers College Sports Romance C. R. Lee C. R. Lee Books Copyright Copyright © 2023 by C. R. Lee Books All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of brief quotations used in book-related articles or reviews or as permitted by U.S. copyright law. This is a work of fiction. The characters, places and events portrayed in this book are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Cover design by Donovan Valdes Proofreading by Charity Chimni Contents 1. Sorry, Not Sorry 2. Deal with the She-Devil 3. Bitches Have More Fun 4. Game Over 5. Feel the Cringe 6. All’s Fair in Love and Oreos 7. Oh! Sweet Revenge! 8. It Takes Two to Two-step 9. Hack, No! 10. One Butcher Knife Short of Murder 11. And She’s Off 12. Emotional Damage! 13. Smoke and Mirrors 14. Ain’t No Use for Sloppy Seconds 15. Hope Is for Suckers 16. So Funny, I Forgot To Laugh 17. My Mojo Is No Mo 18. What’s in a Name? 19. That Little Green Monster 20. And the Oscar Goes To… 21. Three Words and a Smile 22. Just Call Me Ice Man 23. Sometimes It Sucks Being Right 24. Always 25. Smack Down! 26. As With All Good Things 27. It’s My Pity Party, and I’ll Cry if I Want To 28. A Gentleman Never Tells 29. You Can’t Fix the Unfixable 30. Ambush! 31. The Re-Education of Lenni the Fool 32. Running From the Devil 33. My Spidey-Senses Are Tingling Three Months Later Also by C. R. Lee Wanna Hang! Acknowledgments About Author one Sorry, Not Sorry KatIt’s official. My sister is a witch or an alien or the product of some top-secret program that teaches mind control. It’s got to be one of those things, right? Because those are the only plausible explanations I can come up with for how my sister constantly gets me to do shit I don’t want to do. Case in point: my mom’s sentencing. That’s right, sentencing, not trial. There was no reason to have a trial because the woman was found to have a blood alcohol level almost three times the legal limit when she wrapped her car around a tree and ended up in the hospital. She’s lucky she didn’t kill anybody. And I’m supposed to stand here and plead with the judge to get her into a court-ordered rehab facility like she deserves another chance? She’s had eight years’ worth of chances, and it’s all amounted to exactly zero. But Emma, ever the optimist, can’t stop herself from trying. I stopped trying a while ago. Does that make me a crappy daughter? Maybe.Okay, probably.But trust me when I say, that woman was a much crappier mom. The courtroom looks straight out of Law & Order. We’ve got the judge in his poofy black robe sitting on his pulpit looking all… judgy, with the lawyers, wearing their tailored suits and regulation douchebag haircuts, situated across from him at their tables. The prosecutor’s been standing for the past I-don’t-know-how-long rambling to the judge about all my mom’s priors. She’s got quite the rap sheet. I’m almost impressed. The public defender constantly shifts around in his seat like a little kid who needs to pee. I wonder if that’s because he knows this case is fucked or because he simply doesn’t want to be here. Finally, the prosecutor finishes his monologue and my mom’s lawyer stands. “Mrs. Chase’s daughters have prepared a statement, Your Honor.”“Proceed,” says the old judge, and I have to stifle my giggle at his ridiculously pompous attitude. Emma and I step up to the podium, but I don’t speak. This is her show. I’m just eye candy.Well, in truth, Emma’s the eye candy. Even with her long blonde hair pulled into a tight bun and her silky green blouse buttoned so high it’s probably cutting off the blood to her brain, there’s no hiding it. How do you hide double Ds? I may be slightly envious of her perfect heart-shaped face and delicate features, but I am so glad I don’t have her boobs. I like my C cups just fine, thank you very much. People say we look like twins but that’s only because they’re blinded by all the blonde hair, which is why I dyed mine pink. I’m also a good five inches shorter, my eyes are a much darker blue and my lips are so full you’d think I got collagen injections—I didn’t.“Your Honor,” Emma begins. “My sister, Katherine, and I—”Ugh. I hate it when she uses my whole name.“We’ve come to you to ask for your help. When our father died of cancer eight years ago, it broke our mom, and she’s never really recovered. We’ve tried to do our best to help her, but what she needs we can’t provide. That’s why we’re asking you, for our sakes, to sentence our mother to a mandated rehab facility.”My mom shoots out of her chair. “What the fu—” The lawyer slams a hand over her mouth before she can finish that statement, but I’m pretty sure we all got the gist. The lawyer apologizes to the judge while our mom glares daggers at the two of us, her hands balled into fists at her side. Splotchy patches of red bloom across her cheeks. It’s possible Emma and I told her we were here to ask the judge for a lesser sentence. Oops. Guess that’s what she gets for being a stubborn lush. The judge slams his gavel on the wooden block. “Enough.”Damn. Now, I really feel like I’m on Law & Order.“Mrs. Chase,” the judge says, forcing our mom to pause her