Free-Form: The Extended Edition

Freeform: The Extended Edition (The Free #1) By Xavier Neal © Xavier Neal 2023 Cover by Dana Leah (Designs By Dana) All rights reserved. License Note No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without authorization from the author. Any distribution without express consent is illegal and punishable in a court of law. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Subscribe to my newsletter! http://bit.ly/XNNLSL21 Contents Warning: PLAYLIST SELECTS Chapter 1 June Chapter 2 Tucker Chapter 3 June Chapter 4 Tucker Chapter 5 Tucker Chapter 6 June Chapter 7 Tucker Chapter 8 Tucker Chapter 9 June Chapter 10 June Chapter 11 Tucker Chapter 12 June Chapter 13 Tucker Chapter 14 June Chapter 15 Tucker Chapter 16 Tucker Chapter 17 June Chapter 18 Tucker Chapter 19 June Epilogue Other works Gratitude: Follow me Full list of my works Warning: This novel contains foul language (from both men and women), graphic sexual content (including some that may differ from your own), and other adult situations. Some readers may find the content triggering or disagree with it entirely. This novel is intended for readers over the age of 18. Please keep all these things in mind and proceed at your own risk. Thank you. - Xavier Dedicated to The Universe...Thank you for allowing me to always be free in my form. PLAYLIST SELECTS Here are songs from the Free-Form: The Extended Edition playlist! Feel free to follow the playlist on Spotify to find more songs I felt related to the novel. 1. They Don’t Love It – Jack Harlow (Rap) 2. Thank God – Kane Brown (Country) 3. Love Me Now – John Legend (R&B) 4. Follow Me Down – Colony House (Indie Rock) 5. Robarte un Beso – Carlos Vives, Sebastian Yatra (Latin Pop) More songs: https://bit.ly/TheFreeSeriesPlaylist Chapter 1 June Contrary to my eccentric boss’s belief – and I use the word eccentric because she fired a different assistant just last week for using the C word – I am not an actual member of The Babysitter's-Club. Not the book version. Not the movie version. Not even the half-thought-out streaming version I’m sure will come to fruition in the next few years. No. I have never – and will never – be a part of that creation nor a fan of its creation the way other girls were when I was growing up. See, they all believed it was glamorous and magical and fairy-tale bullshit, when in reality it was exhausting and taxing and sticky. Always so goddamn sticky. I don’t know how or why, but I swear to God kids generate stickiness out of thin air. Like the world’s worst type of magicians. That entire franchise I just mentioned goes on my personal “Do Not Like” list. Right under fucking kiwi. “Mrs. Harding, I…I um…don’t think…I…understand the aforementioned,” my light toasted brown shaded fingers roll around one another in frantic circles while I search for the proper wording that won’t lead to me calling up another job recruiter, “assignment.” The end of my statement is accompanied by me accidentally bumping into the edge of the red leather seat I’m beside. “I mean I know I have child…care…experience listed on my resume because I nannied for an otolaryngologist a couple summers back in college-” “Teeth doctor?” “Ear, nose, and throat. The teeth doctor you are referring to is an orthodontist.” “They’re awful in bed,” Brandi Harding, my multibillionaire boss, dramatically sighs at the same time she leans her rosy beige, thin frame forward onto her elbows. “All the time they spend having their customers-” “Patients.” “-make that O face, you’d think they’d be better about spotting a fake one.” Keeping appalment out of my expression is almost impossible. If this were a normal conversation with someone who wasn’t married to the retired NHL defenseman Brett Harding, wasn’t mother to the twin NFL quarterbacks Brent and Bennett Harding and wasn’t the youngest daughter of Bill and Bethany Frost – the multibillionaire owners of one of the largest hotel chains in the entire world – I would absolutely display the horror that statement summoned. Not because she faked an orgasm. All women have faked orgasms at least once in their lives – or in my case anytime I haven’t been the one to give it to myself. No. The astonishment comes from having my boss just casually say that shit to me as if it’s the tail end of happy hour and we’re sipping cosmos instead of it actually being nine in the morning with her sipping Adrak chai in between taking baby bites of overly thin pieces of kiwi, pieces I had to slice that thin my fucking self, which is primarily how the tiny green fruit landed on my shit list. The reason I can’t showcase anything remotely related to shock is because that would translate to her warped sense of self that I couldn’t do the job she hired me for. And if I can’t do my job, then I don’t have one. And my job…unfortunately…is whatever this second coming of The Devil Wears Prada deems it to be. “Juniper-” “Just June,” I meekly correct. “-it should make you happy to know that the care you will be providing for the next ten weeks isn’t to a small child.” My dark eyebrows pull together in confusion. “Don’t get me wrong, he absolutely behaves like he’s still that six-year-old who doesn’t think I know he’s the one who spilled cranberry juice on my white leather chase lounge that summer in the Hamptons instead of Bennett who took the fall, but Tucker is actually a full-grown, fully tattooed adult who just so happens to still harbor a small parental grudge he swears he’ll take to his early grave.” “That sounds like a