Curve Ball (Eastgate BBW Romance Series Book 4) by Elle Gordon

High School Sweethearts
     
    I was just seventeen when I met Alec. He and I both attended Eastgate High but had never met until that year. We met in our senior year chemistry class, and let’s just say, we lit up on each other hotter than the lab’s Bunsen burners. In school, we also learned that opposites attract. Alec was tall, and I was short. He was also fantastic at nearly every sport. I, on the other hand, looked as though I was missing bones in my arm when I would throw a ball. Alec was also a very serious mannered guy, which I adored. However, because we were so opposite, I was always trying to make him laugh.
    “Carly,” he’d say, calling me by the nickname only he used. “You’re the only one who could ever make me laugh this hard.”
    I loved staying up late at night with Alec, talking on the phone until my father would burst in through my door.
    “Carla, it’s one in the morning!” he would scold. “You better not be talking with that Alec.”
    Then he would threaten to have been grounded, unable to speak to Alec for a week if I did it again. Despite his threats, I always got away with it. The truth was, both of my parents loved Alec. Our families even became close after we met. Every Friday night, his parents would come over to our house for dinner and cocktails. Alec and I would sit in my backyard and swing on the hammock together. We didn’t need booze to make us let loose. Together, we were eternally happy.
    “I love you so much, Carly,” he whispered in my ear late one night. It was the first time that he had said that to me. His arms were wrapped around my body as I lay against him on the hammock. I loved the way that Alec’s body felt against mine. It was warm and comforting. We fit together like two pieces from the same puzzle. Everything that felt perfect when I was with him.
    “I love you, too,” I replied. Then he leaned over, and we kissed. A smile fire ignited inside of me. I didn’t think that anything would change. Little did I know that everything was about to change for us in the most drastic way.
    ~
    “How excited are you for Alec?” my mother asked as she peeked into my room the next morning. She sounded excited, but I didn’t understand why.
    “What do you mean?” I asked her as I sat up from my bed.
    “About Alec’s scholarship,” my mother smiled at me as if I knew this. When she realized, her face quickly flat-lined. “Oh, honey, I thought that he would have told you last night.”
    “What do you mean, scholarship? To where?”
    “Alec received a baseball scholarship out of the city.” My world suddenly turned upside down. I wanted to know why Alec didn’t tell me.

Twenty Years Later
     
                  I was driving my SUV back home from my eldest son Quinn’s soccer practice when my kids started to fight in the back seat.
    “Mom!” screamed my four-year-old son, Payton. “He’s hitting me!”
                  “Quinn!” I scream back. “Stop hitting your brother!”
                  Twenty years after high school, this is what my life had become. Don’t get me wrong; I loved my kids and would do anything for them. Still, things just didn’t turn out the way that I planned when I was seventeen.
                  The budding romance of high school was just a distant memory, cut short by the shears of adulthood. We tried to make our long distance relationship work, but over a phone call we decided to cut ties. The idea was that we would get back together after college. However, after not seeing Alec for a year, I met Paul. He was an engineer at my college, and he seemed to like me very much. Paul was a goofy kind of a guy, much different than Alec. I loved Paul, even though his idea of a good time was an ultracompetitive night of bowling and McDonald’s french fries.
    Still, I didn’t feel that it was fair to compare our relationship to what Alec and I had. After all, I was just a girl when I first fell in