The Great Ex-Scape Read online

  Copyright © 2018 Jo Watson

  Excerpt from Love To Hate You copyright © 2018 Jo Watson

  Cover illustration and design by Caroline Young

  The right of Jo Watson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in this Ebook edition in 2018

  by HEADLINE ETERNAL

  An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4722 5775 8

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.headlineeternal.com

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Jo Watson

  By Jo Watson

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Epilogue

  An excerpt from Love To Hate You

  Find your Destination Love

  Find out more about Headline Eternal

  About the Author

  Jo Watson is an award-winning writer whose romantic comedies were originally published on Wattpad. Her first novel Burning Moon won a 2014 Watty Award for being one of the site’s most downloaded titles and has now had over 7 million reads. Jo is an Adidas addict and a Depeche Mode devotee. She lives in South Africa with her family.

  Follow her on Twitter @JoWatsonWrites and find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jowatsonwrites.

  Praise for Jo Watson’s hilarious romances:

  ‘Found myself frequently laughing out loud and grinning like a fool!’ BFF Book Blog

  ‘Witty, enjoyable and unique’ Harlequin Junkie

  ‘Heart-warming, funny, sweet, romantic and just leaves you feeling good inside’ Bridger Bitches Book Blog

  ‘Full of pure-joy romance, laugh-out-loud moments and tear-jerkers’ Romantic Times

  ‘A treat of a book’ Smut Book Junkie Book Reviews

  ‘Well written and lovable . . . a bundle of laughs’ Monash Times

  ‘Heart-warming and raw . . . I urge you to go on this journey’ Four Chicks Flipping Pages

  ‘I absolutely loved this book. It has humour, romance, heart-wrenching grief and the excitement to live life to the fullest’ Njkinny’s World of Books & Stuff

  ‘Completely lovable’ Katy Reads

  ‘Unputdownable! . . . Love to Hate You is more than just a rom-com, besides the inevitable plenty of laughs it will have you wonder, sigh, hope, and dream. Want a great date? Call Ben White, err, I mean grab this book!’ Darkest Sins

  By Jo Watson

  Destination Love Series

  Burning Moon

  Almost a Bride

  Finding You

  After the Rain

  The Great Ex-Scape

  Standalone

  Love to Hate You

  About the Book

  For more laugh-out-loud, swoon-worthy hijinks, don’t miss Jo’s other rom-coms, Love to Hate You, Burning Moon, Almost A Bride, Finding You and After the Rain.

  To GP, JJP, WP and DM! (Hopefully, you know who you are!)

  Author’s Note

  I’ve seen a few cool things in my life, but one really sticks out for me and I knew I had to write about it one day. Some years back we went on holiday to Réunion Island, one of the most interesting places in the world. But more than that, we got to see its volcano erupt. It was sheer chance and perfect timing that we arrived just as it started. We then got to take a helicopter ride over it and watch the lava spewing out. It was one of the most amazing and strangest things I’ve ever seen, an image that I can’t ever forget. I hope I’ve adequately described it in this book and encapsulated the magic of it all. I hope the island sweeps you up and away as much as I was swept by it and if you can, I recommend a visit.

  I feel very sad to be finishing this series and saying goodbye to Lilly, Annie, Jane, Stormy and now Val. These friends have been with me for years, and in some strange way I feel like I’ve gotten to know and love them. I’ve become friends with them. I’m also sad to leave all the islands and the sea and sun and sand that has been so fun writing about. I’ll miss Stormy’s mixed idioms and Lilly’s dramatic inner monologues. I’ll miss them all and I wish I could write each and every one of them a sequel. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll all come together for a reunion, but for now, it’s a big goodbye to this group of friends and all their wild adventures finding love. I hope you’ve loved them as much as I have and I hope you’ll join me on my next adventure with new characters and new books. If you want to read one last bonus novella about them though, be sure to go to www.jowatsonwrites.co.uk to get a free copy sent to you.

  Jo x

  CHAPTER ONE

  Crappiest, crap day of my entire effing life!

  I’d been perching on the closed toilet seat for so long that parts of my body had gone dead. It had started in my feet, worked its way up into my ankles and was slowly numbing my calves. Maybe if I stayed here for long enough, everything would go numb? (Wishful thinking.)

&
nbsp; My new—and ludicrously overpriced—pink cardigan was officially ruined from the mixture of mascara-stained tears and snot bubbles I’d been pouring into it for the last hour. But it was all I could use to stifle the undignified sounds of my uncontrollable sobs. This was a public restroom, after all!

  I had a headache from hell; possibly from tear-induced dehydration, possibly from the half-empty bottle of wine I’d been sipping on for the last hour. But I knew I had to leave at some point. I couldn’t hide in a toilet cubicle forever, as much as I wanted to. People would start to wonder where I was. He would start to wonder.

  This had been one of those monumentally bad ideas from the start. No, what was I saying? This wasn’t just a “bad idea,” this was the worst idea ever conceived of. On a scale of one to “worst idea ever,” this would be right up there with DIY open heart surgery (something I was seriously considering, since the pain of it breaking was almost too much to bear).

  Going to my best friend’s engagement party.

  Sounds perfectly benign.

  Making a speech at my best friend’s engagement party.

  Totally normal.

  Toasting my best friend and his beautiful new fiancée.

  Absolutely acceptable.

  That is until you replace the words “best friend” with “the man I’ve been hopelessly, devotedly and excruciatingly in love with for the past three years.”

  I glanced at my watch; ten minutes before I needed to make the speech. Ten minutes until I was due to take up position in front of friends and families and deliver the old “thrilled and couldn’t be happier for them” platitudes.

  I gulped down another more-than-mouthful of anesthetizing wine as my phone beeped. I rolled my eyes when I saw whose name was lighting up the screen. It was my friend Lilly. She’d been on my case for the last week, insisting that this was my last chance to tell him how I felt, even if he didn’t feel the same way. I needed to get it off my chest, she said. It would be cathartic, she said. I would finally get closure, she said. I wished to God she would shut the hell up. But then she’d said that other thing too, the one that kept that ember of hope burning: What if he does feel the same way too?

  But I’d been here so many times before too. Hopes up, only for them to later be dashed, and downright shattered in the flaming pits of friend-zoned hell. I glanced at my phone again; another one of those dreaded phrases was splashed across it.

  You have to tell him how you feel before it’s too late. What if you’re meant to be together and he just doesn’t know it yet?

  Meant to be? Yeah, that’s what I’d thought too. All that hanging out together. Pizza and beer evenings. Staying up all night chatting on the phone. We’d even gone to a friend’s wedding together, for heaven’s sake. Surely that was date-y? My friends had all agreed . . . it was date-y!

  I’d certainly interpreted those as very clear signs. We were meant to be together! It was only a matter of time before he confessed his true feelings to me. But as time passed . . . and passed . . . and passed, nothing happened. And then she came along. And everything changed.

  I needed to snap out of this. I needed to get a grip. I needed to go outside and pretend that everything was totally fine. More than fine. I needed to pretend that I couldn’t be more thrilled for my BFF. I’d written a speech drenched in a smorgasbord of hideous, romantic clichés that I’d plucked directly from the internet. As it turns out, cheesy one-liners are just a Google search away. But now, I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage to say them out loud.

  Why had I agreed to this in the first place? But this was only the appetizer; the real main course was yet to come . . .

  And let me tell you, it is a turducken of tragedy. One horrific idea rolled into another equally dreadful one and then stuffed into the mother of shitty ideas. Grilled, basted, tenderized and deboned!

  Agreeing to help him pick out his wedding suit.

  Agreeing to emcee his wedding.

  Agreeing to help him choose his romantic honeymoon destination—where they’d have lots of romantic honeymoon sex.

  Clearly, I was a sadomasochist hell-bent on torturing myself. But I had to do this. I had no other option.

  So I stood up . . .

  Pins and needles in feet. Kneecaps crunching. Dead legs. Stomach lurching. General revolting creeping feeling.

  I took my first step, but as I did . . . Whoosh! It hit me all at once. The alcohol raced through my body, spiking the blood in my veins and making me buzz. I took another step and the buzz gave way to a much more unpleasant feeling.

  Suddenly, I felt woozy. Very woozy. And this wasn’t the kind of establishment for wooziness. The engagement party was being held at her parents’ restaurant on their award-winning wine farm in the beautiful Cape Wine lands; no expenses spared. Very fancy. It was the kind of super-upper-crusty party that people with surnames beginning with Vander and ending in Child went to. Many of the guests had been flown up from Jo’burg to be here, including me.

  I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, holding onto the sink for added support. I looked hideous. What was my mother’s favorite saying again? “I look like the wreck of the Hesperus.” I’d never known what a Hesperus was, but for some reason, the word seemed to describe perfectly how I looked and felt right now.

  “Hesss Perrr Russs.” I hissed it out loudly as I leaned towards the mirror and then almost laugh-cried out loud.

  I splashed some water on my face to counteract the wooze—it worked a little—and then I grabbed some paper towels and attempted to wipe my tears away. I blew my nose quickly when I realized it was making a disgusting “squeeeeeee, squeeeeeee, squeeeeeee” sound on every out breath.

  I reapplied my foundation, popped on a bit of mascara and smooshed on some lip-plumping lip-gloss. I’d bought the lip-gloss for him. I’d stupidly thought that if my lips were more Jolie, and less me, that he might take notice. I’d been wrong. And now I was 250 rand poorer.

  The lobby outside was abuzz with a crowd of overdressed people. She and her crowd were of the super-skinny, pearl-wearing, overdressed ilk. Which meant that I always felt somewhat inferior in their presence, and a great deal larger than I knew I really was. She and her crowd were the kind of people that gave normal women body dysmorphia and made us all feel like large, beached marine animals.

  At least eighty people were bustling about in the massive lobby, excessive for an engagement party, if you ask me.

  I smiled at everyone as I walked past, trying to do my best impersonation of a happy, non-tipsy person. Soon we were all ushered into the restaurant and instructed to take our seats. I was sitting across from my so-called BFF, Matt. He smiled at me and I melted into my chair. I always melted when he smiled. I always got butterflies when he called and I got downright dizzy when we spent time together. I glanced to his left, and there she was . . .

  Samantha. Doctor Samantha, I might add. Pediatric oncologist Samantha, to be specific! She saved sick children’s lives for a living, for heaven’s bloody sake! How the hell could a mere mortal such as myself compete with that?

  Samantha caught me looking at her and I quickly shot her a smiley thumbs-up. I’ve always wondered if she knows how I really feel about him. Aren’t women supposed to have a sixth sense about these kinds of things? Unless she did have her suspicions but felt that unthreatened by me. I wasn’t sure which was worse, and I suddenly imagined her and Matt’s late-night conversations about me . . .

  “You know she’s in love with you, right?” she says, lying in bed, silk sheets tussled, body glistening with beads of sweat from post-coital workout.

  “I know,” he says, equally sweaty and naked from mind-blowing sexcapades. “Don’t worry, though,” he turns and kisses her softly, “she’s no competition for you.”

  “I know, baby. I know,” she says, and I want to imaginary-punch her.

  I tried to shake the image from my head and looked down at the handwritten speech in my hands. But my fingers were shaking uncontrollably an
d the wooziness was hitting me in steady waves that seemed to be building in momentum.

  A large pair of invisible hands suddenly reached out and wrapped themselves around my throat. Squeezing. Throttling. I swallowed, but it got stuck. The tightening feeling was growing by the second as Samantha’s father was nearing the end of his speech.

  “And now we’ll hear from Matt’s best friend, Val,” he said.

  I froze. A deathly pause followed as people turned and looked for me.

  “Val!” He said it a bit louder this time. “Val?”

  What the hell was I going to do?

  Three Years Ago

  14 Feb.

  Dear Diary,

  Something amazing just happened. Genuinely amazing. No, it was not the insights I gained while writing my latest article about why “Dairy is the New Gluten.” It was the amazing thing that happened in the lift, precisely 7 minutes ago. As you can see, I’m writing this soon afterwards, while the amazing thing is still fresh in my mind, because I don’t want to forget any of it.

  I’d just come back from my “romantic” Valentine’s date with Stormy-Rain, in which she’d spoken all evening about how Valentine’s Day was yet another example of the evil consumerist-capitalist agenda. (I still have no idea what she means, and the irony is that she actually does have a boyfriend!) Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly in the most “hearts and chocolates” kind of mood when I got home at precisely 2:30 a.m. . . . that is, until I got into the lift and saw him!

  Gorgeous. Pitch-black hair. Maldivian-blue eyes that make you want to peel your clothes off and go swimming in, naked. Dark, sexy stubble dotted across seriously sculptured jaw—not in a Ridge Forrester way, though. Tall, broad shoulders, seriously sexy ass and smelling like heaven. In a word, H. O. T.

  So, naturally, I tried to exude that cool nonchalance that is always preferable in these kinds of situations. I made momentary eye contact, gave wildly noncommittal nod of acknowledgment, placed hand on hip, and looked in opposite direction. And, it worked! Because HE started a conversation with ME. I reiterate, this is important, he opened his mouth first . . .