Breaking Old Habits by Melissa Bender

“I had one deal breaker between us—two, actually: You sticking your dick in another girl, and you going inside her house.”

I’m Ayla—Ayla Morgan, that chick with tats and long, black hair. Totally screams bad girl, right? Except I wasn’t. I’m just a regular twenty-two-year-old girl working at my mum’s café. I’m honestly a good girl—unless we’re talking about what goes under the sheets. And my tattoos? When you date an architect slash tattoo artist, I guess you just let him draw. He’s Griffin—Griffin James, my tattooed, extremely handsome, long-haired boyfriend with a glorious full beard. He’s thirty-seven and has twin sons. I have moved in with them, and the kids love me as I adore them. Having them around is no big deal—but his ex-fiance from hell constantly turning up uninvited in our home is.

She lives just across the road and is having free-reign over our lives: stealing things and insulting me in front of the kids to boot. God knows what she has on her evil, conniving mind… but I bet it’s about making my life a living hell and breaking us up. And Griffin’s letting her, his idea of keeping the peace for the kids—or at least that’s what he said. For a long time, I believed him, willing to let things stay the same for the sake of my hot new love. But the ghosts of his past are haunting us…suffocating me, fucking me over, and breaking my heart.

I am turning into a hormonal, paranoid mess—the kind of girl I swore I would never be. Something has to give, or it’s my mind that’s gonna break.

Will I get him to change his ways? Will we ever escape Karen’s nasty grasp? Griffin’s old habits might just come back to bite him in the ass—bite him so hard that he realises just how much he wants it and just how close he is to losing it all.