the street. One of them stopped to do spontaneous push-ups and the girls started howling.
“Okay,” Ryder said, his tone neutral.
“No, not like I do sometimes. Like...really leave.”
“What?” The question was sharp. She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t look back.
“Not like...forever. But...for longer than I do sometimes. I think I need to strike out on my own a little bit more.”
“What brought this on?” She could hear the frown in his voice. Laced through with stern disapproval.
She shrugged, as if it wasn’t a big deal and not something that had been nagging at her for ages now. “Pansy. Pansy making her own way. Her own place. Her own family.”
Ryder looked like he wanted to say about ten different things at once, which was strange, considering he never looked like he had more than one thing to say at a time, if that. He said nothing.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “Because... I’m happy. But I’m not whole. I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I need to do to have the kind of life I want. I’m not a kid anymore. And it’s all hitting me really suddenly. I’ve always thought of Hope Springs as Neverland, Ryder, but I have to grow up.”
“Is anyone stopping you from growing up?”
“I’m stagnant.”
“You’re not,” he said, his eyes far too sharp and focused. Far too insightful.
“It’s my mom,” she said finally. “She came to the workshop today and...she’s just...stuck, Ryder. She’s committed to her bad choices. I thought my dad held her back but it was her. So what if I’m the only thing holding me back, too?”
“Holding you back from what? Sammy, you’re building a successful jewelry business. You’re a one-woman manufacturing machine.”
“But I’m... I don’t know how to explain it. I’m the same. I’m...alone.”
“You have us.”
Yes. She did. The family she’d crashed.
“I know. I don’t mean that but I... I look at my mom and I see someone so bitter about everything. So stuck in these choices she made, and I don’t want to become that. I don’t want to realize someday that I missed out on something I really wanted.”
You’d be a terrible mother.
Rage kicked in her chest. Rage and a desire to prove her mother wrong.
“I want to be more than I am. More than she thinks I can be. Just... Ryder...” She turned to face him finally, and the look in his brown eyes nearly took her breath away. But she continued on anyway because her mind was made up, and it was too late to turn back now. “I think I want to have a baby.”
Copyright © 2020 by Maisey Yates
Keep reading for an excerpt from Insatiable Hunger by Yahrah St. John.
Insatiable Hunger
by Yahrah St. John
Chapter One
Falling Brook’s country club had been given a face-lift, Jessie Acosta thought as she walked around the elegantly appointed ballroom. The Black & Silver Soirée theme was in full effect. Silver and black balloons hung from the ceiling and the tables were decked with black tablecloths and silver lamé runners.
Black and silver confetti had been sprinkled over the tables, giving them a festive touch, and on top of each sat either a glass vase filled with black tulips and silver-gray roses or a bowl topped with silver and black ornaments. Black plates sat atop silver chargers and held silver napkins and flatware. Reunion guests’ names were in tiny silver frames next to each setting. The reunion committee had outdone itself.
Jessie herself had come prepared to dazzle in an eye-catching, sequined spaghetti-strapped gown with a plunging V-neckline and an open back with crisscross detail. Or at least, that had been her intention, but her long-distance boyfriend, Hugh O’Malley, was nowhere to be found. When she’d asked him if he was coming home from London for the event, he’d informed her he was too busy at work. So she’d spent most of her evening in the company of Ryan Hathaway, at one time one of her oldest friends.
That changed fifteen years ago when her parents had lost their entire fortune because of Black Crescent Investments. CEO Vernon Lowell had embezzled millions from his clients—her parents included—disappearing before authorities could catch him. That loss had led Jessie to always wanting to make her parents happy and to do what was expected. Instead of hanging out with Ryan all the time, she’d started dating Hugh O’Malley, who was from one of the richest families in town, just to please them, and she knew they expected