hair around me like a cape and close my eyes and breathe…
Then she was gone.
She went for a walk one crisp winter evening along the narrow, dirt road that runs past our orchard out to the old house on the hill. Frost was in the air; bonfires were burning. The man driving the truck said she came out of nowhere.
He never saw her.
She never saw him.
Six weeks later, in that same orchard with peach blossoms on the trees and dew tipping the grass, on the very spot she died, my daddy took his life with his own gun.
I guess sometimes love makes you forget things can get better.
I guess he didn’t see a bend in the road up ahead.
I guess he only saw a straight line leading deeper and deeper into black.
My daddy was the star of his high school football team… but Life threw him a pass he couldn’t catch with Momma’s death.
Our world changed forever that winter.
Dolly says love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as a sigh, but from what I’ve seen of love, I think it’s more like a tornado, shocking and violent and so powerful it can rip your soul out of your mouth…
It’s faster than you can run, and it blows one house away while leaving the next one peacefully standing.
I didn’t know which way love would take me, quietly or with the roar of a freight train. I should’ve known. I should’ve realized the moment I saw him.
It was both. It was quiet as the brush of peach fuzz, but it left my insides in splinters. It twisted my lungs and lifted me up so high only to throw me down with a force that rang my ears and flooded my eyes.
It all started the summer before they left, a month before my brother was sent to fight in a war everybody said was over.
It all started in the kitchen of my momma’s house…
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Also available on audiobook (link).
Stay
Special Sneak Peek
Stephen Hastings is a control freak.
He’s arrogant. He’s smart as a whip and sexy AF.
He has too much money. He’s bossy, and he’s usually right.
All I saw were his clear blue eyes, tight ass, and ripped torso.
I gladly handed him my V-card that night, ten years ago.
I was so stupid. I swore I’d never be that stupid again…
Emmy Barton works for a dry cleaner?
Yes, that Emmy Barton—long, blonde hair, bright blue eyes, pretty smile…
Sexy little ass. Smart mouth.
She was the only girl who interested me, but I was leaving to be an officer in the Navy.
Now I’m home, running my business. My life is perfectly ordered until I bump into her, divorced and struggling to make ends meet.
I hate seeing her like this. I hate that she married Burt “The Dick” Dickerson. What an asshole.
She says she hates me, but when we fight, it’s all heat and lust.
I won’t leave her this way.
She will let me help her and her son. She will stay…
It’s a thin line between love and hate, and this line is on fire.
(STAY is a STAND-ALONE enemies-to-lovers, second-chance, marriage of convenience romance. No cheating. No cliffhangers.)
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Prologue
Stephen
Ten years ago…
Stop crying, kid. Life isn’t fair.
Humans invented fair as a pacifier, because they needed justice. Animals don’t know fair. In nature only the strong survive. You’re kind, loving, honest? Nice try.
If you’re weak, you die.
Or poor.
“What are you thinking, Esteban?” Ximena lowers herself carefully into a dingy-brown, worn-out armchair, and I blink these thoughts away. “You were always the smartest boy in the room.”
The gray strands outnumber the black in my old housekeeper’s hair. It’s thinner than it was when I was a boy, and she keeps it twisted in a low bun.
“Now I’m a man.” I kiss the top of her head. “And I’d wager the whole city.”
Her muscles tremble from exertion, but her eyes are bright. She still greets me with a smile, just like always when I visit. “Smartest man in the city. What is that like?”
“It sucks.” I look around her crumbling one-bedroom apartment.
It’s a second-floor walkup, outdated but clean. She works hard to keep it clean, even with the cancer eating her insides. Even with the years passing, drawing her closer to death.
The thought of her dying fans the darkness inside me. “Where’s Ramon?”
“He moved downtown.