Everything to Me

by Teresa Hill

  “Well, that’s what it feels like! So for you to come here now and act like you care so much about what happened to me—”

  “I do, Dana. I swear. I never stopped, and I never will—”

  “Well, you don’t get to decide when you’re my friend and when you’re not, and you don’t get to … make things the way you did between us and then decide you’re suddenly going to change it back to what it used to be. You can’t. I can’t ... I can’t do this anymore.”

  Can’t do what? I might have said that out loud. I don’t know. I go straight into panic mode wondering what she means. I can’t do this anymore?

  She shoots me one tear-filled look, all hurt and defiance at once, and then unbuckles her seatbelt. She would have been out the door and gone if I hadn’t grabbed her by the arm to stop her.

  I just mean to stop her, to get her to listen to me for a minute. I can’t let her go like that. But she flinches when I grab her arm, flinches like it hurts.

  “Dana?” I let go of her.

  She cries harder, looking as miserable as can be, and a bit scared again.

  Of me? Surely not of me. I can’t have hurt her. Did I?

  It’s hard for any coherent thought to get through my head, but I finally figure out that somebody hurt her tonight. Not me just now. Someone else, before.

  Before she can get away from me again, I take her hand in one of mine and turn on the truck’s overhead light with the other. I push a sleeve of the hoodie up to just above her elbow, and there it is. What she has been hiding. Her skin is a pale white in the dim light, but not just above her elbow.

  There, it’s an angry red.

  By tomorrow, she’ll have bruises.

  Someone put bruises on her.

  It takes my breath away, like I’m the one who took a punch. Did somebody punch her?

  “What the fuck happened at the party?” I ask her.

  “I told you, I handled it—”

  “No, somebody handled you. Mishandled you. Nobody has a right to hurt you this way.”

  “Peter, it’s nothing.”

  I grab her other hand, push the other sleeve up and find the same fucking thing, more bruises forming.

  “Yeah, tell me again that it’s nothing.” I look from her arm to her big, sad eyes. “Nobody gets to do this to you.”

  “I know,” she says, pulling her sleeves down. “It was no big deal — ”

  “Someone hurting you is a big deal.” I’m yelling at her again, dammit. I’m yelling like a crazy guy.

  The door behind her flies open.

  Oh, shit. There’s her father!

  Dana was leaning against the door. She starts to fall out of the truck. I grab for her, and she grabs for me. By her quick, indrawn breath, I know I’ve caught her with my hand over her bruises, but she tightens her grip on me. She doesn’t want me to let go. From the quick, panicked look in her eyes, I know what she wants. For me to not say anything to her father about the bruises.

  My eyes go from hers to his. He takes in the scene in the truck. Me, yelling at his daughter in the middle of the night. The strong smell of beer. Dana, wet, cold, her eyes red from crying, wearing what looks like nothing but my hoodie.

  He’s already staring at me like I’d better start digging my own grave. If he finds the bruises on her …

  Surely he knows I would never hurt Dana.

  Looking at his face …

  No, I don’t think he does.

  Dana and Peter’s story continues in my serialized YA/NA crossover romance, Everything to Me.

  BOOK 2 ON SALE EVERYWHERE Dec. 1. : It will be followed by a new installment every three weeks.

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  Would you like to read about how Dana’s parents fell in love? Or how Peter came to live with his sister and Zach? Page forward for excerpts from The Edge of Heaven and Bed of Lies.

  Dear Readers,

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  If you’d like to know when I have a new book for sale, please sign up for my mailing list at my website or follow me on Facebook or Twitter. I play on Pinterest with image boards to help me plan my books.

  As a reader, I know what it’s like to get so drawn into a book that the whole world falls away. You care so much about the characters that you find yourself crying over them, and feel like you’re saying good-bye to old friends once the story’s done.

  My best hope as a writer is to create that kind of experience for you, to help you know that you’re not alone, that you’re not the only person who’s ever felt the way you do, and that it’s possible to overcome really awful things in life and become happy. I also hope to show everything is better with someone you love beside you. Much love to all of you,

  Teresa

  * * *

  Excerpt: The Edge of Heaven

  The McRaes — Book 2, Emma

  Did you like meeting Dana’s parents? Emma & Rye? Here’s an excerpt from their story, available now.

  "How old are you?"

  He practically growled, as the scent of her, straight from her bath, settled deep in his lungs, warm and languid. It made him hungry in ways he didn't want to think about.

  "How old do you think I am?" She drifted a bit closer, the smell coming along with her.

  Vanilla, he realized a moment later. She smelled like vanilla.

  It made him think of warm cream dribbled over something sweet and sinful. Emma and warm, smooth vanilla cream.

  If the smell of her wasn't dangerous enough, the sight of her was even harder to take. Her skin was still flushed from the heat and slightly damp in places, as if she'd toweled off in a hurry. Her hair was piled carelessly on her head and the pieces of it that had escaped were damp, too.

  Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked all fresh faced and innocent and young. He had to remind himself he didn't mess around with nice women like her, not anymore.

  "Something smells good," she said, coming closer, bringing that scent into the kitchen with her.

  Rye bit back a reply, something that would likely have come out as, Something certainly does.

  "Hungry?" he said instead, too late realizing that probably wasn't the best conversation opener, either.

  "Yes." She came right up beside him, damp and warm, and she might as well have doused herself in vanilla cream.

  Dessert, he thought. Emma.

  She turned to the cabinets. Opening one, she raised up on her toes to reach the top shelf, giving him a perfect view of her sweet bottom in a pair of jeans that fit like a glove and hugged every enticing curve.

  Abruptly, he remembered he had to know one thing about her. “Twenty-three?” he guessed. “Maybe twenty-five?"

  "Close enough," she said. She eased down off her toes, two plates in hand, seeming to take delight in throwing it right back at him.

  But at least she was smiling. He liked seeing Emma smile. Trying not to growl at her or take a bite of her, he thought, Please, let her be twenty-five.

  "Emma?" He took a plate from her and filled one for her, cheese crepes topped with a sauce he'd made using some of her aunt's blackberry jam and some whipped cream.

  "It's just a number, right?" she said, taking her plate and smiling mischievously.

  "No, it's not just a number."

  Not when he was thinking he might be ten years older than she was, maybe even more. Not that he was going to let anything happen between them. Still…

  "I'm starving," Emma said. "Can we eat?"

  He frowned. "You didn't tell me how old yo
u are."

  "Old enough," she claimed, seating herself on one side of the breakfast bar and waiting for him to do the same.

  He made a plate for himself, sat down across from her, a good bit of pretty granite counter top stretching between them, which had seemed like a good idea at the time. But it meant he got a front-row seat as every spoonful went into her delectable-looking mouth.

  And he was supposed to be figuring out how old she was, dammit.

  He had a nagging sense that he wasn't going to like her answer, once he got one out of her. But honestly, how young could she possibly be? She'd said she was finishing college. So she had to be twenty-one or twenty-two.

  Twenty-one?

  He frowned.

  Twenty-one-year-olds were practically infants, weren't they? Didn't they still giggle and flirt shamelessly and guzzle beer at parties with frat boys?

  She probably went to parties with frat boys.

  Rye sat there while she moaned and groaned in appreciation over bite after bite. He tried to block out the sound, because it made him think of Emma in her bath, in her vanilla-scented water with her now vanilla-scented skin.

  If she was a day over twenty-three and he was anyone but who he was, he would have let himself imagine feeding her crepes in the bathtub, getting her out, and eating her up.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  He looked up at her, finding her chewing slowly, her pretty mouth pursed into something that looked like a kiss at the moment.

  "Nothing,” he claimed.

  It was an absolute lie.

  * * *

  Buy The Edge of Heaven

  Excerpt: Bed of Lies

  The McRaes Series — Book 3, Zach

  Did you like meeting Zach & Julie? Read their story and find out how Peter came to live with them. The book is on sale now. Here’s an excerpt.

  Julie turned around, and there he was, bare chest, bare feet, weary, bloodshot eyes, razor stubble all over that stubborn chin. His hair was all mussed, a towel knotted hastily around his waist that was likely the only thing he wore, regrets like none she'd ever seen stamped across his face.

  Never in a million years would she have believed she'd end up in bed with Zach. She was sure he felt the same. He was the seemingly perfect older brother of her best friend from childhood, a boy who’d always seemed completely out of her reach.

  He still was.

  “I was... I'm going to go," she said. That was the answer. Go. Without another word. What was there to say anyway?

  He nodded toward her skirt barely hanging over her hips, the bra barely covering her breasts, the ruined blouse in her hand. "Like that?"

  "No" she admitted as he came closer.

  Without another word, he went to her back and carefully, competently raised the zipper and slipped the little button at the top of her skirt through the buttonhole. She tried to stay perfectly still, to not so much as breathe at the slight touch of his fingers against her bare skin, to not feel anything. If only she could manage that.

  The bra posed no challenge at all. It seemed he dressed women as easily as he undressed them.

  He took the blouse from her trembling hand, frowning at the state it was in. Running a hand through his hair, he looked down at that spot on the floor where they'd started last night and said softly, gravely, "Did I hurt you?"

  "No," she whispered.

  He came to stand in front of her, took her chin in his hand, making her look at him. "Are you sure? Because I was rough with you. I know I was."

  She held his gaze just long enough to say, "I'm sure. You didn't hurt me." Then she went back to staring at the same spot on the floor that seemed to fascinate him as well.

  Her skin tingled in places she didn't care to admit. Her back, from being pinned hard beneath him on the carpet. The skin around her mouth, her nipples, even between her legs, abraded by the rough stubble on his face. She felt a slight soreness between her legs deep inside as well, and maybe in the muscles of her thighs. He'd held her, probably tightly enough in moments that she had a little bruise here and there, but it had been sheer desperation driving him, and she understood that. He'd done nothing that needed forgiveness.

  He took the blouse from her hand and held it out for her. She slipped her arms through the sleeves, unable to keep from thinking how kind and considerate he was this morning, in contrast with the way he'd taken her last night. Not a typical night in the sack with Zach McRae. She'd have put money on that. He'd even shocked himself with what he'd done.

  With the kind of dexterity she couldn't help but admire, he began buttoning the tiny buttons on her blouse, frowning as he got to the gaping hole in the middle where the buttons were gone and her lavender bra showed through.

  "Not gonna do much good, is it?"

  She clutched the ends together. "I'll be fine. I just have to get home."

  "Not like that." He bent over and grabbed his own shirt, which was lying in a pool of stark white on the sofa. He held it out so she could slip her arms inside that, too. Then she quickly stepped back before he could go to work dressing her again.

  It seemed he never stopped taking care of a woman. She hastily buttoned his shirt and rolled up the sleeves. She pushed a hand impatiently through her hair, trying to get it to not look so mussed. She stepped into her shoes. All the while he stood there staring at her.

  "I don't know what to say," he began.

  "Nothing." She gave him an out. "There's nothing to say."

  "I'm sure there must be something. I just don't know what it is."

  "Look, it was a bad night," she said as evenly as possible, trying to look very much like it was nothing to her, either. "You were upset. You needed to not be alone."

  "And that's supposed to make it okay?"

  "It's just one of those things, Zach. It happens."

  "Not to me."

  She stared at him, a thousand questions running through her mind. He'd never once been that lost? Never once reached for a woman just because she was there and he needed to lose himself in her? His life had never been this bad?

  Well, hers certainly had.

  "It's all right." Stupid, but no harm done, right?

  He frowned at her. "That's it? I got drunk and poured out my troubles to you and then we ended up in bed, and all you say is that it's all right?"

  “I’m saying I understand. It's awkward, and I'm sure we both regret it and find it a little embarrassing, but people have done worse things. We'll just put it behind us and go right on."

  "Go right on?" he repeated.

  "What else would we do? I know what it was. Two people helping each other make it through the night. That's it. Now it's morning, and the thing is, problems never look quite so bad in the morning. You go put your life back together, and I'll go do the same to mine." She finally found her other shoe, grabbed her purse and her keys. "I have to go."

  He stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Julie, I'm sorry."

  "I know,” she said, his touch bringing back a million little memories of the night before, memories she certainly didn't need or want.

  Then, unable to help herself, she turned to face him. Which was a mistake. She needed to forget him and this sad, lost look on his face, too. And all that bare skin and him all rumpled and uncertain. She'd never seen Zach uncertain, and it made her want to try to take care of him some more. But look where that innocent little impulse had gotten them both.

  She rose up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the cheek. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

  He nodded bleakly.

  "And go home." Jesus, he had people who loved him, people who would take care of him. He didn't have to live like this.

  She was going to worry about him, even if he wasn't hers to worry about. He never would be. Just that little piece of him she'd had last night.

  * * *

  Buy Bed of Lies

  About the Author

  Teresa Hill is a USA Today Bestselling Author whose books have been transla
ted into eight different languages and sold in many more countries than she’s had the opportunity to visit. (So not fair.)

  Growing up on a farm in Kentucky, she was a Daddy’s girl and a tomboy. She learned to drive on a tractor and loved to climb trees.

  Her mother warned that one day – when she wanted to have pretty legs for boys -- she’d be sorry about all her scrapes and scars. But she has no regrets -- not even about the time she got a fishhook stuck in a very sensitive area or ended up seeing her own kneecap. (Not on an X-ray.)

  Her husband found her while they were both working their way through college. (He was her boss.) She remembers thinking so clearly, “What are you doing here? You’re much too early. I have things to do.” But she couldn’t just tell him to go away and come back later, so she married him. He never tried to keep her from doing anything.

  She wanted to live by the ocean, so after college, she sent resumes to a dozen coastal cities between Virginia Beach and New Orleans. It worked! She wrote her first novel on a little island off the South Carolina coast.

  She and her husband now share their home – a brick ranch (for him) with a view of the mountains (for her) -- with a collie, a German shepherd and a 20-pound cat who informs her it’s time to stop working by plopping down on her keyboard. (He doesn’t care if her hands are still on it.)

  She believes everything in life – the good or the very bad -- is better with someone you love, which is why she writes love stories.

  * * *

  Find Teresa at

  @TeresaHillBooks

  AuthorTeresaHill

  www.teresahill.net

  teresa@teresahill.net