“Anyhow, when he finally came home, he told me he’d made a doctor’s appointment for me. I was so excited to finally be getting some prenatal care and hopeful I’d get to hear my baby’s heartbeat. But he never took me to the doctor. Instead, he took me to this compound off in a secluded area where there were so many people, all living in large buildings with tons of rooms, most without doors. He said this was where he went all the time, and it was time to bring me in. I wasn’t happy to be in this place that was even farther from people, and after a few days I realized he was one of the higher ranking members of a cult. The higher up, the more privacy, and bigger living quarters. We had a large two bedroom with a kitchenette, private bathroom, and a door with a lock. I knew I needed to escape, but without really knowing where I was and what direction to go to get help, I was scared. The last straw was when the leader, Jeremy, came into my room when Michael was gone one evening and tried to force me to have sex with him, claiming he and Michael were brothers who shared everything. When I wouldn’t have sex with him, he beat me up pretty badly and told me to stay put in my room until Michael got back. By two a.m., Michael wasn’t back, and I was done. I tried to escape, but I got caught by Jeremy. That was a night I’ll never forget. “
This time she can’t breathe through the tears that are threatening. After a few deep breaths, the tears manage to escape, and I can’t help but clench my fists, wishing I could get my hands on these motherfuckers that hurt Dawn. I just know when she’s ready to finish this story, I’m going to wish I could kill them.
“Sorry.” She takes a big deep breath and wipes her tears away. “I can do this.” Another deep breath and she continues. “Jeremy took me to his private cottage on the compound. He must’ve drugged my tea, because after only a few sips I could barely hold my head up. When I woke, I was back in my bed, but disoriented. When Michael came in to see why I still wasn’t up, I was still a little confused. It wasn’t until I tried to get up that I realized there was something very wrong. I moved and felt wet. I’m not sure what I thought, but when I picked the sheet up to see why I was wet, I screamed. I was bleeding everywhere. Michael was pretty freaked out too. He tried to get me to a doctor fast, but when I started cramping to go with it, we both knew the baby was gone. He took me back to the compound, packed my stuff, and took me home to Brandon. I never heard from him again. Brandon took me to the hospital, they gave me some medication that induced me, and I had to deliver my dead baby. It was the worst day of my life.”
The small sob she chokes back destroys me, and I vow that if I can ever figure out who this Michael is and find him, he’ll be lucky if I let him breathe again. I move to scoot toward her, and she puts her hand up, stopping me, not wanting me to touch her. As much as I don’t want to, I respect her request and keep my hands to myself.
“I barely got out of bed for six weeks. Brandon was so worried about me. I was a mess, barely ate, and barely showered. It wasn’t pretty. Funny though, I never missed Michael at all. It said a lot to me that he was willing to leave me bleeding in someone else’s care and never return. It took years before I could be near another man, and even more before I could even let one touch me at all. The guys at the garage became my brothers and my watchdogs. They interrogated every man that spoke to me, ran the few I gave a chance off, and then you showed up. For some reason, they let me get to know you without any resistance. Well, at least not from them. All the resistance came from you. I haven’t been happy in a long time, but you make me happy.”
“Dawn, guess you too know just how real the saying ‘Life’s not fair’ really is. I’m surprised to hear we’ve both been through losing a child we never knew. I don’t know how you’ve gotten through it. Every moment of every day, I ache for the chance to hold her.”
“What? You lost a child?” The tears flow steadily down her face, and I’m not sure if it’s because of her memories, my revelation, or both.
“Yes. Do you want me to tell you about it? Or is it too much tonight? It’ll help you understand why we can’t be together.”
“I’m ready to hear your story. Let’s get this all out of the way. Then the emotional stuff will be behind us, because I’m not sold on the whole ‘we can’t be together’ thing.”
Telling her my story is hard. This is the first time I’ve ever spoken out loud about what happened. Everyone else who knows my story either was around when it happened, or heard it from those around me. I barely spoke to the shrink with the army, and she had the facts in front of her to pry anyway. Each sentence is harder than the last. Watching tears leak out of her eyes as I talk makes it even harder. I never expected our stories to have similarities. Just another way we are so connected. And that scares me a little more. She doesn’t seem to understand that there isn’t much, if anything, left of my heart to give, and she deserves someone who can give her their all. I’m wracked by nightmares that ache in my gut for days, coupled with the feeling that life will be better alone, so how can she even want anything to do with me?
I keep talking, and she keeps on crying silently for me. At one point, I reach over and wipe her tears away. When she closes her eyes, absorbing my touch, I feel myself soften a little. It’s strange. It’s more than the little feelings I’ve had with her all along. If I had to describe the feeling, it would be how your fingers feel after they’ve been in the cold and then you warm them up. That painful warming sensation. It’s happening to me more often around her, and I’m not sure what to do with it or about it.
“Do you understand that my entire heart died when I got the news? There’s nothing inside anymore. It’s not fair to you to allow you to waste your time with me when I have nothing left to offer you. I live in a buddy’s place, borrow his truck, and work in a garage. So in addition to no heart, I couldn’t take care of you.” I know that’s kind of a lie as it spills out of my mouth, but she doesn’t need to know I have a decent home and plenty of money in the bank. I just know I’ll never live in that home again, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to sell it either, despite not having been inside it in years. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to get rid of their things, the memories of them.
Just like the wonderful woman she is, her response is soft and gentle. Taking my hand in hers, she says, “Jason, I think you’re wrong. I think your heart is plenty big, but that you forgot how to use it. Being able to share an understanding in the pain of losing a baby you never had the chance to meet is not something we’ll find every day in someone else. We know we have chemistry, so why not give us a chance. Our two broken hearts could easily meld together into one fully functioning love story.”
“But what if we don’t? What if I break the rest of your heart? I’m not sure I could live with myself if I knew that I did that.”
“Then don’t break my heart, heal it.” Before I realize it, she’s leaning over and placing her soft lips on mine. She just leaves them there, waiting for me to react, before either pulling back or deepening the kiss.
I pull back a little to look into her eyes. “I’m going to kiss you, but I think it’s a bad idea.”
Her slight nod tells me she heard, but doesn’t agree. Basically, it was a nod to humor me. Either way, I’m going to kiss her now. When my lips touch hers again, there is an energy I can’t explain running through my system, pushing me to run my hands over every surface of her, to learn every last slope of her body, and to hold on and never let go. But I know I need to be realistic. Taking this slow will keep her heart from becoming too invested, allowing her to make an easy break when she realizes she’s better off with someone who will be able to give her their everything, not just their what’s-left-over.
As much as we are both into this moment, I end the kiss by pulling her close and whispering, “I don’t know why, but I’m willing to give you this chance, even though I know at least one of us, if not both of us, will never be the same again. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. I have faith in you, in us.”
With those simple
words, it dawns on me that every moment with her has stirred emotions inside that I thought were long gone. Maybe, just maybe, we can heal each other.
~ THE END ~
SNEAK PEAK
The Thinnest Veil
Book Nine
by M. Stratton
Chapter One
Es
I cry out in pain as the knife slices through my stomach. Looking down, I watch as blood pours out of me and splashes to the dry, dusty ground.
Sitting straight up in bed, my fingers dig into my stomach, hoping to stop the pain as the remains of the dream still lingered fresh behind my eyes. Another nightmare. Looking over at the clock on my bedside table, I see it is 3:13 AM. Great, I thought to myself. Not only did I have a nightmare during the darkest hour of the night, I also had it in October, when the vail between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.
My name is Esmeralda Boswell, or Es for short, and I'm a psychic living a double life in a small trailer at Happy Endings Resort in Endings, South Carolina.
By day, I am a conservative receptionist at a local construction company. I watch happy couple after happy couple come in, design their dream home, and live happily-ever-after in it. But nights and weekends, I travel the roads, peddling my wears to the populace who are hoping for one future, but in reality are destined for something completely different. Since no one really wants to know how dull and boring their lives really are meant to be, I put a spin on it. They all want the same thing. Their happy-ever-after.
I try to keep both of my lives separate, but sometimes they overlap. Sometimes as hard as I try, they rush headlong into each other and burn in a fiery crash.
If my dream was to be believed, I'm heading for a disaster of epic proportions. At this point, I could only hope death wouldn't follow me again.
I really liked these people at Happy Endings Resort, I don’t want any of them to die. I finally thought I had found a place where I was happy, where I fit in. Well, as much as I could. There were people here who accepted me for who I was. I’d been searching for somewhere to live all of these years and it was here, at Happy Endings Resort. I’d seen my future, and it was here. So the real question was, am I going to survive what is coming, or is this my final stand against death?
*****
Dominic
“This is bullshit.” I threw the paper across his office.
“Such language, Dominic, what would your grandmother say?” My best friend Rick asked.
My heart sank. The woman who had raised me ever since my parents died when I was twelve. Who had taught me how to be a man and how to respect a woman, was gone. Ethel Mae McKay was one hell of a woman. I still felt an unbelievable loss and she’d only been gone for two weeks. “She’d say I could do better than that. The lady might have been in her seventies, but she could make a biker blush.”
Rick sighed. “I miss her too, man.”
Walking over to the couch, I sat down and rested my elbows on my knees, dropping my head down into my hands. “Natural causes is what the death certificate says. Natural causes. How can it be? She was the strongest person I’ve ever known.”
“Dom,” my friend said with sadness filling his voice. “Even the strongest person in the world can’t live forever. Lord knows, I didn’t know anyone stronger than her.”
“There are a dozen of other ways I could see her dying and I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. The chute wouldn’t open while she was skydiving? She’d laugh and ask, ‘What were the odds?’ Crashing into the wall while she was drag racing down at the local track? She’d love that. Cord breaks while bungie jumping? She’d enjoy flying. But dying in her sleep? No, it’s too peaceful, she was so full of life.”
“Listen man.” Rick stood and walked over to me and sat down next to me on the couch. “It’s going to take time, her death was a shock to all of us, but you have to stop looking for something sinister behind her dying. It was her time, plain and simple. Just because you write for and own this newspaper doesn’t mean there is evil lurking behind everything that goes wrong around Endings, South Carolina.”
“That’s where you are wrong.” I stood up and crossed over to my desk, grabbing the file. There was no need to open it, I’d already memorized everything inside. “My dear sweet grandmother had been paying some two-bit, low-life fraud for psychic readings.”
“So what?” Rick shrugged. “She paid someone for a couple of readings, what harm is there in that? People do that all the time. Hell, my wife Cindy goes to one a couple of times a year. It’s all for fun, it’s not real.”
“That’s just it, it wasn’t only a time or two. Towards the end, she was going every other day. She paid this scammer over five thousand dollars. No.” I shook my head. “There was something more going on here.”
Rick whistled. “Wow. That is a lot.”
I sat on the edge of the desk. “See? And that is what gets me. This is only for the past three months. What if grams didn’t die, how much would she have ended up being taken for? Would she have changed her will so this person would get a cut? Would she have ended up taking everything my grandmother had?”
“I assume you’ve done a background check on this person?”
“You know it. Esmeralda Boswell. Currently resides at Happy Ending Resort. She travels around stealing money from people. I can’t believe this is the first time she’s come up on my radar. She’s right here in our backyard. Scamming people. And here’s the thing, this isn’t the first time she’s pulled this kind of crap. She only lives for a couple of years in any one place before she’s up and moving again. Not too smart though, she’s never changed her name.”
“Well, then it should be easy enough for you to take her down, expose her for the criminal she is.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But here’s the kicker, she’s been investigated for murder no less than five times over the years.”
“Holy-”
“Exactly.” I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded, waiting for him to catch up with me.
“How can she do that? Either she’s really lucky or innocent.”
“And what do you think the odds are that she’s innocent?”
“Five murders? Hmmm…” Rick shook his head. “No, there is no way she is innocent. Do you think she had something to do with your grandmother’s death?”
I nodded. “I’ll bet the newspaper she did.”
Note from the Author
Every time I type “The End” on a manuscript I get a little giddy. This makes number five for me and the feeling is the same. This work was different for me though. I challenged myself to do something different. I’ve never written exclusively from the male POV and I knew this had to be done this way. It was challenging. I got stuck a few times in spots with keeping this character true to himself and not allowing him to become some over sexed soldier while leaving the story behind. He was so clear to me and I wanted to make him clear to you, the reader. I hope I did him justice. It doesn’t hurt when you have a muse like Justin Keeton. It was an old picture of him that was the inspiration for this story. I couldn’t be happier to be able to use Justin’s photo by Randy Sewell of RLS Model Images Photography. Being able to spend time with both of them in Alabama was a blessing. And now to call both of them friends is definitely a perk of this business.
Thank you for your continued support along this journey. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
To keep up-to-date with information about releases and events, you can follow me at www.authorlisasurvillas.com or www.facebook.com/authorlisasurvillas. I’m also on Instagram @authorlisasurvillas and Twitter @LisaSurvillas.
Acknowledgements
The process of writing a book isn’t an easy one. It takes time away from things in life that need to be done, but the people who suffer the most are my hubby and kids. They get pushed aside or have to deal with a grumpy mom often. They never complain and I love them so much for the support they give me as I pursue this dream. As my ki
ds get older and near the end of their childhood, I’ve found myself willing to put my writing aside and spend time with them. I know I won’t get these moments back if I skip them now. In doing that, I’ve found it is taking longer to get books completed. The best of intentions don’t get the words on the paper, but I wouldn’t give up the time with my kids for anything. Please be patient and understanding in the time it takes to get a book completed in addition to living a life and working full time outside the home.
For this book, I have to start by thanking Jennifer Benson, the mastermind behind this series. I was honored to be a part of such an innovative project. Thank you so much for including me. Please be sure to pick up all the books in the series.
Justin Keeton deserves a huge thank you. We met in Phoenix at a signing and we formed quite a little friendship. He is an amazing person, loving father, and dear friend. I am usually not interested in using models that have done other covers, but Justin was easy to make the exception for. He and I talked about a book I was working on and I searched for a photo of him and a female model for that project, however when I saw the military one that is on the cover, I knew I had to have it. This work was created from that photo alone. Thank you so very much Justin for the inspiration and the friendship! XOXO
Thank you to Kari March of K23 Designs for her exceptional work on this cover. This project brought us together and I’m so very glad it did. This cover is gorgeous!
A Soldier's Dawning (The Happy Endings Resort Series Book 8) Page 9
