by J. Evans
I’ve been talking about consent with my sons since they were toddlers. Even children too young to discuss sexual issues can understand that it is never okay to touch someone without their permission and that “no means no” and if someone says no, you immediately sever physical contact. As they grow older, we’ve talked about what to do if their friends make rape jokes, if they see a girl passed out at party, or if they witness someone initiating physical contact with another person that clearly isn’t welcomed.
As hard as these conversations can be, they’re necessary. At least twice a year, my children are taught by their schools to say no to drugs, but sexual education and sexual violence prevention are treated as taboo subjects. It’s time to bring these subjects out of the darkness. I believe that’s the only way to have hope of raising a generation of young men who would never think of violating another person and of young women who don’t have to head off to college with such nightmarish statistics hanging over their heads.
Knowing my readers the way I do, I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, but I hope you’ll join me in making a pledge to speak out in favor of sexual education and sexual violence prevention in your local schools. Research has proven prevention education—especially in how to speak up as a bystander—works. And if we can save even one girl, any level of discomfort associated with speaking out is worth it.
Thank you for your time and your readership,
Jessie Evans w/a J. Evans
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Jessie Evans (aka J. Evans), gave up a career as an international woman of mystery to write the sexy, contemporary romances she loves to read.
She's married to the man of her dreams, and together they're raising a few adorable, mischievous children in a cottage in the jungle. She grew up in rural Arkansas, spending summers running wild, being chewed by chiggers, and now appreciates her home in a chigger-free part of the world even more.
When she's not writing, Jessie enjoys playing her dulcimer (badly), sewing the worlds ugliest quilts to give to her friends, going for bike rides with her house full of boys, and drifting in and out on the waves, feeling thankful for sun, surf, and lovely people to share them with.
Learn more at her website: www.jessieevansauthor.com
And sign up for her newsletter to make sure you never miss a new release: http://bit.ly/1swaXYv
ALSO BY JESSIE EVANS
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Lonesome Point, Texas
LEATHER AND LACE
SADDLES AND SIN
DIAMONDS AND DUST
12 Dates of Christmas: A Lonesome Point Holiday Novella
GLITTER AND GRIT
Sunny With a Chance of True Love: The Ballad of Ugly Ross
CHAPS AND CHANCE
ROPES AND REVENGE
Eight Second Angel: The Ballad of Lily Grace (July 2015)
Always a Bridesmaid
BETTING ON YOU
KEEPING YOU
WILD FOR YOU
TAKING YOU (series-ending novella)
Fire and Icing
MELT WITH YOU
HOT FOR YOU
SWEET TO YOU
SAVING YOU (series-ending novella)
Escape to You Novellas
AUDITIONING YOU
DARING YOU
Edgy, New Adult Reads written as J. Evans
ONE WILD NIGHT
THIS WICKED RUSH
ONE PERFECT LOVE
THIS SWEET ESCAPE
ONE BEAUTIFUL REVENGE
THE PROTECTOR
A Kindle Worlds novella set in the world of
H.M. Ward’s The Arrangement
PLEASE ENJOY THIS EXCERPT
Of “Chaps and Chance”
CHAPTER ONE
Layla
The heart surrenders.
The mind makes excuses, the soul suffers in the dark forgetting the color of sunlight, but the broken heart eventually lays down its sword and gives up the fight.
Layla Parker couldn’t remember the day she’d stopped believing that she and Wayne Wheeler were going to find their way back to the love they’d lost. She couldn’t remember the first time he used words to hurt her, the first time he left her alone for weeks on end while he and his brothers got wasted at their hunting camp, or the first time he gripped her wrist so tightly there were bruises on her skin the next morning.
She couldn’t remember the moment that grief had transformed into resentment or resentment to terror, but she remembered the exact minute of her heart’s surrender.
It was six minutes after ten on a Sunday morning, not long after her ninth wedding anniversary. She was staring at the clock above the stove and Wayne’s hand was fisted in her hair, pinning her face to their oak dining table. She remembered the crumbs from the English muffin she’d had for breakfast rough under her cheek, the sour smell of Wayne’s beer-scented sweat filling her nose, and his breath hot in her ear as he promised to kill her if she tried to leave him again.
“You’re my wife,” he growled, pushing her face into the table until waves of pain shot through her cheekbone. “You made a promise and you’ll keep it. Or I’ll put you in the ground. Do you understand me, Layla? Am I penetrating that thick skull of yours? I will end you before I let you go.”
“Yes,” she whispered, gaze fixed on the clock as the six flickered to a seven and she surrendered all hope for the marriage she’d fought for and the man she’d once loved.
Twenty minutes later, Wayne was finished screaming and hurting and had entered the tearful phase that often followed in the wake of his rage. He knelt at her feet, his cheek pressed against her stomach, crying as he begged for forgiveness and promised everything was going to be better from here on out.
She cradled his head and ran soothing fingers through his thick brown hair, but his apologies hadn’t melted her heart the way they once would have. Her heart was lying motionless on the battlefield, waiting for the killing blow. Her heart had surrendered and now there was only her soul shivering in the cold, trapped in the nightmare her life had become, and her mind carefully, deliberately sorting through the available options.
Layla had always been clever. In high school, she’d made straight A’s without even trying and had earned her bachelor’s degree in business management online in three years instead of the usual four. She could tally five digit numbers in her head, balance the budget of a multi-million dollar company in a few days, and had a better than average grasp of statistical probability.
Now that her heart had fallen silent, no longer protesting that things would get better the way they usually did after a rough patch, her mind was free to analyze the data and come to logical conclusions.
As she comforted her husband, her mind catalogued every bruise, every hard word, and everything he’d done to isolate her on his family’s massive ranch, keeping her far from anyone who would notice the haunted look in her eyes or the marks he left on her skin. She remembered the night three months ago when he’d found her secret money stash taped beneath the bureau and beaten her until she could barely walk the next day. She recalled the look in his eyes when he’d arrived home early this morning from a long weekend with his brothers and found her in the kitchen with her suitcase by her feet.
She’d been afraid of Wayne for at least a year, but it wasn’t until she was bent over the kitchen table with his fist in her hair, that she realized how much more afraid she should have been.
His tearful apologies now filled the kitchen, but none of his repentant words sounded as true as his threats. He could swear until he was blue in the face that he would never end her life, but Layla’s mind knew better, and her gut insisted there was only one way she was getting free of Wayne Wheeler.
That night, she slept in the circle of his arms.
The next morning she got up early and took the first baby step toward escape.
If she’d known when she star
ted that it would take a year of baby steps to gain her freedom—or that her family’s ranch would soon pass to her older brother, Grayson, who would offer her the sanctuary her father had refused her—she might have made a different choice.
Or not.
The morning Layla finally left the home she’d shared with Wayne for the last time, all she knew for certain was that there was no going back. The past was etched in stone and there was no rewriting it. The best she could hope for was to find peace with her brother, who had promised to keep her safe.
A part of her knew it wasn’t wise to stay in Lonesome Point—even with Grayson to watch over her—but she didn’t know where else to go. She had no money, no job, very few friends and even fewer prospects. After years of managing her in-law’s lucrative meat-packaging plant in Houston, Wayne’s parents refused to give her a reference, the same way they’d refused to acknowledge that their youngest son had become a monster.
In Pat and Deborah’s mind, Wayne was still their golden child, the hero of the football team, the star of the debate team, and the president of every club at Lonesome Point High. He was still the boy who could make everyone laugh and end an argument with a wink and a smile, the boy who had made Layla believe in happy endings after a childhood shadowed by the loss of her mother and the neglect of her emotionally distant father.
But Wayne hadn’t been that person for a long time and Layla no longer cared about being happy. Happiness was a luxury reserved for people who had made better choices than she had made. She just wanted to feel safe, to be able to drop her guard and stop living in fear.
As the days after her escape stretched on without a word from her husband—not so much as a phone call, let alone the ugly confrontation she’d feared—she began to hope the peace she craved would be hers.
By the time her brother and his new wife left to go look at property in Montana in March, ten weeks after Layla had left Wayne, she was feeling confident enough to stay at their childhood home alone. There were locks on the gate leading to the property, heavy locks on the doors, and she slept with a shotgun she knew how to handle by her bedside.
But she didn’t really think she would need to use it.
Enough time had passed that she was forgetting how to be properly afraid. She was learning to smile again, to laugh with her sister-in-law, to treasure long talks by the fireplace with her brother and to wonder what good things the future might hold. She was working as a waitress while she applied for management jobs, writing in her long-neglected journal, and making new friends.
She was learning to live again, and had even heard regret murmuring in her subconscious, once or twice, late at night before she went to sleep.
Maybe you were wrong, it whispered. Maybe there was another way out and you did this dangerous, crazy thing for nothing.
At one point, she even picked up the phone, only to end the call before she pressed the last number and hang up with shaking hands.
She couldn’t tell the truth. Never, no matter how loud the guilty voices in her head learned to shout. She had already served her time. It didn’t matter if her crime had come at the end of her sentence or the beginning; she had paid for it and then some.
Besides, Wayne would be all right. The situation would resolve itself when the next property inspection was conducted in May and he would be back to his old self in no time.
She knew that—had even thought it as she was getting dressed the night Wayne proved she’d been a fool to drop her guard—but she still wasn’t prepared. She should have realized that it was only her heart that had surrendered.
Wayne’s heart would never give her up.
Not until the moment one of their hearts stopped beating.
CHAPS AND CHANCE is available now.
