by Charity West
Genre: Upper YA Contemporary Romance
Release Date: October 17th 2016
Coastal Escape Publishing
Summary:
High School senior Lily Rhodes has been in love with her brother’s best friend nearly all her life. When nineteen year old Jake joins the Marines and is shipped overseas, she worries she’ll never see him again, and wishes she’d been braver before he left. Lily vows that if Jake comes home, she’ll tell him how she feels. But when Jake is injured by an IED and is discharged from the Marines, he comes home changed, bitter and broken. Despite the fact he's loved Lily for the past three years, he no longer feels worthy of someone like her. Not one to back down from a challenge, Lily knows the best things in life are worth fighting for.
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EXCERPT:
Lily carried the food to the kitchen and
got down a plate for her father. She knew if she just gave him the containers,
the food would sit uneaten on his desk. Giving
him a plate and fork seemed to make a difference though. Shrimp fried
rice, orange chicken, and lo-mein covered the dish. She snagged a bottle of
water out of the fridge and carried it down the hall to her father’s office.
The door remained open from her previous intrusion, but he was clicking away again, hard at work.
She set the plate down on his desk along
with the water. Her dad didn’t break stride with his writing, looking almost
feverish with his obsession. The thunder boomed overhead,
and the lights flickered for a moment. It was enough to make her father pause,
at least long enough to hit the save button, and then he glanced her way.
“Sorry, Lily. I didn’t realize you were
there.”
“It’s okay, Dad. I brought you some
dinner. I decided to go to the store first so will eat mine when I get back.
The clouds coming in are getting darker,
and I want to get there and back before the worst of the storm hits.”
“I should go with you.”
She knew that wasn’t what he wanted to
do. The quick darting of his eyes from her to his screen and back again was all
the assurance she needed that he wanted to keep working on his book.
Considering the drought he’d recently been through, where he barely wrote a few
hundred words a day, she knew he needed to spend his time writing while the
story was speaking to him.
“It’s fine, Dad. I’ll be there and back
before you know it.”
“Be careful, Lily.”
“I will,” she promised before easing out
of the office and closing the door.
Lily went to her room to retrieve her
purse and keys, before slipping out through the garage door and walking over to
her white, gently used Honda Civic. The car had been a present from Jake and
her brother for her sixteenth birthday. It had been a one-owner car, with
hardly any miles on it, despite the fact it was now nearly ten years old.
Several of her friends at school had received brand new cars for their
birthdays that year, but Lily had thought hers was far more special, just
because Jake had helped pay for it. He’d been a junior,
and she had wondered where he had gotten the money, and she’d probably never
find out. She knew Riley had used part of his inheritance from their
grandparents.
As she backed out of the garage, the sky
seemed to open up, and the heavens rained
down as the storm intensified. Her wipers worked overtime as she drove the
narrow, twisting road into town. The parking lot at the grocery store was
nearly empty, and she wasn’t really
surprised. Aside from her, who in their right mind would go shopping in this
weather?
She pulled into a parking space and
reached into her floorboard for an umbrella, only to realize she had taken it
inside the other day and never put it back. With a groan, she rested her forehead on the steering wheel and blew out a
breath. She wasn’t looking forward to getting soaked. The sky lit up with a
triple streak of lightning as thunder made the ground tremble under her car.
Lily pulled her hood over her head before opening the door and dashing through
the rain to the front of the store.
When she stepped inside, the cool air made her shiver as she pushed back her
hood. Her clothes were drenched and sticking to her body as she got a shopping
cart and started down the first aisle. She didn’t want to get too much since she’d have to load the car in the
rain, but she wanted to make sure there was enough food, snacks, and drinks to
last at least a day or two, in case the storm didn’t break.
She tried to stay away from sweets,
except for the occasional pint of ice cream, but she threw in some Oreos and a
half-gallon of milk, along with some seasoned turkey breasts, a sack of
potatoes, and a can of carrots for dinner tomorrow. Thinking ahead, she also
grabbed a frozen pizza for lunch the next day, and then stopped in the coffee aisle to feed her father’s
addiction. A twelve-pack of grape soda rounded out her shopping spree, and she headed for the checkout.
The clerk looked bored as she scanned
Lily’s items and sacked them. Lily loaded the shopping cart and paid for her
purchases, then pushed the cart to the door. The rain looked like it had
slackened a little and she made a mad dash for the car, the shopping cart
bumping and jolting over the uneven pavement. She
popped her trunk and quickly loaded everything, before pushing the cart off to
the side. Usually, she would put it in
the cart return, but that was seven spaces away,
and she was already wet enough.
Lily cranked the engine and blasted the
heat, trying to chase away the chill she still felt from the cool air in the store and then getting wetter on the way to the
car. Turning on her lights, she pulled out of the space and headed for home. She’d barely turned onto the road before the
sky turned an ominous black and green mixture that scared the crap out of her.
A moment later, the rain got so heavy that she could barely see through the
windshield. The road was too narrow for her to pull over and wait for the
weather to clear, but she did slow her pace and turn
on her flashers.
As Lily went around a particularly sharp
curve, headlights cut through the darkness and nearly blinded her, causing her
to jerk the wheel. The tires slipped and slid as they tried to gain traction.
Lily’s heart raced in her chest, beating so loudly she could hear it pulsing in
her ears. Her hands scrambled on the wheel, trying to get control of the
vehicle; the on-coming car smashed into the driver’s side of her car, knocking
her off the road and down the incline. Her car tumbled and rolled, slamming
Lily’s head into the window and steering wheel several times.
Finally, it came to rest at the bottom
of the gorge. Blood dripped into Lily’s eyes,
and she tried blinking it away. Everything blurred and swayed until it all went black.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Charity West is a young adult/new adult romance author who has always had her head in the clouds. She had her first crush when she was four, and it lasted for six years. Then she quickly fell head over heels for another boy, until she had to move away and leave him behind. Jumping from one boy to another, she finally found a keeper when she was twenty, and she’s been married to him ever since.
By the time Charity was twelve, she was sneaking her mother’s Harlequin romances and reading them in secret when she was supposed to be asleep. Teased throughout middle school and high school for the bodice ripper covers on the books she openly read in class, she knew that one day she wanted to write her own happily-ever-afters. Subscribe to Charity West's newsletter!
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