This week's sample comes from my new contemporary romance LOVE NEVER FAILS from Rebel Ink Press.
It's a second chance at love story. Reid and Caroline still love each other but they have to work through some emotional baggage for a chance at that happily ever after.....
It's a second chance at love story. Reid and Caroline still love each other but they have to work through some emotional baggage for a chance at that happily ever after.....
He moved over beside her and gathered her into his embrace, holding her so that her head rested against his shoulder, her face beneath his chin. Reid cuddled her, mouthing soothing words and stroking her hair as if she was a child waking from a nightmare. His tenderness moved her, eased some of her inner anguish, but she wondered why he couldn’t have come to her five years ago when she needed consolation, when she needed him most of all.
As her sobs eased and she calmed, Caroline decided to ask him. Ever since she heard his voice on the phone, she'd known they would have to talk about what happened. If they didn’t, they could never move forward and leave the past behind and they'd never known what might've been.
He kissed the last tears from the corners of her eyes and wiped her cheeks with a soft tissue.
“That’s better.”
“Why didn’t you come to me when I needed you?” Caroline asked in a small voice. Inside her, tension coiled like a snake.
“Baby, there was never a time I wouldn’t have come when you needed me. I love you, Caro, and always have.”
He sounded sincere but he failed her that time, and she couldn't let it go. She had to ask and get to the bottom of the issue even if it unleashed an emotional storm.
“Then why didn’t you come after I lost the baby? I wanted you so much and Aunt Julia said you wouldn’t come. I waited for you but you didn't come. I cried for two days when you didn’t, Reid. She said that you were too busy, that you and Ross had gone fishing down in Oklahoma and that you couldn’t come. I needed you then.”
His arms around her stiffened and she felt the shift as his body grew rigid. “What did you say, Caro?” he asked in a choked voice.
She didn’t want to say it again, couldn't bear to open that festering wound, but if he had to hear it, she'd force the words out.
“You didn’t come when I lost the baby.”
He held her so tight she felt crushed, as if a python wrapped its length around her and squeezed.
“When was that?” Reid whispered. “Tell me, Caroline, because no one ever told me about a baby.”
Her lungs had no air, she couldn't breathe and when she tried, she could get no oxygen. Caroline gasped aloud, afraid that she might die without air. Shock robbed her of speech as well as breath and she stared up at him, unable to respond. He didn't know, she repeated in her mind. Reid never knew. Julia lied to him, lied to them both. Grief for those lost years filled Caroline's heart with pain, a blinding, uncaring rage expanded through her body from her brain out to every atom.
“Caro?” Reid asked in an anxious voice. “You’re scaring the hell out of me. Say something!”
“Caro?” Reid asked in an anxious voice. “You’re scaring the hell out of me. Say something!”
“Julia lied to us.” She found her voice. “We’ve spent five years apart because of her meddling and her lies. You really didn’t know, did you?”
“I don’t know now. Tell me what it is, Caro.” Urgency roughened his voice.
“I'll but first tell me why you think I left.”
Reid became still, so quiet that she could feel his heartbeat, hear his breathing. His utter calm sucked all the air from the room, leaving it airless, the calm before the storm.
“Everything between us was good and then all of a sudden, you wouldn’t talk to me on the phone or go out with me. I went crazy but no matter when I called, your aunt told me that you were either gone or didn’t have anything to say to me. She told me that you had moved past our “little romance,” that you had bigger plans than me.”
Her throat was dry as an August drought. “And you believed her?”
Reid’s voice ached with hurt. “I didn’t want to, Caro. Then she told me that you were seeing Sam Richards while he was home from the University of Missouri for the summer. I didn’t think it was true but then I saw you two coming out of a restaurant, together. He was holding the door open for you and you walked through, looking back at him. You never saw me in the parking lot. You didn’t even look my way. After that, I believed your aunt.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t talk to me when I tried,” Caroline understood now. “Reid, none of it was true. I never dated Sam – I didn’t even like him. I loved you then and now.”
“I believe you. Tell me about the baby.”
She gathered strength and searched for words to tell the story that she'd carried like a burden on her back for five years. To share it, she had to look into his face and meet his eyes so she extricated herself, unwound from Reid, and faced him. She sought his hand and held it, gazing into his navy blue eyes as she remembered and shared what he'd never known.
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