TRUE by Erin McCarthy

TRUE by Erin McCarthy

 

“A New Adult winner for sure.” -Elissa Petruzzi, RT Book Reviews

 

Awkward girl meets scorching-hot boy…

 

When Rory Macintosh’s roommates find out that their studious and shy friend has never been with a guy, they decide that, as an act of kindness they’ll help her lose her virginity by hiring confident, tattooed bad boy Tyler Mann to do the job…unbeknownst to Rory.

 

Tyler knows he’s not good enough for Rory. She’s smart, doctor smart, while he’s barely scraping by at his EMT program, hoping to pull his younger brothers out of the hell their druggy mother has left them in. But he can’t resist taking up her roommates on an opportunity to get to know her better. There’s something about her honesty keeps him coming back when he knows he shouldn’t…

 

Torn between common sense and desire, the two find themselves caught up in a passionate relationship. But when Tyler’s broken family threatens to destroy his future, and hers, Rory will need to decide whether to cut her ties to his risky world or follow her heart, no matter what the cost…  

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~Excerpt~

That was when I realized that was why I’d always been slightly nervous around Tyler.  He was what people always accused me of being- there but not present.  Easy going, but distant.  Smiling, but intense.  Maybe it was the alcohol, my ears still buzzing, my insides hot but my skin cold and clammy, but for the first time I didn’t feel uncomfortable around him.

“So are you really a virgin?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.  “Or were you just saying that?”

No longer comfortable.  It went away faster than you could say Awkward Moment.

Why he thought I would want to talk about that made no sense to me at all.  I was drunk, but I wasn’t insane.  If I hadn’t even told my roommates until that night, why the hell would I sit in Tyler’s car and spill my guts?  I wasn’t the confessional type.  I never had been.

So I just looked at him.

“I’m going to take that as a yes.”

I wanted to tell him to mind his own goddamn business. To stop pressing a girl he didn’t know for intimate details about her sexual experience. That it was rude. But I remembered that he had in fact saved the very virginity he was questioning, so I didn’t want to be a bitch. I just shrugged. Really, what difference did it make? I was already a collegiate abnormality. Likes to study! Hates to Talk! Won’t go tanning! See this freak show exhibit in her natural dorm habitat…

But I actually surprised myself by opening my mouth and saying, “Yes, I am.”

My admission silenced him for a second, but then he drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel as he put the car in PARK in front of my dorm, which was a seventies built tower of glass and steel, the lamp post flooding into his car, showing even more clearly how dirty and ancient it was, a slot for a cassette player crammed full of what looked like parking tickets.

“Do you have a purity ring or whatever?”

Now that I was in, and the beer had loosened my lips, I said the first thing that came into my head.  “I prefer to call it my hymen.”

Tyler let out a laugh.  “No, I mean one of those rings you wear on your finger…”  He looked at me, understanding dawning.  “Oh, wait, you’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

Which made him laugh harder.  “Rory, you are an interesting chick.”

Interesting wasn’t exactly a riveting compliment, but he hadn’t called me a freak, which was how I felt sometimes.  Like I had been assembled in a different way altogether than everyone around me, and while I liked the end result, everyone else was confused as to how to interpret my very existence.
They watched me, suspicious, as if I were a Transformer and they were waiting for metal arms to spring out from my chest cavity.

I didn’t think that I’d ever seen him laugh before, or maybe I had just never noticed, my attention focused on Grant, who I had thought was more likely to fall in with my plan of exploring human mating and relationships.  But then again, Jessica and Kylie tended to dominate all conversation in a group setting, so maybe their own perfectly affected laughter had drowned out Tyler’s.

But for some stupid reason, I liked to think that he was laughing just for me.

Which was when I knew I was even more drunk than I realized and I needed to get away from him before I sat there blinking at him like a baby owl indefinitely.  Before I put some sort of hero worship onto him that he might deserve, but which didn’t mean a damn thing.  Before I substituted one pointless crush out for another. 

 

I shoved open the door, half falling out, clinging to the handle and the remnants of my dignity, like he could hear my stupid thoughts.  “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder, barely glancing back as I exited the car, clutching my bag.

There was no response and when I struggled to slam the heavy door, which seemed to weigh a million pounds and required more coordination than my icy fingers had, I realized that he was just staring at me.  There was a cigarette in his mouth, and he was lifting the car lighter up to it, his hand guiding it to his destination without thought.  As he sucked on it to catch the paper and tobacco on fire, his eyes never left mine.

The smile was gone.  There was nothing but a cool scrutiny.

I shivered.

Then I walked as fast as I could to my dorm, digging in my bag for my swipe card.

Once inside, I paused at the front desk to check in and I glanced out the front doors.

His car was still there, and I could see the shadow of his outline, the tiny red glow of his cigarette.

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WRECKED by Shiloh Walker

WRECKED by Shiloh Walker

“Friends make the best lovers and soul mates in WRECKED. A beautiful look into true and enduring love…” Carly Phillips, NYT Bestselling Author

In the nineties, Abigale Applegate and Zach Barnes were the most beloved sitcom child stars in the world. Then they grew up and left Hollywood behind…

Whatever happened to Abigale Applegate?

She’s been wondering the same thing.

With her Hollywood dreams long gone, Abigale now has a nice, neat, uncomplicated life—until the day her perfect fiancé needs to talk. Dumped, a little more than shattered, and totally confused, Abigale turns to Zach, her best friend since forever, to help her pick up the pieces. He does it with a gift—a copy of Wreck This Journal. She can vent her frustrations, and sketch out a new plan. Zach just hopes he’s part of it. Because he’s been in love with Abigale his entire life.

When the journal falls into Zach’s hands, he discovers Abigale wants a new man. And fast. Nothing more than a hot distraction. Zach has a strategy, too. He’s going to be that man. It’s his last chance. Abigale might be out to shake up her life, but Zach’s out to reinvent it. Now, all he has to do is convince Abigale that life can go as planned.

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~Excerpt~

"I don't get it," she said softly, some of the confusion and pain breaking free. "I mean... I thought he loved me. How could he love me and walk away like that? Over the life I used to have? That's what it's all about. I used to be an actress. I'm not anymore--I haven't been for years and I'm happy with that. How can he not see that? If he loved me, wouldn't he be able to see that I don't want to act anymore?"

Zach didn't answer.

Turning her head, she peered over her shoulder at him.

He had his head bowed, the gold-streaked strands falling down and hiding his features from her.

"Zach?"

He sighed. "Do you really want to hear what I have to say about this right now, sugar?"

"I always want to hear what you have to say."

"Okay." He used the cloth again on her back and then bent down, staring at her skin like there was nothing else in the world but her back and the design he was inking onto her flesh. "He never loved you."

It was a strike, square to her heart.

She closed her eyes.

"If he loved you, he wouldn't treat you the way he did. When you walked into a room, it would have showed on his face...if he really loved you. Either he'd been so busy staring at you because he just had to see you, or he would have been looking away so nobody could see it. Except he was going to marry you-you were his and he had every right to let the world see how he felt." Zach dabbed at her back again, still focused on the work.

She was almost glad of the pain now, because it was easier to think about how much it hurt than to think about what he had to say.

"But when you walked into a room, that f'ing prick was too busy either messing with his damned gadgets or looking at everybody else to see what they thought about you. He was in love with the idea of having Kate the cutie on his arm. But he never loved you."

He paused what he doing and for a brief second, the world fell away as he looked up and met her eyes. "He never loved you, and the son of a bitch sure as hell didn't deserve you, sugar."

Her heart slammed against her ribs as his blue gaze held hers.

And then, as it felt like all the oxygen in the room had dwindled away, he turned his attention back to the task at hand.

It felt like he was flaying the flesh from her bones. And she decided that was just fine, because now she needed that distraction.

Was he right, she wondered? Had Roger ever loved her at all?

And more importantly...had she loved him?





"Okay, here are the important things," Zach said as he studied the design. It was cute, sexy as hell and if he found out another guy was the one who got to press his lips to that dragonfly as where it curved low over the flare of her left hip, he thought he just might go insane. "I'll send you home with some instructions on how to care for it, but you need to make sure you keep it clean. No scrubbing at it or anything-you need to be gentle when you wash it, but keep it clean. I've got some ointment I'll send home with you and I'll go into detail about using that, too."

She was still staring at it over her shoulder in the mirror. Worrying her lower lip with her teeth and eying the dragonfly like she expected it to take flight or something.

"I need to get the bandage on," he said softly.

"What? Oh."

She continued to stand there and he reached up, pressed his hand between her shoulder blades. "Lean forward a little."

Hunger screamed, jerking on the leash inside him as he eased the waistband of her skirt just a little lower so he could get the bandage in place. Bent over the table like that, he could so easily imagine pulling the hem of the skirt up. Slipping his hand between her thighs. Would she sigh? Moan?

No. This was Abby and she'd freak the hell out and then she'd run away and he'd lose her-

A soft, shaky sigh caught his attention as he smoothed the bandage down. Keeping his head bowed, he checked the mirror from under his lashes and his knees almost buckled.

Abby was staring at their reflection and her face was flushed.

What. The. Hell.

Abruptly, he stepped back and moved away. If he didn't move away immediately, he was going to grab her and do things he never should do to his best friend. The woman he loved. That was the problem. He'd loved her for too long and he was misreading the signals and-

"Do you really think all that's true? About Roger?"

Hearing that shithead's name on her lips snapped his temper. He turned around and glared at her. "If I didn't think that was the case, Abs, I wouldn't have said it. He's an egotistical, arrogant piece of work and he never loved you. You deserved a hell of a lot better and I knew it all along. But he was what you wanted so who in the hell was I to say any different?"

"You're my best friend," she said quietly.

"Shit." He went to pass a hand over his face and stopped. He still had his gloves on. Stripping them off, he tossed them into the red trash can near the door and headed over start cleaning up. "Yes. I am. You asked me what I thought and I told you. But I can't tell you what is in that prick's head. You can always ask him when you call him to tell him off, although I doubt he'll tell you the truth. He doesn't even see the truth anyway."

"Have you ever been in love?"

In the middle of gathering up his supplies, he paused. Zach closed his eyes and started to mouth every single foul, nasty curse he could think of. He had four brothers. He could think of a lot of cuss words. Half way through one that involved anatomical improbabilities and a goat, a hand touched his shoulder.

"Zach?"

Damn it, he couldn't do this. Moving away, he started grabbing shit at random. Dumping trash, slamming the tools here, there. Being careless with them, but he couldn't look at her yet. If he did, she might see-

He went to dump the trash and turned around.

Abby was right there, dark brown eyes locked on his face, her shirt still knotted just under her breasts, leaving her belly bare.

"What is this?" she teased. "You make me play twenty questions all the time."

Edging around her, he focused on cleaning up. "I'm thirty-two years old, Abby. Yeah. I've been in love," he said, keeping his voice flat and his eyes on the task at hand. "It didn't work out."

"Why not?"

"She never seemed to notice that I was staring at her when she walked into the room."

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