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Carrero book 9 – Live now!

A little surprise …

So this weeks read along chapter was delayed for a very good reason. We were working our butts off to pull off something awesome..

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Time To Grow Up – Chapter 2

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Read along (Weekly quick reads writing challenge)
A chapter by chapter read along for followers of my blog.



Chapter 2

‘You okay baby girl?’ My sister brushes the damp strands of hair
that have become stuck to my soaked cheek, while pouring my broken soul down my
face. I have been crying for a solid hour as my heart breaks in two and my
happiness is reduced to dust and grimy ashes. Curled up on this single bed in a
room that is now mine, in a home hundreds of miles from where it longs to be.
I’m pining and falling to pieces with every passing day. All my resolve dying a
slow death of torture.

It’s been two weeks since I walked out on Luke and headed here.
Two miserably lonely, long dark weeks of doubts and regret and I am at breaking
point. I can’t eat, sleep or just be, without being consumed by him. His face,
his laugh, his smile. So many memories of my fair-haired boy and those strong
shoulders calling me from afar. I miss his hugs, god more than anything I miss
his touch.

‘No. I want to go home. I want Luke.’ I break again, voice
strangled through muffled sniffs and watery despair Heart wrenching in two and
collapse into a crumbled heap in her strong arms. Succumbing to the
overwhelming pain that is consuming me. My body feels bruised and weak, my
insides sharp yet heavy as though everything inside of me has turned to stone.

‘You knew this would be hard, Meel’s. You knew this would happen
and you just have to ride the waves. Going back won’t fix things.’ Claire
croons at me in that baby voice she used to use whenever I had a boo boo as a
kid. She talks sense and deep down I know her words are wise, but the heart
doesn’t want to hear it and I wail in disagreement. Refusing to contemplate
anything other than what I want anymore.

‘How do you know? No one knows! Maybe…just maybe…’ I start,
scrambling backwards to fix her with a loaded look of conviction, blood pumping
through my ears and brain like a violent waterfall and confusing everything.
Face sodden, skin raw. I can’t think straight while this overwhelming pounding,
throbbing ache of despair affects every cell of my body. I can barely breathe,
and my lungs are laboring under my hysterical tense despair.

‘You are too young and too unfulfilled to settle. You have
dreams and hopes and Luke is the same. You both need to just find yourselves
before you can be happy together again. Let it happen, baby. Let him go to college
and you too. If it’s meant to be then you will find a way back together. If you
go back now you know that boy is going to throw away his future to save his
relationship with you and you will both be back to square one in no time at
all. Trust me on this. You both need time to grow.’ Her soothing, warm tone and
gentle words as she strokes my hair and cuddles me up tight like I’m her child
and not her sibling, younger by a mere seven years. Not giving me a choice but
pulling me back to her and ignoring my stubborn fight. Too practiced at
controlling me from years of being my only maternal female in our home. I guess
those years make a difference though as she only wed just over a year back and
her path seems to be blooming and full of adventure instead of the dead-end
hard wall that I hit. Maybe she is right, and age means a whole lot in terms of
being ready. Claire seems deliriously so with her lot in life. A huge contrast
to the way I was existing with Luke in matrimonial un-bliss.

‘What if I made a mistake?’ silent warm droplets roll down my
cheeks, giving up as the last of my energy disperses. That little voice inside
of me refusing to be silenced while my mind is full of visions of him.

‘What if you didn’t and your heart knew deep down, you were
doing what is best for you?’

I hate that my sister has always had this way of turning me
around and making me think. With so few words and no real hostile tone to be
seen. She always was a master of gentle and I can’t dislike her for it in this
moment. She was a mother figure in some ways as I grew up, the only one I knew,
I guess. My own mother passing from giving birth to me and I have never known
anything else. She is just a face in pictures and a name in stories that
happened before I existed. Claire was my hugs and my lessons in life. She
taught me how to put on pantyhose and how to blush my cheeks. She taught me
about the birds and the bees and how to bake the best apple pie in the whole
damn south.

I guess I never really thought about how much of her own childhood
she gave up before, to be what I needed as I grew. By the time I was ten she
was seventeen and she took me everywhere with her when she could. Papa was
working a lot at the mill, but Claire always came home for me getting out of
school and made sure I had my hot meals and my hugs, my bedtime stories and my
hair braided every Sunday for church. I owe my sister so much.

‘I don’t know what I want.’ It’s a heartbroken sob, a wail of
sorts, my insides aching and twisted up so that I feel like it may actually
kill me. A pain so exquisite that nothing in life can ever compare or really
describe how it feels. Like gutting a fish, except I am the unfortunate creature,
and someone is pulling my insides out through the slit in my belly.

‘No one does at nineteen, sweet-pea. You have to find your way
and figure out who you are. Luke needs to do the same to become the man he can
be. You weren’t happy and neither was he and it changed you both. Let it go. If
you love each other then you will find each other when you are ready. If not,
then your heart will have found something else by then.’ Calm, smooth words
forma girl who is way wiser than her twenty-six years on earth.

‘You make it sound so easy but what about how much it hurts. How
much I miss him. How afraid I am that he will move onto to someone else and
forget me’

‘If he does then that’s not your path. It’s going to hurt,
anything worthwhile comes with effort. Pain is a part of life and in time you
will learn to overcome it and move on. Just like I did when mama died. Lord I
thought I would just die and here we are, 19 years on – loving my little sister
as if she were my own, looking forward to my own little ones soon enough.‘ A
warm smile, a kiss tenderly on my forehead as I blink up at her. Wide eyed and
lost.

I stare at her for the longest moment, watching that still face
, filled with compassion. The soft gentle features of my southern belle sister;
so in contrast to me. Her fair hair and blue eyes much like the woman in the
pictures I call my mother yet so many years younger than the pictures I have of
her. I’m like my father, god rest his soul, with dark hair and hazel eyes, dazzling
a hint of green in the depths. I miss him so much it just kills me inside and I
wonder how different things would be if he hadn’t died the sudden way he did.

If he were here, he would know what to do. It wouldn’t have gone
the way it did. I would have applied to college like intended, as the money
wouldn’t have been needed to keep us afloat and bury him. I would have stuck
with the plan, our future thought out and Luke and I would have dated long
distance until we graduated.

We would have come home on weekends and holidays and still been
together and happy like we were meant to be. We would have had time to grow and
find our feet before getting married and throwing away our innocence and youth
to become adults. We only did this because of how everything was thrown at me
all at once and I was left with a house alone and no way to pay the bills.
Right out of high school, a part time job in the diner and grieving. My sister
hundreds of miles away with her own home to pay for and new husband to stay
away with, I couldn’t have asked her to give up all that to come back. Claire
was never going to stay in Denville. It’s not where her heart lay. She was
never a small-town country girl they way daddy and I were. Claire wanted bright
city lights and busy bustling adventures.

It was all too much for us try as he might, Luke wasn’t ready to
should all that responsibility and throw his dreams away too. We’re kids. We’re
not ready and if I go back now, she is right. He will stop any plans he has in
motion to go to school and stay with me to work this out, putting us right back
in that pit of despair. He wouldn’t leave me to struggle alone so it’s a no-win
situation.

The baby wasn’t planned and as much as it pains me to say, it’s
passing was a blessing. It saved us from being tied down in ways neither of us
would have walked away from. It hurt like hell to lose that tiny little piece
of us just as we were getting used to its existence. I thought I had suffered
in ways that nothing else could come up against, but I was wrong. Pain is funny
thing and even when you are twisted in agony and unable to feel any more than
you’re carrying, it somehow finds a way to cut deeper. And it did, so deep I
just stopped feeling anything at all. I think it killed my heart for the
longest time and I became oblivious to anything except my own numb. It’s partly
why Luke pulled away and began to suffer in his own agony alone.

A few days after I left him, he called me. Upset, tired but he
understood why I left. I needed so badly to hear his voice and speak to him, so
I cried the whole time he was on the line. It was devastating to hear him and
talk properly for the first time in months, after our self-inflicted distance.
It felt weird like we were no longer the same people and awkward because we
forgot how to talk to one another. It was bittersweet and excruciating, which
just highlighted how broken we had become.

He told me I was right to go, and he just didn’t have the
courage to tell me how unhappy he was. That he felt guilty for feeling that way
and he was sorry about how he handled it. He agreed that we should find out own
feet for a while , see how it goes and give one another space to get our heads
back on track. Luke the mature man he always was, broke my heart by being smart
and saying the right thing. he told me I did the right thing by walking away
and I didn’t want him to say those words to me.

I just don’t know how to feel anymore. I need him and I miss him,
and it feels like my whole life has spiraled into a dark pit of despair and I
will never see sunlight again. I won’t find reason to enjoy a single thing in
the world like I once did. Not without him.

I can’t go back though; I can’t afford to pay for the house or
bear to stay there without him. My sister told me we should sell it. Luke doesn’t
want it either and moved back to his parents’ days after I left him and has no
intention of taking what he feels is mine. If I sell it I can pay to go to
school and follow my dreams of becoming a chef, If I don’t then I have to find
a job to pay the remainder of the small mortgage my papa had left, and live
while I am away from there in the hopes of one day going back. I just don’t
know what to do. I can rent it out to finish the last couple years left that
the bank is owed but I wouldn’t know where to start. That was my family home
for 18 years and then my marital home for one. I can’t just toss it aside like
it means nothing and never go back. It holds a million memories that I can
never get back if I let someone take that house form me.

My heart lies in Alabama and I will go back one day. I don’t see
myself ever being happy and settled anywhere else. It holds the key to a part
of me, even beyond Luke.

My life is there, my heart and soul are there. Luke is there.

‘What do I do about the house and the land? I can’t just leave
it to rot.’ It’s a whimper, a sad little breathless nothing of a sound as I
give into utter fatigue. I am waning and giving into reason, my head and heart
colliding dramatically but my sister talks sense and I know what she says is
true. Tears drying because there is nothing left, and Claire just hugs me tight
to squeeze it all away. I know she would if she could. She has always tried to
carry my burdens and shield me form pain like a real mother would have.

‘Let Jimmy deal with a letting agent and start getting the house
to pay for itself. Plenty people would jump to stay someplace like that, fully
furnished and so close to town. We can get good money as a rental and maybe a
little extra to pay out fees an such for accommodation at school. Jimmy is
willing to get a loan to pay your college tuition using my business as
collateral and you can pay us back when you start earning those big bucks. We
can help you out.’ Claire has it all worked out nice and neat in her head, like
it’s nothing that a good old mug of sweet tea can’t fix, while I am wallowing
in self-pity and not even begun to apply for any kind of college. My head has
been all tied up in foggy chaos while missing the bones of my husband. I feel
like I have severed a limb from the second I walked out on him. I would go back
in a heartbeat and try to fix this if I thought we could.

‘I don’t know. I can’t think straight.’

‘You don’t need to. Just trust us to take care of you in the way
dad would have wanted. I’m your family and it’s what I want to do for you. You
have so much potential and you are only just starting your life.’ Claire sits
back, pulling my face to hers so she can look me in the eye, squeezing my
cheeks between her palms and scrunching up her face cutely. Her own eyes misted
over with empathy at the sight of her heartbroken kid sister, but she is trying
as she knows how to make it less traumatic. So much love and pleading in one
beautiful face.

My sister was always gorgeous as country girls went. Flawless
porcelain skin she kept out of the sun so she wouldn’t age before her time, sky
blue eyes and delicate features. A classy dress sense more in keeping with
nineteen fifties housewives and a genteel personality, but she knows how to be
my rock when I need her. When papa died, she came home and held me together
best she could while taking care of all the rushed details so we could put him
in the ground. She was broken too but not once did she fall apart the way I
did. I guess because she already lived through losing one parent and knew she
had the strength to do it all over again. I love my sister dearly and it’s no
surprise I ran to her when I felt like everything was crumbling to dust. She’s
my mother in so many ways.

‘What about Luke. I have to see him. I need him.’ It’s a wail, a
last-ditch childish attempt at clawing onto what my heart wants when all the
truths are pointing elsewhere.

‘You love that boy as much as you say you do, then you’ll leave
him be to find his own way back to you. Y’all-ways did have him wrapped around
your little finger, but you need to be a grown up now and realise you are doing
what’s best for you both. Darling, I know it hurts like hell but it’s not the
end. It’s just a little gap until you find one another again.’ She smiles,
trying to bring me around from bottom of the barrel broken, to light at the end
of the tunnel if I squint really hard.

‘Do you think we can fix this again one day?’ It’s a sad but
hopeful question, my insides aching for some reassurance that this isn’t it for
me. It can’t be. This empty nothing tearing me apart. I can’t exist in this
floral chic and pastel room, a million miles from my heart’s desire for the
rest of my life, I have to have some hope that one day when we are ready to do
this again that I can go back to him. Right now, it’s all I can cling onto to
see me through these dark thunder clouds fogging my entire outlook on life.

‘The boy loves you to death. You don’t just get over someone
that means that much to you easily. He will be focused on school and probably
sat thinking and crying much like you are right now. Trying to piece together a
future where you will come back to him. I know him too well.’

I cry some, but with a smile peeking through because I know
she’s right. He all but told me as much when we talked that one time. That he
hoped we could find a way past this when we were ready, and I should always
know where home is waiting for me. We agreed not to talk after that call, to
block one another on social media and just take a blackout break while we went
our own way and I think that’s what is killing me now. For the first time in my
life, Luke Watson isn’t mine anymore and doesn’t have any reason to reach out
when I need him the most. I feel like I have lost half of me and I may never
recover or be able to function like a human ever again. I am cutting off my own
limbs while trying to use them in this crazy world to get by.

I shouldn’t have this kind of dependency on another human being.
My papa always told me you don’t rely on another person to make you whole and
happy. You have to do that for yourself or you will never be able to be happy
no matter how much someone loves you. I think I finally understand that now.
Luke and I loved each other more than life but we couldn’t make the other happy
in our situation and it wasn’t from trying.

I have to learn to be strong on my own two feet. To be happy in
myself and my skin and find what I need to be to function in life before I can
go back there and try to offer him something I haven’t got right now.
Contentment and purpose. I have to grieve for my losses properly, so they no
longer overshadow every sunny day and I need to figure out what I want to do
with the rest of my life, so I don’t just fall back into being someone’s baby
maker and house wife. I have so many more aspirations than that, too like my
sister in every way.

She wanted more and she fought to get it. Moving away , starting
her own business and marrying the man who chased her for four long years before
she agreed to settle down. Jimmy was from Denville too, but his daddy was way
out here, and he lived between two divorced parents his whole life. When he
left for good it was obvious to everyone that Claire would go with him, even if
she kept him at arm’s length until she did. My sister had dreams and no man was
going to dictate how she got them. Luckily, she wanted to leave, and this city
seems to be just right for her. as right as Jimmy is. They all just work
somehow.

‘I want the house back when this is all over. I’ll want to go
home when I know what it is I want as a career and I am ready to go back
there.’ I answer, voice stronger than it was as the wheels and gears turn in my
head and I start working out a plan that may just get me through this awful
pain. Face drying slowly now there is a break from the onslaught of tears, and
I swallow hard, steadying myself and sniff harder to clear my stuffy nose.

‘That’s do-able, we just lease it on a period basis. Like six
months or a year at a time. That way when a lease runs out, we can either renew
or you can go home.’

I blink at her, head swirling with what she is saying as it’s
all double Dutch to me. I know nothing about renting and the legalities, but
her husband is a junior lawyer in his father’s firm and a useful man to know.
My sister owns herself a little home goods store in town where she sells
beautiful things even though it’s only early days of her start up  and caters to expensive clients. They mean it
when they say they will see me through school. They have the means financially
to help out even if it means taking a loan to cover the expense and I will pay
it all back one day, soon as I can. I would be a fool to not accept what it is
she wants to do for me. It’s a new start and a chance at happiness.

‘I should take a few days to think and look up colleges for
catering huh?’

‘I think you should.’ She coaxes me gently, smoothing back my
hair again, as I finally have the strength to sit up by myself and wipe my face
completely free of all traces of waterworks. Pain still rattling around inside
of me, but that good old stubborn Jessop blood has my mind on other things. That
same strong will that got me walking out on Luke two weeks ago.

To fix us, I have to fix me. And I have to let Luke go to become
the man he can be. I love him to the moon and back, but we are not working, and
we never will if I don’t let him go, trust that we can maybe find our way back.
She is right. He loves me, I know this right to the bare bones of my blessed
heart. He isn’t one to throw himself at other woman to get over me either, so I
have time. I can breathe a while, meander through days without any pressure. He
will go to school like I will, we will figure ourselves out and then in time
maybe we can sort us out. We don’t have to wait until we graduate, maybe just a
few weeks or months of settling into a different life will be enough space to
long distance date like we said we would. Time to get over the past year and
how broken we became. Time to reconnect and see where we could go. Time to
figure it all out.

My heart is no longer heavy as all of this runs through my mind,
and the sodden mess of misery I was when Claire came home to find me crumpled
on my bed and dying of grief isn’t how I feel now. I am exhausted emotionally
and mentally but I am starting to see sense and put logic before everything
else.

I need to plan and put things in place. Focus on ways to get my
shit together and my life back on track. Find a way back to Luke so that when I
do, I will never want or need to ever leave him again. I have to find me and
make myself happy before I can try and be happy with him.

School is my priority and figuring out what I want to do to be
able to stand on my own two feet. I go back when I am ready to say, ‘this is
where I want to be forever’ and see if we can start all over again. I can do
this if I keep him in my head and heart with a ‘never say never’ attitude and
Luke as my prize when I sort myself good.

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Sophie and Arrick start their new life together in France, where Sophie hopes to follow her dream and finish her term in the Paris Fashion Academy.

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Time to grow up – Chapter 1

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Read along (Weekly quick reads writing challenge)
A chapter by chapter read along for followers of my blog.

Chapter 1

My hand trembles over the cold metal handle of the beaten up suitcase at my feet as I scoop to pick it up, heart somersaulting stupendously. I feel sick, nerves eating me inside out and my heart is fit to burst, but I know this is what I have to do. Body shaking with the effort of so much emotional trauma.

I am leaving my husband.

Only three weeks and four days until my nineteenth birthday and I am already heading for divorce, lost all that I knew and loved and running away.

I don’t even know how it came to be that I got here.

We had it all, the fairy-tale relationship and plot to a great happy ever after. The couple everyone envied. The existence of carefree kids with long hot Alabama summers and happy lives. Bright futures, big smiles and kisses a plenty. So in love we made everyone sick.

I love him, even still and doing this is tearing me inside out, but I cannot see beyond the wreck and ruins of what was once a love that could conquer all. He was my best friend, my lifelong left arm and now …… we haven’t touched or talked in weeks and as I strip our stark white bedroom of all that is me, he is sat in the bar in town, drowning his days away as has become his routine. Ignoring life with me. Forgetting what I am to him.

He goes to work, he goes to the bar, get’s drunk and comes home to sleep on the couch, before morning to do it all over again. That has become the sad reality within the wreck of what was once strong and true. Luke has disappeared inside himself and that sparkle of his eyes has died along with the hope in my heart.

Luke was always my protector, my confidant and somehow, somewhere along the past year of our lives, we have lost one another completely, with no way back. No breadcrumb trails to find our way. My father dying suddenly of a heart attack mere weeks after my sister left to embark on her new life with her husband was the catalyst. It meant I was left alone to manage in this big old house all by myself and he swooped in to save me from my own misery.

Marriage seemed like the right thing to do.

A happiness to plough through my dark cloud days to bring me light in some small way. I wouldn’t be alone and we always intended to do it anyway. It made sense to bring it forward after graduation. Something to help me with my grief and a security I so badly needed. Losing a father and gaining a husband was meant to give me some sense of safe. No matter what, I had him and always would. Oh how foolish we were.

I love him. I have loved him since the first kiss he ever gave me when I was just four years old and he five. I loved every moment of our childhood where we ran side by side, every adventure, every hug and every mischief we found ourselves in. We were those kids that everyone knew on sight, always together. Luke and Melia. Double trouble. The conjoined twins.

Inseparable, so in sync and so completely devoted to the bubble that was us. Friends envied our ability to just exist together through thick and thin. We rarely argued, we never really fell out. I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone the way I love him. And I do. Despite what I am doing now and the evidence is my heart shredding itself to pieces little by little as I gather my things. The pain almost unbearable so that I have to struggle to take a breath and my head pulsates with the stress of my decision. I feel nauseous and faint and my courage waivers.

We can’t fix what’s broken though. It’s bigger than us.

We were already drifting apart after the wedding, when life got so real and reality of adulthood swept in to stain our innocence. It was so rushed, so odd to try and be happy and smile through my vows while I cried for the absence of my father. He had been all we had known as a parent since my mother died giving birth to me. He was our world and he was not there at the most important day of my life. Luke and I. We moved from naive kids who lost their virginity to one another on prom, to a honeymoon where suddenly sex was no longer forbidden.

Sex is a weird thing. It can just make everything so much messier, foggier and your emotions really do hit chaos when you add sex to everything else in the mix. We wanted it for so long but fear and respect of our parents made us wait. Prom just happened. A little booze, a little romance and carefree behaviour and before we knew it, we were doing things we promised we would wait for, but it didn’t seem wrong. It just strengthened everything I felt about him and cemented in my head that I would his forever. A night I will never forget.

I was still reeling from the shock of laying my father in the ground, our new found intimacy and craving to feel it from Luke as a balm over and over again. Marriage seemed like the only answer. We were adjusting to throwing away our plans of college and other lives for a picture book end in our small town when I found out I was carrying a life that we never planned on.

Luke took it badly, I guess I did too. We were careless, consumed with one another now we had no boundaries on what was proper and moral. Being married meant we could ignore life and just stay in bed pushing all the pain away by immersing our bodies in the act of love. Naive that it wouldn’t cause an issue somewhere along the line. I am ashamed to admit, I didn’t want it either. I am still a child myself in so many ways. I didn’t want to be responsible for a baby until it wasn’t there anymore.

I knew the moment I woke up that night, in horrendous pain and sweating as though I was being baked in an oven. I could feel there was something wrong. Luke was working an extra night-shift at the factory, cramming in every hour he could to support our new life when it happened. Absent , doing his duty as husband and being our provider. His new role as Man of the house. His new life working in a dark smelly factory, packing boxes. Hardly the dream he had of being someone worthwhile.

He came home to the news that we were no longer going to be parents and rather than be relieved like I thought he would, he cried. My strong handsome Luke. Tall, powerful with that boyish goofy smile and sandy hair of a boy raised in the southern sun. Those grey eyes, red and veined with emotion. He held me all night and took me to the hospital at first light. Those days passed in a blur of numb so that my memories are hazy even still. But that empty hollow pain inside that grew instead of a child, never left me.

It was the nail in the coffin in such unexpected ways. We pulled away, we recoiled inside our heads and his touch became nothing but a memory.

Months now of living like strangers while he avoids me to go drown his sorrows. I work my days at the diner and the numb which took place in my heart slowly started to eat away at my soul and ability to keep going. The constricting hands around my throat, squeezing tighter with every passing week until the only way I can breathe is by fantasising about running away. Somewhere that isn’t this small town where everyone knows your business. Where people don’t look at you with such sad eyes but never know what to say.

I dream about casting all of it off like I am dumping a heavy sodden wool coat that’s been making my muscles ache with the effort of carrying it. Running free, out of hell, away from agony. Away from this place, these people, this mundane life and all of the pain around me.

My sister lives hours away and I feel that I need her more than I need Luke now. She was never really my center of safety, he always was but it’s missing and I need it. He is no longer my rock or my shelter from the storm. He is at the root of my heartache and I can’t forgive him for leaving me to suffer alone day after day. He promised to always take care of me, yet he barely lingers in my company for more than minutes. His eyes always downcast or on something else and the most we have said to one another in weeks is …

“Don’t forget to take the truck to the garage for the tyre change!

That’s it. Our love has become nothing and I cannot find it within me to even know how to fix it. I don’t have the energy to do it and he isn’t trying either. I don’t want this nothing life with no future. An empty marriage with a cold empty bed he doesn’t use.

My father wanted me to go to college and be someone, but we gave it all away when we had to pay for his funeral and find a way to pay the bills on a house he left for us. It was so sudden and we had nothing in place to be prepared for losing him. I gave up my dreams to survive and now my dreams are haunting me in cruel ways.

My sister came home after he died, but she wanted me to come with her and leave our little white home behind. Leave the memories of my father to gather dust inside. To leave Luke as he went off to college on his football scholarship and have the rest of our youth as my father intended. We should have listened to her. She’s older, wiser, the mother figure I always needed and never really let her be, but the thought of being parted was nothing I could bare.

Luke was my oxygen.

We made a mistake, we shouldn’t have jumped in so quickly and brushed aside her advice and now I am leaving him and it’s no one’s fault but our own. We weren’t ready and now too much has happened. Children playing house and it’s all coming down on our heads like a pack of playing cards. We don’t have the maturity to put things right.

I want to be a child still, just for a little while longer until I find my feet. I want to go to school and come home to a happy place and a parent who worries about the bills and the problems. Not me. Not to an empty cold dark home because Luke is taking every shift to make ends meet, to clean and cook and do laundry and sleep alone.

I need the warm cosy nest where we all once lived. I want my carefree days and future plans and I miss my friends and stress free existence.

Bills, worries, jobs and sadness. I have had my fill and I have faced the world long before I was ready. It was no fun at all.

I sigh heavily and hold back the tears that have been threatening since I woke up this morning. Alone again because he had gone to work at the crack of dawn and left only the smell of his body spray behind. An eerie reminder that another human exists in my life although he has become a ghost who haunts me sometimes. The sight of his blankets on the couch, all neatly folded in an expectant little pile for another night, somehow finally broke me inside.

The distance, the emptiness of our home. The lack of hope inside of me while I battle with such heaviness and pain everyday. My father, my baby, my dependency on my love in Luke. It’s all gone and I no longer can bare to stand within these walls and pretend like everything is going to be okay.

Somehow it just triggered a response in me – Automatic pilot.

I began to pack. With every single tiny thing I put in my case my resolve grew stronger as my heart began to crumble away. The cosy, homely farm style cottage built by my grandfathers own hands hemming me in and making me feel claustrophobic in so many ways. The heat of the day only adding to the sense of suffocation. Every shelf and surface I sweep clear of anything I want with me. Sentimental things, trinkets and pictures and very few of anything of value. I take only what I need to survive until here I am with a mere suitcase and two holdalls to start a new life with.

It seems so very little.

I am leaving Luke the house, I mean he married me so it’s his now too. I can’t bear to reside in the walls with so many ghosts to pull my brain to pieces. His home, his new life, his place to sweep clean of our memories. Maybe if I am free of all those things then I won’t die inside every time I see his face in my minds eye.

Luke was there from day one, before I can ever remember. He just always was. The boy next door, the cute one that all my friends wanted to date. Mature in his own way yet with such a lame sense of humour and a naughty streak that led us astray sometimes. He was always mine, from the first time he held my hand when I was three and helped me up from falling over. Always pushing other boys away when they got too rough with play. Luke my hero. Luke my protector. Luke my handsome first love, first kiss, first sex.

Luke the husband who gave me my first broken heart.

I walk to the table and pull over the notepad to leave my last final words behind me, something he deserves to know, pulling a light jacket on to give myself a moment to think. I don’t know what to say really, when destroying a life that you thought was forever. Grasping a pen until it makes my finger sting with the force, standing mutely still as my brain scrambles for the right words.

How do you tell him?
How do you walk away from the man you hoped would be your forever, for good?

I pull the paper closer and begin to cry softly, rolling hot drops across warm flushed skin, forcing myself to just write before I lose my courage. Tears blurring my vision fully as ink starts to flow. It’s almost like I m carving them onto my own heart with a sharp implement. It pains me in every way.

‘ Luke, I’m sorry.

I thought we could do this but we can’t. This was a mistake and we are both so very unhappy. The house is yours, the truck too. I don’t want anything except what I have taken. My sister will make sure I am cared for like she always did. She will see me right.
I love you but we just don’t work and it’s time to face the reality of us.
It’s time to grow up and realise, sometimes it just doesn’t work. No matter what we do. We were too young and it was all bigger than what we could handle.
Don’t follow me. I want us both to find our own happiness in our own way.
I don’t hate you, I don’t blame you.
I will never forget all you have been for me.

Amelia xx’

I stare at it for the longest moment, aware that it’s not enough but I have no words, my insides ripping in two as doubt consumes me and his face lingers in my minds eye. The urge to rip it up and go unpack, killing me slowly. His smile blinding me in the cruelest ways as though he’s climbed inside my brain to stare at me somehow, that warm soft way of his and the gentleness of his character.

Luke was my harbor and now he is my prison. I shake him away, throwing him aside and pull up my big girl panties. Throat constricting with the effort of pulling myself together. My body throbbing and shaking as I do what I never imagined I could.

I slide off my wedding band and lay it on top of the crisp white paper, stained with a stray tear just below my name. Like a smear of shame on a pure surface. I can’t bear to look anymore.

This will hurt him, but I think he will feel relief to be unburdened from a life that is already in tatters. He can go to college like he planned. He can have the life he wanted. He can move on and who knows, maybe we might find a way to be the friends we once were. He can reach for those dreams once again and lay our bad memory to rest. Leave it in the dust with the ruins of our hearts.

I know that delaying this will only make it worse, so I turn quickly, no longer willing to torment myself over the note I am leaving behind. Hurried in my actions, grasping at my bags. I haul my cases up and prop the other bags on my shoulders. Dressed down in jeans and a t-shirt, hair tied up and shoved in his baseball cap to hide my blotchy face and puffy eyes.

I’m scared and my uncertainty is suffocating me but I know that it has to be done. The crushing pain will pass when I walk out of this house and get to the bus station. It’s not far . I can do this and I know Luke won’t be home from work for hours. He won’t see my note until i am long gone and far outwith his reach. I am leaving my cellphone off so he can’t call me and that’s another ordeal I will have to face when I switch it back on to call my sister. She won’t turn me away but I don’t want to forewarn her in case she calls Luke in a panic to somehow rescue me from my obvious breakdown. Her heart is in the right place. I can better explain when I am already on a bus heading west, leaving this southern sun behind me.

If anyone sees me they won’t recognise me like this. Dressed so boyishly and casual, a contrast to my love of girly dresses and flowy dark hair, curled at the ends. I’m already sweaty from lugging around cases. My hair pushed and hidden in a cap that conceals most of the colour and makes me almost like I am someone else. A tomboy and not that girly, floral loving country girl they all know and love.

I have my wages for the last week at work, I have all I need to start afresh, buy a ticket and get to Sadie, cut ties and leave all the past and pain behind me.

I just have to be brave.

I have to chase my own future now. I have to do what’s right for my heart. I have to save us both from the misery we inflicted upon ourselves.

I have to to do this.

It’s time to grow up – Chapter 1

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Read along (Weekly quick reads writing challenge)
A chapter by chapter read along for followers of my blog.

Chapter 1

My hand trembles over the cold metal handle of the beaten up suitcase at my feet as I scoop to pick it up, heart somersaulting stupendously. I feel sick, nerves eating me inside out and my heart is fit to burst, but I know this is what I have to do. Body shaking with the effort of so much emotional trauma.

I am leaving my husband.

Only three weeks and four days until my nineteenth birthday and I am already heading for divorce, lost all that I knew and loved and running away.

I don’t even know how it came to be that I got here.

We had it all, the fairy-tale relationship and plot to a great happy ever after. The couple everyone envied. The existence of carefree kids with long hot Alabama summers and happy lives. Bright futures, big smiles and kisses a plenty. So in love we made everyone sick.

I love him, even still and doing this is tearing me inside out, but I cannot see beyond the wreck and ruins of what was once a love that could conquer all. He was my best friend, my lifelong left arm and now …… we haven’t touched or talked in weeks and as I strip our stark white bedroom of all that is me, he is sat in the bar in town, drowning his days away as has become his routine. Ignoring life with me. Forgetting what I am to him.

He goes to work, he goes to the bar, get’s drunk and comes home to sleep on the couch, before morning to do it all over again. That has become the sad reality within the wreck of what was once strong and true. Luke has disappeared inside himself and that sparkle of his eyes has died along with the hope in my heart.

Luke was always my protector, my confidant and somehow, somewhere along the past year of our lives, we have lost one another completely, with no way back. No breadcrumb trails to find our way. My father dying suddenly of a heart attack mere weeks after my sister left to embark on her new life with her husband was the catalyst. It meant I was left alone to manage in this big old house all by myself and he swooped in to save me from my own misery.

Marriage seemed like the right thing to do.

A happiness to plough through my dark cloud days to bring me light in some small way. I wouldn’t be alone and we always intended to do it anyway. It made sense to bring it forward after graduation. Something to help me with my grief and a security I so badly needed. Losing a father and gaining a husband was meant to give me some sense of safe. No matter what, I had him and always would. Oh how foolish we were.

I love him. I have loved him since the first kiss he ever gave me when I was just four years old and he five. I loved every moment of our childhood where we ran side by side, every adventure, every hug and every mischief we found ourselves in. We were those kids that everyone knew on sight, always together. Luke and Melia. Double trouble. The conjoined twins.

Inseparable, so in sync and so completely devoted to the bubble that was us. Friends envied our ability to just exist together through thick and thin. We rarely argued, we never really fell out. I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone the way I love him. And I do. Despite what I am doing now and the evidence is my heart shredding itself to pieces little by little as I gather my things. The pain almost unbearable so that I have to struggle to take a breath and my head pulsates with the stress of my decision. I feel nauseous and faint and my courage waivers.

We can’t fix what’s broken though. It’s bigger than us.

We were already drifting apart after the wedding, when life got so real and reality of adulthood swept in to stain our innocence. It was so rushed, so odd to try and be happy and smile through my vows while I cried for the absence of my father. He had been all we had known as a parent since my mother died giving birth to me. He was our world and he was not there at the most important day of my life. Luke and I . we moved from naive kids who lost their virginity to one another on prom, to a honeymoon where suddenly sex was no longer forbidden.

Sex is a weird thing. It can just make everything so much messier, foggier and your emotions really do hit chaos when you add sex to everything else in the mix. We wanted it for so long but fear and respect of our parents made us wait. Prom just happened. A little booze, a little romance and carefree behaviour and before we knew it, we were doing things we promised we would wait for, but it didn’t seem wrong. It just strengthened everything I felt about him and cemented in my head that I would his forever. A night I will never forget.

I was still reeling from the shock of laying my father in the ground, our new found intimacy and craving to feel it from Luke as a balm over and over again. Marriage seemed like the only answer. We were adjusting to throwing away our plans of college and other lives for a picture book end in our small town when I found out I was carrying a life that we never planned on.

Luke took it badly, I guess I did too. We were careless, consumed with one another now we had no boundaries on what was proper and moral. Being married meant we could ignore life and just stay in bed pushing all the pain away by immersing our bodies in the act of love. Naive that it wouldn’t cause an issue somewhere along the line. I am ashamed to admit, I didn’t want it either. I am still a child myself in so many ways. I didn’t want to be responsible for a baby until it wasn’t there anymore.

I knew the moment I woke up that night, in horrendous pain and sweating as though I was being baked in an oven. I could feel there was something wrong. Luke was working an extra night-shift at the factory, cramming in every hour he could to support our new life when it happened. Absent , doing his duty as husband and being our provider. His new role as husband. His new life working in a dark smelly factory packing boxes. Hardly the dream he had of being someone worthwhile.

He came home to the news that we were no longer going to be parents and rather than be relieved like I thought he would, he cried. My strong handsome Luke. Tall, powerful with that boyish goofy smile and sandy hair of a boy raised in the southern sun. Those grey eyes, red and veined with emotion. He held me all night and took me to the hospital at first light. Those days passed in a blur of numb so that my memories are hazy even still. But that empty hollow pain inside that grew instead of a child, never left me.

It was the nail in the coffin in such unexpected ways. We pulled away, we recoiled inside our heads and his touch became nothing but a memory.

Months now of living like strangers while he avoids me to go drown his sorrows. I work my days at the diner and the numb which took place in my heart slowly started to eat away at my soul and ability to keep going. The constricting hands around my throat, squeezing tighter with every passing week until the only way I can breathe is by fantasising about running away. Somewhere that isn’t this small town where everyone knows your business. Where people look at you with such sad eyes but never know what to say.

I dream about casting all of it off like I am dumping a heavy sodden wool coat that’s been making my muscles ache with the effort of carrying it. Running free, out of hell, away from agony. Away from this place, these people, this mundane life and all of the pain around me.

My sister lives hours away and I feel that I need her more than I need Luke now. She was never really my center of safety, he always was but it’s missing and I need it. He is no longer my rock or my shelter from the storm. He is at the root of my heartache and I can’t forgive him for leaving me to suffer alone day after day. He promised to always take care of me, yet he barely lingers in my company for more than minutes. His eyes always downcast or on something else and the most we have said to one another in weeks is …

“Don’t forget to take the truck to the garage for the tyre change!

That’s it. Our love has become nothing and I cannot find it within me to even know how to fix it. I don’t have the energy to do it and he isn’t trying either. I don’t want this nothing life with no future. An empty marriage with a cold empty bed he doesn’t use.

My father wanted me to go to college and be someone, but we gave it all away when we had to pay for his funeral and find a way to pay the bills on a house he left for us. It was so sudden and we had nothing in place to be prepared for losing him. I gave up my dreams to survive and now my dreams are haunting me in cruel ways.

My sister came home after he died, but she wanted me to come with her and leave our little white home behind. Leave the memories of my father to gather dust inside. To leave Luke as he went off to college on his football scholarship and have the rest of our youth as my father intended. We should have listened to her. She’s older, wiser, the mother figure I always needed and never really let her be, but the thought of being parted was nothing I could bare.

Luke was my oxygen.

We made a mistake, we shouldn’t have jumped in so quickly and brushed aside her advice and now I am leaving him and it’s no one’s fault but our own. We weren’t ready and now too much has happened. Children playing house and it’s all coming down on our heads like a pack of playing cards. We don’t have the maturity to put things right.

I want to be a child still, just for a little while longer until I find my feet. I want to go to school and come home to a happy place and a parent who worries about the bills and the problems. Not me. Not to an empty cold dark home because Luke is taking every shift to make ends meet, to clean and cook and do laundry and sleep alone.

I need the warm cosy nest where we all once lived. I want my carefree days and future plans and I miss my friends and stress free existence.

Bills, worries, jobs and sadness. I have had my fill and I have faced the world long before I was ready. it was no fun at all.

I sigh heavily and hold back the tears that have been threatening since I woke up this morning. Alone again because he had gone to work at the crack of dawn and left only the smell of his body spray behind. An eerie reminder that another human exists in my life although he has become a ghost who haunts me sometimes. The sight of his blankets on the couch, all neatly folded in an expectant little pile for another night, somehow finally broke me inside.

The distance, the emptiness of our home. The lack of hope inside of me while I battle with such heaviness and pain everyday. My father, my baby, my dependency on my love in Luke. It’s all gone and I no longer can bare to stand within these walls and pretend like everything is going to be okay.

Somehow it just triggered a response in me – Automatic pilot.

I began to pack. With every single tiny thing I put in my case my resolve grew stronger as my heart began to crumble away. The cosy, homely farm style cottage built by my grandfathers own hands hemming me in and making me feel claustrophobic in so many ways. the heat of the day only adding to the sense of suffocation. Every shelf and surface I sweep clear of anything I want with me. Sentimental things, trinkets and pictures and very few of anything of value. I take only what I need to survive until here I am with a mere suitcase and two holdalls to start a new life with.

I am leaving Luke the house, I mean he married me so it’s his now too. I can’t bear to reside in the walls with so many ghosts to pull my brain to pieces. His home, his new life, his place to sweep clean of our memories. Maybe if I am free of all those things then I won’t die inside every time I see his face in my minds eye.

Luke was there from day one, before I can ever remember. He just always was. The boy next door, the cute one that all my friends wanted to date. Mature in his own way yet with such a lame sense of humour and a naughty streak that led us stray sometimes. He was always mine, from the first time he held my hand when I was three and helped me up from falling over. Always pushing other boys away when they got too rough with play. Luke my hero. Luke my protector. Luke my handsome first love, first kiss, first sex.

Luke the husband who gave me my first broken heart.

I walk to the table and pull over the notepad to leave my last final words behind me, something he deserves to know, pulling a light jacket on to give myself a moment to think. I don’t know what to say really, when destroying a life that you thought was forever. Grasping a pen until it makes my finger sting with the force, standing mutely still as my brain scrambles for the right words.

How do you tell him?
How do you walk away from the man you hoped would be your forever that you are leaving for good?

I pull the paper closer and begin to cry softly, forcing myself to just write before I lose my courage. Tears blurring my vision fully as ink starts to flow. It’s almost like I m carving them onto my own heart with a sharp implement.

‘ Luke, I’m sorry.

I thought we could do this but we can’t. This was a mistake and we are both so very unhappy. The house is yours, the truck too. I don’t want anything except what I have taken. My sister will make sure I am cared for like she always did. She will see me right.
I love you but we just don’t work and it’s time to face the reality of us.
It’s time to grow up and realise, sometimes it just doesn’t work. No matter what we do. We were too young and it was all bigger than what we could handle.
Don’t follow me. I want us both to find our own happiness in our own way.
I don’t hate you, I don’t blame you.
I will never forget all you have been for me.

Amelia xx’

I stare at it for the longest moment, my insides ripping in two as doubt consumes me and his face lingers in my minds eye. The urge to rip it up and go unpack killing me slowly. His smile blinding me in the cruelest ways as though he’s climbed inside my brain to stare at me somehow, that warm soft way of his and the gentleness of his character.

Luke was my harbor and now he is my prison.I shake him away, throwing him aside and pull up my big girl panties. Throat constricting with the effort of pulling myself together. My body throbbing and shaking as I do what I never imagined I could.

I slide off my wedding band and lay it on top of the crisp white paper, stained with a stray tear just below my name. Like a smear of shame on a pure page. I can’t bear to look anymore.

This will hurt him, but I think he will feel relief to be unburdened from a life that is already in tatters. He can go to college like he planned. He can have the life he wanted. He can move on and who knows, maybe we might find a way t o be the friends we once were. He can reach for those dreams once more and lay our bad memory to rest. Leave it in the dust with the ruins of our hearts.

I know that delaying this will only make it worse, so I turn quickly, no longer willing to torment myself over the note I am leaving behind. Hurried in my actions, grasping at my bags. I haul my cases up and prop the other bags on my shoulders. Dressed down in jeans and a t-shirt, hair tied up and shoved in his baseball cap to hide my blotchy face and puffy eyes.

I’m scared and my uncertainty is suffocating me but I know that it has to be done. The crushing pain will pass when I walk out of this house and get to the bus station. It’s not far . I can do this and I know Luke won’t be home from work for hours. he won’t see my note until i am long gone and far outwith his reach. I am leaving my cellphone off so he can’t call me and that’s another ordeal I will have to face when I switch it back on to call my sister. She won’t turn me away but I don’t want to forewarn her in case she calls Luke in a panic to somehow rescue me for my obvious breakdown. Her heart is in the right place. I can better explain when I am already on a bus heading west, leaving this southern sun behind me.

If anyone sees me they won’t recognise me like this. Dressed so boyishly and casual, a contrast to my love of girly dresses and flowy dark hair curled at the ends. I’m already sweaty from lugging around cases. My hair pushed and hidden in a cap that conceals most of the colour.

I have my wages for the last week at work, I have all I need to start afresh, buy a ticket and get to Sadie, cut ties and leave all the past and pain behind me.

I have to chase my own future now. I have to do what’s right for my heart. I have to save us both from the misery we inflicted upon ourselves.

Book 9 Launch Date!

I am so excited to be able to let you all know that book 9 is scheduled for release!!! You can click the link below to pre-order it on Amazon today.

* Announcing the release date of The Carrero Series Book 9!! *

CAMILLA WALTERS and ALEXI CARRERO embark on the final installment of their trilogy.
Love confessions hanging in the air and yet a fog of mistrust and confusion clouds the way. So much has passed and yet so much still to resolve. Danger still lurking in dark corners, threatening her life and all she is building.
A mafia based enemies to lovers tale that has gripped our hearts and pulled us on a turbulent journey to this moment.Love him or leave him, put the past to rest or let it destroy what could be.

Can she ever forgive him and allow her heart the happiness it deserves?.

Can Alexi truly be what she needs?

Alexi and Camilla stripped naked with no more lies or games to hide the truth.
Will they find home in one another?

#clubcarrero
Pre – order here http://getbook.at/CarreroContract3



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Carrero Heart Paperback – Out Now !

NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK



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The Carrero Solution – Starting Over
The Carrero Series, Book 4
by L.T Marshall

Get immersed in the world of Carrero and join the thousands who don’t want to get out.

Sophie and Arrick start their journey in this follow on from the original trilogy

Characters that will make you laugh, cry and gasp – and maybe feel a little warm inside.

Get The paperback!!
Universal Link
Buy now – http://getbook.at/CarreroHeart1PB

 The Carrero Series:
Universal Link
️Buy now – getBook.at/CarreroSeries

 Carrero Bonus Books:
Universal Link
Buy now – myBook.to/BonusBookSeries

A Depressing Tale…..

Sometimes I happen upon things in the writing and book community that thoroughly depress me and stay with me long after I bypass the post. Sometimes I know those involved, sometimes I don’t and yet it never fails to leave an impression. I don’t always blog about these things as sometimes it’s not worth the energy to become involved.

Today I saw a post that correlated to ones I had seen previously and although I had read about the situation before , this time there were accompanying screen shots and proof and it really did rile my blood. To have it all made simple and clear with just images.

As someone who thrived and lived in the creative community before becoming a full time author I think it just cut a little close to the bone and gave me a foul taste in my mouth that only goes away when I vent in some little way – IE my blog.

See, I am also a designer and artist and although those are now hobbies, not career paths, I have felt the sting of a situation similar to what I witnessed today and I happen to know this sort of thing happens all too often. Been there, done that. Carry the bitterness to those who dwell on my blocked list.

In this case we have two authors – one who also designs cover art for books at very reasonable prices.

Now I won’t go into major details, i know some will say there are always two sides to a story but I will link the post I saw today in case anyone wants to go read for themselves. So click here to go find out the facts for yourself . I am sure Mary will happily stand by her images.

I have permission from the author of the post to talk about this and having gained a little background into the situation in private I am utterly appalled.

To summarise –

Author one commissions (buys) covers from author two.
Author one pays a handsome amount of $700 or thereabouts.
Through the process everything seems fine, author one likes the work being produced and a friendship develops. That is – Until author one hears about a cover artist she is a huge fan of getting a space opening in her diary and wants to use her. That’s where things turn for the worse.
So instead of sticking with the commissioned designer she begins to make excuses to cancel the order. Using the designers pregnancy and living situation as reason. Author two cannot afford to just throw away the order and has already supplied files.
Now I am only going by the screenshots and messages and story I have had relayed to me, so I can only report upon that, but the proof I have seen seems pretty solid. You can go find the lady (linked above) and see for yourself.
Long story short -author one doesn’t want all the covers anymore despite them being a paid package and even upon getting them all, praising the work too, she decides to open a paypal dispute and get refunded for the entire lot. After she has everything.

Now I understand this happens and sometimes work is not what you paid for, that’s entirely valid, but here’s the bummer. She got her refund AND continued to use the files on her own books despite being told by the designer she no longer has the rights to use them. You can see them all on her amazon books.

Why would you do that if they were sub par, not what you wanted and you had been refunded?

The designer is left in debt, struggling to pay bills because she clealry did not budget her wages to a refund of this magnitude. That money is her income and what she pays bills with. And the author is using the covers she no longer has rights too.

Anyone else confused with how this makes the designer the bad guy?? Yeah me too, but the nasty posts and smear campaign calling the designer a scammer are a plenty.

Take from that what you will but I want to highlight something that happens a lot in this community – The sheer scamming nature of people who want something and will go to fraudulent means to get it for free and then scream victim from the roof tops. Not caring about the damage inflicted. I have witnessed it and I have felt it’s cold nasty breath when I worked in creating things for people.

Now this has turned obviously sour and we have an author trying to destroy the reputation of a designer who is severely out of pocket for the hours she spent making those covers and now having to fight to have them removed from said books. We have the other author trying to defend herself and it becomes a game of tit for tat with the truth lost along the way. people taking sides and things getting ugly. This is not an isolated thing and I have seen this happen to designers, artists, creatives, so many times, it’s not even funny at all.

The smear campaigns that follow as one clearly smug person tries to justify their actions by blaming the person they ripped off, for all wrong doing.

Paypal sides with customers most of the time, so no, a Paypal decision does not always point out an innocent party. All too many times Paypal have left people like this designer, myself and others, struggling to make a living by siding with a cocky scam artist.

Do I think that’s what this is? It does seem that way from the things I have seen.

I hate that this is something that leached from the art world I left behind and happens here under our noses to our own beloved authors and designers. It hurts the trust within our community, with our designers and pushes them to take over cautious measures to not get burned again. It makes them hike prices to recover from loss and pushes them to sometimes quit all together.

We should be embracing our artists and supporting them. It’s a skill we benefit from and we need to really appreciate the work and time they put into it. Appreciate that it’s their livelihood as is ours writing books. That cover artists can make our books sell. That they often support us long after the cover is done and they help promote our books.

We are supposed to be a supportive community. Why do we feel we can just use one another and then turn nasty and try to destroy reputations?

This is my grumble for today, I hope you all go and give her a kind word and maybe have a look at her covers for sale. Lighten her load with some positive reinforcement

Peace out , Lovelies xxx

Last day of Free for book 5

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 GRAB IT BEFORE THE FREEBIE ENDS
The Carrero Heart – The Journey.
Book 5 in The Carrero Series by L.T. Marshall sees us catching up with Sophie and Arrick.

Sophie has been living her life for the past three months, finding her feet and her strength, and determined to survive in a world without Arrick Carrero.

However, in this second installment of their trilogy the wheel of fate throws them straight back together again; like magnets, pulled by a stronger force that neither can fight.

Now Sophie has a decision to make – can she let that one person back in that she never thought would ever betray her?
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Purchase link
Book 5 – myBook.to/CarreroHeart2