by Loretta Lost
Publication date: April 26th 2016
Genres: New Adult, Romance, Suspense
BLURB
Happily ever after isn’t always
easy…
Helen and Liam are engaged to be
married and their relationship is stronger than ever. But when Helen encourages
the young doctor to mend fences with his estranged family before the wedding,
she unintentionally opens a dangerous can of worms.
A devastating secret from Liam’s
past emerges, threatening to tear him apart. The horrors of his family
skeletons make him feel that it is a huge mistake to try to start a new family
with Helen. Unable to cope, he pushes everyone away, including his fiancée and
even his best friend Owen.
Now Helen must do all she can to
save the man who has saved her so many times. Liam has put himself on the line
to help her heal in the past, and she hopes to do the same—if she can even get
close enough to try…
Prologue
Liam
Larson, 1989
I am standing
on the side of the road and holding a newborn infant.
She is
looking up at me with curiosity on her face, and I can already tell she’s going
to be my best friend. We’re going to do everything together, especially
coloring and making snow angels. She’s really tiny right now, but I’m sure that
when she’s a little bigger she’ll love playing catch with me. I have a ball,
but I don’t have anyone to play with.
First, I need
to know her name.
“What are we
going to call her, Mama?”
Turning to
the side, I look at my mother who is sitting in the driver’s seat of the car
and crying softly. I think she’s crying because it hurt a lot to take the baby
out of her stomach. There is blood staining her dress, and she is clutching her
midsection as her shoulders shake with sobs. She barely makes any sound, but
she is shaking so hard that the car is trembling beneath her.
I thought she
needed to go to the hospital, but she said no.
The baby in
my arms is bloody and red. Maybe that's why Mama
never wanted to touch her. When she came out, I tried to wipe most of
the gooey stuff off her before wrapping her up in Mama’s green sweater. Once I
got it all off her face, I was able to see that she’s perfect. She has clear
blue eyes and chubby little fingers. Her bellybutton was funny. I asked Mama
what to do about the floppy string, but she wouldn’t help me.
“Liam,” my
mother says from the car, and she is crying so much that she can hardly
breathe. “Leave her there. Hurry! Before someone drives by.”
I look around
in confusion. It’s early morning, and there aren’t many other cars on the road.
Why would Mama want me to leave the baby here? It’s winter and there is a thin
layer of snow on the ground. I shift the baby in my arms, because they are
growing tired. She might be tiny, but I’m not that big and strong yet and it’s
hard to hold her.
“Please,
Liam,” my mother says again, placing her face in her hands as though she cannot
look at me. “Put the baby down and come back into the car.”
“I don’t want
to. She’ll be cold.”
My mother
wipes her face on her sleeve, trying to remove some of the tears and clean her
runny nose. She sits up a little straighter and grasps the steering wheel
tightly. “Liam, if you don’t get your ass back here this instant I’ll tell your
father that you disobeyed me. He’ll give you a good beating!”
I flinch at
this prospect, and hug the baby tighter against my chest. I don’t want Papa to
hit me anymore. He’s been away for a little while, but I know he’ll be back
soon, and he’ll start hurting me again.
“For god’s
sake, Liam,” my mother whispers desperately. “If you don’t do as I say, your
father will kill me. He’s going to strangle me to death, and who knows what
he’ll do to the baby. He hates little
girls.”
She’s right.
I have seen my father choke my mother before, and he always says mean things
about girls. I begin to grow very afraid. Will he treat the baby in my arms
even worse than he treats me? If putting her down means she won’t get punched
or kicked by Papa, is that better? Somehow, she feels glued to my chest, and I
don’t want to let her go; not for anything.
“Please,” my
mother says frantically as she waves me over with her hand. “Please just leave
the baby there.”
“But… but
she’ll get hurt. If cars drive by, they could hit her.”
“We’ll come
back for her, soon. I promise. I just need to go home. I’m in a lot of pain.”
I look down
at the ground fearfully. “Are you sure, Mama?”
“Leave her, Liam!”
I quickly
move to do as she says, and place the baby down in the snow on the side of the
road. The little girl looks at me in confusion as I stand up, and her tiny arms
move a little, reaching out for me. I can tell she already misses the warmth of
being held; she misses me. My heart is breaking. This feels wrong.
“Quickly,
Liam!” my mother shouts.
Ripping my
own coat off my shoulders, I lay it over the baby as an extra layer of
protection. She makes a cooing sound as she looks up at me, and I feel tears
falling from my eyes onto her cheeks. “I love you,” I tell her, bending down to
place a kiss on her forehead. “I’m sorry. We’ll come back for you, little
sister. Mama promised.” I have a terrible feeling, but I’m too afraid to go
against my mother, so I run back to the car. I can hear the baby start to cry,
and my insides ache.
I have barely
jumped into the vehicle before my mom starts driving away. I didn’t even get a
chance to close my car door, but it slams shut with the force of the car’s
acceleration. My mother is sobbing and the car is veering dangerously as she
drives away at breakneck speeds.
“Mama?” I ask
her nervously. “Are we gonna go back for her soon?”
“Who?” my
mother asks brokenly.
“The baby.”
“What baby?”
Tears pour down my mother’s face as she shakes her head violently. “There is no
baby. There never was a baby.”
Her words
confuse me, and I look behind the car to try to see where I laid the infant
down on the side of the road. I can still hear her cries echoing in my ears. I
can still see her sweet face looking up at me. “Mama, we have to go back,” I
say as panic begins to fill my chest. “I left the baby there and it’s so cold.
She doesn’t even have clothes yet. Can we go back now?”
“There is no
baby,” my mother says quietly, repeating the words to herself over and over.
“There is no baby.”
I am
terrified. There’s something wrong with my mother and I don’t know what to do.
What’s going to happen now? Is my little sister going to be okay? I am her big
brother. I was supposed to protect her.
What have I
done?
Author Info
Loretta Lost is a USA Today
bestselling author who writes stories where very bad things happen to good
people. Mystery, tragedy, and danger complicate her unique romances between
characters who will do anything to protect each other.
In the two days of summer that
she gets in Canada, she grows a garden of the hottest peppers in the world. She
loves using these peppers to torture her guests and challenge their manhood.
This could be why she isn't married.
Subscribe to Loretta's mailing list
for updates: www.eepurl.com/O0WTL
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Author Links:
Do you
have any advice for aspiring writers? Sure!
Writing will destroy your life. If it doesn’t, you’re not doing it right.
Are
there any writing rituals you’ve developed? For
the last few books that I’ve written, I’ve stopped washing my hair until they
were completed. It’s an effective way of keeping myself trapped in “writing
mode.” When I do wash my hair, I feel attractive and energetic, and yearn to go
outside and do human things among other humans. If my hair is gross, I feel too
embarrassed to show my face in public and I am forced to stay at home and keep
working.
How do
you deal with the isolation of writing? I
believe it’s important to have friends who are also writers so that you can
share the struggles. I also recently got a cat, and he provides a little
companionship by cuddling up to me when I’m working.
How do
you stay healthy when sitting on your butt all day? You
need to get up and take walks regularly. Personally, I need to move to
different locations throughout the day to keep things interesting, because I
get sick of sitting one way. Having good posture while writing plays a huge
role in avoiding headaches or neck pain.
What is
your favourite food? I’m obsessed with nachos and could eat them every day
of my life.
What
are your favourite TV shows? Breaking Bad, The Walking
Dead, The Good Wife, How to Get Away with Murder, The Affair, Firefly, Charmed,
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and the list goes on…
If you
could be anything other than a writer, what would you be? Definitely an assassin.
What is
your secret wish? I would be overjoyed if the world ended and we were
all plunged into the zombie apocalypse. I think everyone would have a lot more
fun. I would miss writing and publishing books, but I would really enjoy all of
the physical activity involved with constantly fighting for survival.
There
is a lot of medicine in your books. Did you ever want to be a doctor? I would have enjoyed going to med school if my father didn’t love the
idea. I despise my father, as he is a terrible human being, and I would never
give him the satisfaction of doing something he’d approve of.
There
is a lot of romance in your books. How do you feel about marriage? Sadly, I have almost stopped believing that true love and mutual
respect in relationships exists outside of fiction. As I get older, I find
myself turning down marriage proposals and saying, “Let’s be friends instead.
That way, nothing can go wrong.” This makes me even more dependent on my
stories for love and romance—writing creates a safe place where one can be
optimistic and risk getting hurt.
Author Links:
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