120 days... (43 page)

That was his way, always looking out for me. We swam together during high school. I remember my coach wanted me to join this other team. I was scared because I wouldn’t know anyone. Cameron decided to join too.

He looked at me, so serious. “We’ll carpool.”

And then, through that awful relationship, I remember him putting his hands on either side of my face, trying to convince me I deserved better, wanting to beat up my ex for hurting me.

That December in 2001, I was home one week, and I saw Cameron three times.

I was busy when I first got back to Arizona. I didn’t call him right away. When I did, it was just after New Year’s. He was in the hospital. I spoke to his younger brother. He told me Cameron overdid it when I was in town. I didn’t know.

Cameron called me when he got out of the hospital. It was the first time I actually considered that he might die. I remember saying that he couldn’t die, that I was putting my foot down, like I had any power. I made him promise me he wouldn’t die, and he did. He promised. When we hung up, I was certain he would beat it again. That was the last time I ever spoke to him.

When my caller ID flashed his name, I answered all happy and excited to talk to him. But it wasn’t him. It was his dad.

The second he said, “This is Cameron’s dad,” I knew.

We didn’t talk long, and I honestly don’t remember anything after he said, “Cameron is gone.”

At the time, I was a smoker. I went out on my front porch to cry and have a smoke. I lived in Phoenix. It never really got windy unless there was a monsoon, which between you and me, I never understood what the big deal was. It was just rain. It rained all the time in Virginia. Either way, it was windy, really windy, and there wasn’t a monsoon. It felt like Cameron was coming to say good-bye, using the wind to wipe the tears from my face.

After that night, I began to associate wind with feeling Cameron’s presence. I would lie in bed at night and turn the ceiling fan above my bed to the highest setting to imagine it was him. He was the wind.

Harry Potter helped me grieve. It gave me time to rest in my memories of Cameron. I bought each book as they came out and saw each movie.

When the second movie came out, I went by myself on opening weekend. It was packed, standing in line with little kids dressed up as wizards. I had people, strangers really, sitting on either side of me. They probably thought I was off when I sobbed through the opening credits. I just wished Cameron were there with me. That familiar opening melody broke my heart.

By the third movie’s release, I had a boyfriend. We were pretty serious, but he understood why I went to that movie alone. I told him about Cameron. When we became engaged, he started to come with me. He would hold my hand while I cried.

The last two movies were hard. The books were all out. The end was in sight. During Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, I came close to inflicting bodily harm on the people sitting behind me who were laughing during that scene at the end with Harry and Dobby on the beach. Didn’t they know? Couldn’t they understand these movies, this experience, meant so much to me? The last movie was the hardest for me.

I am now married to a wonderful man, and we have beautiful children. I understand how blessed I am. I mourn the what-if with Cameron, and even if nothing had ever come of us, I feel sad every day because the world lost such a beautiful soul.

So, for me, Harry Potter will always make me think of Cameron and the cancer that took him away.

I want to say thank you, thank you to everyone who has helped me when my Dad was diagnosed with cancer and then my mom. Thank you to everyone who listened to me talk about this project, told me I was strong for writing it and couldn’t wait to read it. Thank you to all my beta readers, editor and clean readers for helping to make this story better than I ever could have imagined possible. And last, but not least, thank you for picking up my book and reading it. I hope, in the end, you remember more than all the tears. I hope you remember to love harder.—M. Stratton

The Storm Series (Romantic Thrillers)

After the Storm—Book One:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G5WYCD8

Alexia “Lexi” Hanson moved across the country to rebuild her life after the attack which almost destroyed her. She enjoys the simple things in her beach cottage. Life is finally complete.

Noah Matthews is Rock & Roll’s hottest star and on top of the world. After years without a break, he finds the solitude he craves at his beach house. Enjoying his early morning coffee, Noah is surprised to see his neighbor sneak into his garden and crawl around.

They never saw that fateful morning coming. Someone was watching them. Someone who thought Lexi belonged to him and would stop at nothing to have her.

Lives are changed forever when they meet amongst the blooms in his garden. Even when things seem darkest, there is always light After the Storm.

Eye of the Storm—Book Two:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IJF4E2I

Evie Taylor loves her life in Boston, running her bookstore and café, but an accident has made it so she needs to return home to take care of her grandmother. With extra time on her hands, she decides to start looking for the monster which haunts her best friend’s nightmares, and a chain of events begins which no one could see coming.

When the last person she ever expected shows up and rings her grandmother’s doorbell, she finds herself in the middle of danger. Bound together in a common mission, they’ll search the world looking for answers. But can they find them in time, or will they end up paying the ultimate price?

As the storm rages around them, they find each other and the calm in the Eye of the Storm.

Caught in the Storm—Book Three:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KY4DH6G

What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?

Kat Snyder has spent years chasing after the man who attacked her and left her for dead. It is her one obsession, and she won’t let anyone stand in her way. Now that they are getting closer to finding him, she begins to doubt herself and her need for revenge.

Jackson “Jack” Taylor lost the only woman he truly loved. Now that he’s found her again, he’s not letting go and will do everything in his power to make her see they can have a life together. Together they search for the monster who has hurt so many women.

The closer they get, the closer they become, until they are both Caught in the Storm.

The Storm Series Box Set—
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZWA6RP0

Includes all three above books plus two short stories where you learn more about the darkness behind the books.

The Dana Marshall Files

Volume 1 (Two short stories)—
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0113F0UQ4

Blown Away

While Dana Marshall didn’t have a perfect life, she did have a mother who loved her, a mother who encouraged her to be whatever she wanted when she grew up. They both had dreams of all she could accomplish, what she could do when she left this small town.

Then her mother was killed and everything changed. What Dana Marshall wanted to do when she graduated was something completely different than what her and her mother imagined. Mama didn’t have this in mind.

Her life was destroyed when a monster killed her mother. Without protection, she fell prey to her alcoholic father. Taking her time, Dana did her research, saved her pennies until finally the storm blew in and scattered her problems to the other side of the county.

The first kill is always the hardest.

Kiss of Death

After successfully killing two men and getting away with it, Dana Marshall had her next kill.

Adrian Silva started beating his wife, Maria, before the ink was dry on the marriage license. When his stepdaughter became a teenager, his eyes turned to her. After an unsuccessful rape attempt, Yara Rivera took matters into her own hands. She attempted to kill him by putting boric acid in his whisky. He drank it, but lived. Sent to juvenile hall, Yara is unable to protect her mother. She knew there was nothing she could do but get her mother to leave Adrian.

Successfully escaping from him, Yara protected her family with everything she had, leaving her listening for every bump in the night in their small apartment every night.

With her file complete, Dana travels to Upstate New York to give Adrian her own kiss of death.

Stand-Alone Novels—Romantic Thriller

Fade to Black:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MT3TK8E

Devlin Cross is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. He has his pick of the scripts and his pick of the women. While on a break from filming his current movie, he takes a drive through the countryside and stops at a local art gallery. There, the owner isn’t star-struck by having him in her shop.

Lily Walker is a single mother who wants nothing to do with men. Her goal in life is to raise her son to the best of her ability and give him the stable home life she never had. With her failed marriage behind her, the last thing on her radar is a relationship, especially one with a famous movie star.

Not every breakup is mutual. Some ex-lovers never let go. Some will do whatever it takes to have that person back in their lives. Dead . . . or alive.

Bender:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S5NKZG8

Since high school, everyone thought Jake Bender would end up behind bars; after all, he comes from a long line of bad boys. He spent years away from the place he called home. When he finally comes back, everyone thinks he’s just a punk kid all grown up who’s now running a dive bar called The Night Club. What they don’t know is he heads a special task force which cleans up neighborhoods and makes them safe again.

Stormy Ryan has always felt more comfortable with her books than with people, and she loves to spend her days within the pages. When her second-hand bookstore is robbed for the third time in as many months, her employees quit leaving her to run the shop on her own. With the pressure of having to deal with her shop and people, not to mention the declining neighborhood, she is at the end of her rope.

When closing up her shop late one night, she is held up and the neighborhood bad boy saves her, putting both of them at the forefront of a psychotic’s obsession.

Being bad has never looked so good.

Paranormal Novellas

Constant Echo:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O2C4PSA