Perfect Regret ( BOOK 2) (28 page)
Here is a sneak peak from Sawyer Bennett’s upcoming New Adult novel
Off Chance (Off Series #5)
Release Date- 10/21/2013
You can learn about this book and the other stories in the Off series by visiting Sawyer at:
Goodreads (page for Off Chance)
He is seeking absolution.
Flynn Caldwell has a hero complex and it’s one of the reasons he joined the New York City Fire Department. He has spent his entire professional career trying to atone for that one person he failed to save. Because, if he can do that, than perhaps he can be worthy of love again.
She is seeking escape.
Rowan Page’s life is nothing short of a disaster. Always immersed in trouble, she has only herself to depend on. She’s determined to pull herself out of this mess and make something of her life, despite the hard years she has lived on the streets of New York.
Together, they have the chance to become complete.
Flynn and Rowan’s worlds exist miles apart, but when a chance meeting brings them together, neither of them can deny the instant pull that connects them to each other. What starts as a tiny spark eventually flares into a fire so hot, it refuses to be extinguished.
Are they willing to jump feet first into the flames to see where it takes them, despite the risk of being burned?
Prologue
Flynn
8 years ago
I glance down at my watch.
11:50PM.
In about ten minutes, I’m going to see Marney. In about twenty minutes, I’m going to be buried deep inside of her and my horny, eighteen year old body starts to get a boner thinking about it.
Marney and I have been dating for just over six months but we had sex for the first time very recently.
Five days ago to be exact.
That’s one-hundred and twenty long hours or seven-thousand, two hundred excruciating minutes.
We haven’t been able to see each other the last few days between school events and work. She’s on our high school soccer team and I play baseball. When we’re not working our part-time jobs, we have our studies, and although we are just weeks away from graduation, we are both competitive and strive for good grades.
That’s a lot of shit we both have going on, which means our time together has been limited. And that’s pretty fucked up in my opinion, because sex with Marney should really be a priority in my life.
Fuck...I love my girl!
She is everything a guy could ever want. She’s drop dead gorgeous, smart as shit and funny as hell. We hadn’t been going out barely three weeks and I knew I was in love with her. I was too chicken shit to say anything, but luckily for me, Marney confessed she loved me first at just the five week mark in our relationship, and then I was able to reciprocate.
Even though love hit us kinda fast, we took our time with sex. Which is strange, now that I think about it because neither one of us were virgins. Marney had been dating our high school quarterback, Sam Faber, since the ninth grade but they had broken it off at the end of our junior year.
Lucky for me!
And while I hate to think about Marney having sex with Sam, I’m grateful I didn’t have to worry about deflowering a virgin. I mean, that’s a lot of pressure on a dude. I’d been around the block a time or two, so even though I certainly had the ability to eradicate the V-card, I was still glad I didn’t have to.
It made that first time together freakin’ fantastic. There was no fumbling around or uncertainties between us. We chose our six month anniversary to have sex for the first time and it was mind blowing. It was exactly how I’d imagined it would be...soft, slow and shattering. I’d got us a hotel room for the night, and armed with a box of condoms, both of us left starry-eyed and sore the next day.
We made plans to sneak out and meet up tonight. Marney lives just two blocks east of me and I’m going to her house to get her. I know just the place to take her. There’s a quiet spot in the woods that borders Griffith Park. It’s an unusually warm spring night, I pilfered a bottle of my parents’ wine from the liquor cabinet and I hope to make love to my girl under the stars.
I glance at my watch again.
11:55PM.
Time to rock and roll.
Bending over, I grab my backpack which has a blanket and the wine…oh, and condoms. Just as I turn for the bedroom door, the piercing wail of a siren slams into my brain. I walk to the window and pull the curtain back, catching a glimpse of a fire truck as it barrels down the road right in front of our house.
I hope to God the sound doesn’t wake my parents up and ruin my escape plan. Just as I start to turn away from the window, an orange glow catches my eye.
Right over the roof tops of the houses across the street...just east of here.
My brain doesn’t process what I’m seeing at first, but then I realize the glow is from a fire, and it looks to be pretty big. Now I know where the fire truck is going.
I turn away from the window but then a shiver runs up my spine, warning me that something is wrong. Turning back again slowly, I look back at the fire.
Just east of here.
Oh God!
Marney lives just east of here and my stomach bottoms out as I realize that glow is coming from somewhere in the vicinity of her house.
I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and hit Marney’s number. It rings four times before going to voice mail. There’s no fucking way she wouldn’t answer.
Dropping my backpack, I sprint for my bedroom door, throwing it open so hard it slams against the wall with a resounding crack, knocking my signed photograph of Martin Brodeur to the floor where it shatters. Adrenaline pumps through me as I take the stairs three at a time. I vaguely hear my dad calling out, “What the hell was that?” but I’m out the front door and tearing down the street.
I would normally go down Pine, then turn east onto Glenford Street until I hit Macon to get to Marney’s but fuck that...I don’t have time. Angling through Mrs. Capistrano’s yard, I scrabble over her chain link fence, only to take three sprinting strides in her small back yard, and do the same to get over the back part of the enclosure.
Dodging and weaving through the next block of yards, I run out onto Macon Street and come to a dead stop.
Marney’s house is just two doors down and my knees almost buckle underneath of me when I see it’s fully engulfed in flames. My hesitation lasts only a second, and I start running.
Running toward Marney.
I push my way through a sizable crowd that has filled the streets, knocking people roughly out of my way. I think I even knock a lady over but I could give a shit. Careening around one of the three fire trucks that sit in front of Marney’s house, I’m almost knocked backward by the wave of heat that is pouring off her house. Huge tongues of flame are waiving from every window but I don’t stop and in fact, kick my speed up a notch.
I’m just steps away from the front porch, holding my arm up to ward off the heat. I can’t even fathom how I’m going to get inside with the fire pouring out the front door, but that doesn’t slow my progress.
Almost there...three feet from the first porch step and then…I’m tackled from the side. My body slams into the ground and the air is knocked completely out of my lungs. I try to take in a breath, but my lungs aren’t working. Fuck it...I don’t need them to get to Marney. I start struggling with the lead weight that is on top of me, vaguely noticing that it appears to be a fireman.
I push hard against him, trying to get my legs up so I can kick him off me. I make another attempt to breathe but my lungs still aren’t cooperating.
Pulling on the last vestiges of air I have left in me, I rasp, “Get the fuck off of me.”
“Alright, kid...calm down,” I hear and then the weight is gone.
I suck in a huge lungful of oxygen. Replenished, I spring to my feet and start to make a dash to the porch but arms of fucking steel wrap around my waist and sling me away from the house. I stumble for a few feet then right myself.
Spinning around, the fireman is standing between me and Marney’s house with his arms held out in front of him. “You can’t go in there, kid.”
“The fuck I can’t,” I scream at him. “My girlfriend is in there.”
“I’m sorry...” he starts to say but I don’t have time for this shit.
Lunging for the house, I try to juke around the fireman but my skills must be rusty. He easily catches me again, wrapping me in a bear hug that I cannot break.
My body strains toward the house, the blazing heat causing rivulets of sweat to pour from my face.
“Marney,” I scream and my eyes frantically search the windows, hoping to see her somehow through the angry flames and billowing black smoke.
I try to lunge toward the house, time and time again, but the firefighter isn’t letting me go. I scream Marney’s name, over and over, until my throat feels like it’s riddled with glass shards.
And a look at the new contemporary New Adult Romance from
Zoe Dawson
A Perfect Mess
Book #1- A Perfect Secret series
Available now where e-books are sold.
I know what you did last summer.
Aubree Walker, the perfect girl most likely to succeed, is sure there’s only one person who knows what she did.
Booker Outlaw, one of the three Outlaw brothers—all identical, all gorgeous, all from the wrong side of the tracks, and all pure bad boys. He was always the unpredictable one, the one who would be brash enough to make it big self-publishing horror novels on the internet. He promised never to tell, but everyone knows you can never trust an Outlaw.
Then a year later, in the middle of the night, she receives a phone call at Tulane. Her aunt, who took her in after her mother’s death, is in a coma under suspicious circumstances. Now she has to face that one person who knows all about what she did that summer—sexy Booker.
Returning to Hope Parish to be with her aunt, stirs up all those ugly memories. When Aubree starts getting threats, she can’t help but wonder if what she did last summer was tied to her aunt’s “accident.” Afraid, she turns to the only person who knows the truth and Booker doesn’t hesitate to offer his broad shoulder for her to lean on. But Booker has a secret of his own that could crush their fledgling relationship.
As the hot, sultry summer days move on, she finds that even a perfectly smart girl can lose her heart to a perfectly bad boy. What is she going to do when someone starts asking questions Aubree doesn’t want to answer? She’s knee deep into a terribly dangerous, wholly life changing, who-can-she-really-depend-on perfect mess.
***
Aubree
“This solution is incorrect, Miss Walker.”
I looked down at the formula and went back over it carefully. “No, sir. I believe that this is the correct answer. I’m sure I got it right.”
“No. It’s wrong.”
“Could you tell me why?”
“Because a mongoose doesn’t mate with a chicken.”
“What? I’m sorry. I don’t understand what that has to do with math.”
“Exactly. Perhaps you haven’t been working hard enough. Maybe you got too many A’s and not enough F’s. Everyone in this class knows that a mongoose doesn’t mate with a chicken.”
I looked around at the class. All the desks were occupied with…chickens. They all looked at me with beady red eyes and sharp yellow beaks, laughing their fool chicken heads off.
Oh god, I was being mocked by a roomful of chickens who knew how to do math better than I did. “But they’re all chickens. Of course, they would know the answer.”
“That’s right, and you’re not a chicken.”
“But I could be a chicken. I could study more, work harder.”
“I’m afraid not. Do you know what happens to you in this class if you get the problem wrong? If you don’t measure up?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s the stewpot. We don’t tolerate stupid chickens in here.”
“But…but I’m not a chicken.”
“No? Then you’re just plain stupid.”
“No!” I cried. “I’ll try harder. I’ll be as good as I can.”
“I’ll be the perfect chicken,” I murmured, tossing and turning, kicking at the bed sheets. A pillow sailed across the room and struck me right in the head, drawing me out of that fitful dream.
“Aubree. You’re having the chicken dream again. If you don’t shut up, I’m going to yank out all your feathers,” Ashley grumbled. My roommate Ashley Cook and I were opposites. I was an uptight stats major and she was an artsy landscape architecture major. She was wild. I was sedate. But somehow we clicked.
Before I could respond to her half-serious threat, my cell phone chimed. I sat up in bed, now fully awake, my heart pounding. A call at this time of night was never good…wait…two a.m….it was technically morning. I fumbled around for the light and stumbled out of bed.
“Aubree. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said rummaging through my Einstein tote in frustration.
“Oh, just turn it upside down.” Ashley huffed. Her golden blonde hair fell forward in a loose braid as she got out of bed, grabbed it out of my hands, and upended my neatly packed bag onto my bed. She snatched my cell from the jumble and handed it to me. “I swear, Aubree, you’d spend all night huntin’for it.”
“I knew exactly where it was, miz pushy. You didn’t have to make a mess out of my bag. Albert hates that.”
An indignant sniff was her reply. “Albert can kiss my ass along with your chicken professor. Besides, you love putting all your humpty-dumpty stuff back together again. Admit it.” She yawned and settled herself on the edge of the bed once again, legs crossed, her expression wry.
“Hello.” My voice was scratchy from sleep.
“Aubree Walker?” The man’s voice was deep, brushed with a soft Southern drawl.
“Yes,”
“This is Sheriff Mike Dalton.”
I frowned. I knew that name. “From Suttontowne?”
His voice was brusque, but there was regret threaded through it. “Yes. I’m calling to inform you that your aunt has been injured. She’s in the hospital.”
My hand flew to my mouth, my heart jumping into my throat. “Oh, god. What happened?” My Aunt Lottie was my only living relative. The past and the present merged and I was back against the wall, waiting for my mother to wake up from an eternal nap. If it hadn’t been for my Aunt Lottie, who had welcomed me into her home and her life with open arms, I would have been alone.
“The best that we can tell, she fell down the stairs.”
I bit my lip until I tasted blood, fighting furiously to hold back the tears that gathered in my eyes and constricted into a solid lump in my throat. “How bad is she?”
“She’s been unconscious since I found her when I was doing my rounds. But the good news is there are no broken bones.”
“That’s a relief. I can be there in two hours. Do you know when visiting hours are?”
“Just a moment.”
I heard muffled voices and then he came back on the line. “Eight a.m.”
“Okay. Thank you, Sheriff.”
“You’re welcome, Miz Walker. Call me when you get to town and we’ll talk.”
“Okay, goodbye.”
“What happened, Aubree?” Ashley rose and put her arm around me.
I looked over at her. “My aunt’s in the hospital. She fell and is still unconscious. I’ve got to go back to Suttontowne.”
“Now, tonight? Can’t you wait until the morning?”
I shook my head. My mother had died when I was at school. I couldn’t take the chance that the same thing would happen to Aunt Lottie. I owed her so much.
I went to the closet and grabbed my suitcases and threw them on the bed. I was relieved that exams were over and all I had to worry about was my research assistantship.
“What about your RA with Dr. Wells?”
“I should be able to do the bulk of the work on my computer while I’m in Suttontowne. I’ll email him before I leave.”
“I’m so sorry.”
It took me no more than thirty minutes to pack and dash off an email to Dr. Wells. Ashley helped cart some of my luggage down to the car. Before I slid into the driver’s seat, she hugged me.
“Make sure to keep me posted on how she’s doing. And be a good chicken while you’re gone.”
“Cluck, cluck.” I managed with a weak smile. “I’ll call you. Thanks, Ash.”
As I drove towards Suttontowne in Hope Parish, where I had lived with my aunt for seven years, I struggled to manage my increasing anxiety. I couldn’t lose my aunt. She was the only family I had left, and losing her would leave me totally alone. Even more alone than I had been for the first twelve years of my life.
It had scared me something terrible when my mother went into one of her blue spells—crying all the time, hardly ever getting out of her nightclothes, shutting herself away. I’ve always thought that the last spell she had did her in. She’d been too blue to get out and see a doctor, and she’d died of pneumonia. Two days later my Aunt Lottie found me still pressed against the wall too terrified to move. Too terrified about what would happen when they found out my mother was gone and I had nobody.
I shook the anxious thoughts out of my head and turned on the radio to a lively Cajun station, hoping the cheerful Zydeco music would keep my fears at bay.
Avoiding the rear view mirror, where I couldn’t help seeing the old ghosts that haunted the depths of my green eyes, I let the music take me home.
Someplace I didn’t want to be.
Ever again.
