One memory.
One special summer.
The one thing Bliss York had lost herself in when the fear and sickness were too much, moments never to be damaged by the harsh reality that followed...until now.
Bliss York didn't live a normal teenage life. She didn't go to Friday night football games, walk the halls with her friends every day, go to her prom or even walk to receive her diploma. It had all been taken from her the Fall that she was fifteen years old and she was given the diagnosis no one ever wants to hear.
She had leukemia.
Seven years after spending a summer with a girl who he knew would always be his first love and the one who got away, Nate Finley returns to Sea Breeze to help his fiancé open her new boutique clothing store. When the new employee walks in Nate is taken back seven years to the girl he thought he'd love forever. The one who never answered his calls or returned his texts. The one who shut him out completely with not even a goodbye and broke his heart.
They've each become someone different. No longer the young teens with stars in their eyes. But does that matter when your heart still says
thats the one.
Happy New Year! In 2017 I will go back to self-publishing my new adult and adult romance titles. E-book prices will once again be $3.99 and I will be able to put out more than a couple books a year. My teen fiction will remain with Simon Pulse (Field Party Series) and Feiwel and Friends (AS SHE FADES in 2018)
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the "grown up" kids from Rosemary Beach and Sea Breeze.
The door to Octavia's swung open and out stepped a tower of boxes. I stopped, because the tower was tipping towards me, and just before it crashed I spoke.
"Careful," I said, before reaching to steady the body behind the cardboard. "Can you see where you're going?"
I heard a squeal and then they came down. I moved to help when my eyes locked with a pair I new all too well. Id only seen eyes like that once before and they were blue and keep and cool. The long thick dark hair tumbling down past her shoulders was also familiar to me. She was older and her body now curved in all the right places. She had definitely developed since the teenage years. No longer fifteen she'd become a woman.
Bliss York had been my first love. Or so I'd thought back then. Come to find out she'd been my first lust, because I had no idea how to love. Her face could stop traffic and that was without any makeup. She was as natural as I remembered. Nothing fake about her. Her smile had once made everything perfect in my world.
"Oh, I'm sorry..." she said, trailing off as her eyes scanned my face. I saw the realization there. She remembered me. Knew who I was. The boy who had given her that first kiss. Told her he would love her forever. Then I left after a summer of what I thought was the beginning of forever. I'd been a bit of a dreamer back then. It was before I realized that women weren't as soft and pretty on the inside as they were on the outside. My mother was perfect, inside and out, but my little sister Ophelia had a definite evil streak.
"You work here?" I asked before she could say my name. I didn't want to remember that summer. I had remembered it for far too long. Once I finally got it through my head that Bliss York wasn't the perfect girl, I'd let myself forget her entirely.
She opened her mouth to speak, then slowly nodded her head.
I knew that Octavia had hired someone to help her get things ready. I just hadn't been told her name. Not that it mattered. That was seven summer's back and a past that would stay there.
I picked up a fallen box. "I'm Octavia's fiancé Nate." That should answer her questions and also lead her to believe I didn't remember. "I'll get the boxes to the recycle bin."
I didn't wait for her to give me her name. I went to work picking up the rest of the fallen boxes. She didn't mover what felt like several minutes, but was actually just a few fleeting seconds. I was tense. Nostrum why. If she told me who she was and asked if I remembered, I could still act as if I'd forgotten. Seven fucking years had passed. We'd been kids then. We weren't now. I was a different person and I was sure she was too.
"Okay, um...thank you," she said. I wanted to look up and watch her go. To take in the woman she'd become. To see just how much her body had changed. The glimpse I'd allowed myself at first had been impressive and I wanted another. She had been a beauty back then. Now she was gorgeous and I had to fucking work with this beauty for the next two weeks.
Shit.
This would only happen to me.
Abbi Glines is a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Rosemary Beach, Sea Breeze, Vincent Boys, Existence, and The Field Party Series . She never cooks unless baking during the Christmas holiday counts. She believes in ghosts and has a habit of asking people if their house is haunted before she goes in it. She drinks afternoon tea because she wants to be British but alas she was born in Alabama. When asked how many books she has written she has to stop and count on her fingers. When she’s not locked away writing, she is reading, shopping (major shoe and purse addiction), sneaking off to the movies alone, and listening to the drama in her teenagers lives while making mental notes on the good stuff to use later. Don’t judge.
You can connect with Abbi online in several different ways. She uses social media to procrastinate.
Nikky Kaye believes that life is too short not to giggle while you're reading--or writing. She is careful not to feed her young twin boys after midnight, and hides a terrible Diet Coke addiction from her husband. She has worked with movie starts and the United Nations, but thinks creating stories that make people sigh is almost better than world peace. And she feels really awkward talking about herself in the third person.
