A riveting new page-turner is coming next week from Marie Force, and I have a little sneak peek for you. It’s the story of two girls who witness a crime committed by a young man they grew up with. Years later, one of them decides that she can’t live with this secret anymore. All hell breaks loose for her, the town, and everyone involved when she reports what she saw.
Excerpt
Jack is too cute for his own good—and mine. And it occurs to me that before he decides he might like me, he needs to know why I came to town in the first place. Hearing my story might make him never want to see me again.
After he washes his hands, he dries them on a towel as he studies me. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
I shake it off and force a smile. “Nothing.”
“Something…”
“I want to tell you why I’m here, but I’m afraid you won’t want to be friends with me anymore.”
“And it would bother you if we weren’t friends anymore?”
I think he might be asking about more than just basic friendship. “Yeah, I think it would.”
He surprises me when he tosses the towel aside, takes my hand and leads me into a cozy living room with a wood-burning stove and two full walls of bookshelves.
I scan the shelves stuffed with books. “All this, and you read.”
“I saw a thing once advising women to quickly run for their lives if they come to a guy’s house and he has no books. So I bought these at a yard sale.”
“You did not.”
Laughing, he says, “Made you wonder, though, didn’t I?”
He’s fun, funny, handsome, talented, smart, sexy, sweet and kind. He’s all the things. And he deserves to know what I did before he decides if he wants to spend more time with me.
When we sit next to each other on the sofa, he doesn’t release my hand.
I’m one hundred percent sure that if I give even the slightest tug, he’ll let go instantly. The only fear I have of this man is the possibility of losing my heart to him. I’ve never experienced this kind of connection before, and I’d be sad to lose him before I ever got the chance to really know him.
“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
“It is. It’s terrible.”
He turns to face me. “Tell me.”
I fix my gaze on the far wall, so I won’t have to see his revulsion when I confess my sin to him. “When I was almost seventeen, I witnessed a crime. For many reasons that made sense to me at the time, I didn’t report what I saw. Keeping that secret for fourteen years has all but wrecked me, and this week, I finally reported it. That’s why I’m here.”
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