Kristen Ashley continues to infuse her stories with such depth of emotion that I can see myself re-reading her novels until I’m old and gray. The latest River Rain instalment is a richly layered tale of second chances in life, of redemption, of forgiveness, of knowing our self-worth and believing in the best version of ourselves, no matter how hard our demons fight to break us down, and you can read an excerpt below.
Excerpt
“Actually, it does. Newsflash, Mum, like my wedding wasn’t your wedding, even if you took it over, Alex’s wedding isn’t your wedding either.”
That made Mum mad, and she didn’t hide it. “I did everything as you’d wish it to be.”
“How do you know what I wished?” I asked. “You didn’t ask. Furthermore, you don’t know me. Back then, I didn’t even know me.”
“I know you made the biggest mistake of your life letting Chad Head slip through your fingers.”
I blinked, the shock I felt at her statement was so profound.
Then I stared.
“He cheated on me…a lot,” I reminded her.
“He didn’t put his ring on any of those women’s fingers,” she reminded me.
I knew she was crazy.
But that was insane.
“Mum, he cheated on me…even just days before our wedding. At a party celebrating our rapidly upcoming nuptials, he was fucking a friend of mine in a broom closet or something.”
“This is a woman’s lot,” she rejoined.
God!
She wasn’t to be believed.
“Maybe it was in 1567, when women had no power,” I stated. “Now a woman can tell a man who can’t keep his dick in his pants to go fuck himself.”
Mum opened her mouth, her eyes flicked over my shoulder, she jolted, then her entire countenance changed from infuriated to obsequious.
“Wallace, dear, how are you enjoying the party?” she asked.
Oh hell.
I turned.
And yes, there he was. All six foot four, muscled mass of him wearing a nice, chestnut-colored button down and jeans. If the damned man didn’t open his mouth, you’d think he’d been born in the desert mountains we were currently inhabiting.
By the by, Mum had always called him Wallace, and I didn’t know why. It felt like some nod to old aristocracy or something, even though her (yes, my) family were aristocrats, and the Wallaces were not. They were just filthy rich.
I sensed Dair wasn’t a fan of it, but he’d never said anything.
I took him in up close.
He wasn’t carrying another plate of food, thank God.
But those perfectly full lips in his tanned, rugged outdoorsman face were twitching like he was fighting a smile.
He’d heard what I’d said about Chad.
And it amused him.
God, I wanted to punch him.
I’d been wanting to punch him since I was six, and he was nine, and he’d taken me to that awful room in that horrible building on his family’s estate where they skinned all the deer they’d hunted that day, making me cry and gag and go screaming to my mother, who’d then forced me to eat venison that night.
I had avoided meat as much as I could since then.
I did not count myself as a vegetarian, because that was way too hippie for me (shudder). But I’d never forgotten those beautiful, sad carcasses. And it had been decades.
“Food is great. Rix is a good lad,” Dair replied to Mum.
Mum’s gaze drifted to where Rix was now standing, talking to his brother, Josh, along with Judge and Judge’s dad, Jamie.
And she mumbled, “I suppose.”
Dair made a noise like a grunt, and my attention turned to him.
His gray-blue eyes were narrowed on my mother, and he was wearing an expression of distaste easily visible on his features.
“Salt of the earth,” he continued, his rich Scottish burr vibrating naturally, but doing it on those words firm to inflexible.
Mum’s gaze raced back to Dair, and pure Dair Wallace, he didn’t bother to adjust his expression.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Good man. Perfect for my little girl.”
Like she gave that first shit about Alex…or me.
God, she made me want to vomit.
Dair dismissed her completely and turned to me.
I was fighting a smirk at how he so obviously shut Mum out, until he spoke.
“Wicked as fuck how ye publicly humiliated that wankstain.”
There it was.
The entire Wallace family had of course been in attendance when I’d left Chad at the altar.
Well, not so much left him there, but instead pulled a huge drama where I exposed him as the cheat he was, something that started a massive brawl in the church. A brawl that Rix and Dad had to rescue me from…physically.
I felt my throat close at the reminder of that particular humiliation, which only Dair would bring up right to my face (well, only Dair and my own mother). Wrestling with the weight of it, I couldn’t hold eye contact with him.
“Chad was young, a little wayward,” Mum again defended my ex…wankstain.
“Ye could be thirteen and courtin’ your first lassie and ken not to fuck her about like that,” Dair retorted.
“Dear, you are in the presence of ladies,” Mum admonished him on a valiant forgiving smile. “Perhaps mind your language,” she suggested.
“Your own daughter just described that twat as a bloke who can’t keep his dick in his pants, and he should go fuck himself.” He again turned to me and smiled a blinding bright smile of strong, white teeth in tanned face. “Reckon he only had that choice for a while after ye gutted him. No woman would touch him after ye got through with him.”
“I try not to think of Chad in that manner, or at all,” I replied.
“Good choice,” Dair approved.”
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River Rain - Recommended Reading Order
(standalone stories with interconnected characters)
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