There is more goodness coming to you from the Forever Young Blog Tour hosted by Forever Books. We’ve got more awesome excerpts from Shannon Richard and J.A. Redmerski. Check out an excerpt from J.A. Redmerski’s Song of the Fireflies:
When I made my way back to the top, I found Bray wasn’t sitting near the edge of the ridge where I had left her I moved farther out into the clearing with our blankets draped over one shoulder.
“Bray?” I said, looking around.
I brushed it off for a second, thinking she was probably just taking a piss behind a tree somewhere, and I set our blankets on the ground.
But then I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I walked quickly toward the edge and looked over. My heart started to bang against my rib cage. I peered down as far as my sight could penetrate the darkness, but took a step back upon realizing that if she had fallen there was no way I’d be able to see from way up here.
She had to be somewhere around close by. She had to be.
“Bray?” I called out again. “Where the hell did you go?”
Still no answer.
Panic set in quickly. I stood there as still and as quiet as I could for several long seconds in case she was coming through the woods, but I heard nothing. I arranged both hands around my mouth and shouted, “BRAY!” and my voice echoed through the wide-open space. But still nothing. I felt sick to my stomach. She wouldn’t have left like that way out here. And if she did, I would’ve seen her on the path coming down as I was making my way back up.
I ran toward the tree line, searching for any sign of her, for another path she might have taken. I refused to believe that she had fallen off the edge.
Just as I noticed another path through the woods that seemed to head south and I started to go toward it, I heard footfalls in the leaves. I didn’t wait to see if it was her, I ran blindly straight into the woods. A skinny branch slapped me across the forehead on my way, but I didn’t stop.
Bray and I nearly crashed into each other.
“Shit, baby! Where the hell did you go? Scared the hell out of me!” I started to pull her into a hug, but something about her was off and I stopped. She didn’t respond or even raise her head to look at me.
“Are you all right?”
I took her hands into mine. Hers were shaking. Her whole body was shaking.
I cupped her face in my palms and raised her head so that she’d look at me. She was crying, and something in her eyes…I couldn’t place it, but it haunted me. I wondered if she even knew I was standing right in front of her. Her hair was messy, with pieces of leaves stuck within a mass of strands. Dirt was smeared across her left cheek. She looked like she’d been in a fight.
I touched her split lip, where a thin line of blood glistened near the corner. “Bray, you’re scaring me. What happened to you?” I shook her gently and then more aggressively when she still didn’t respond. “What happened? Talk to me!”
Her lips trembled and more tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. And then as if a floodgate had been opened, she started screaming through her tears, “It was my fault! Elias! Oh my God!”
“What happened?” I roared, scared for her and for myself, my heart about to burst through my chest.
And our last excerpt for the day comes from UNDONE by Shannon Richard. This was another good read, one that I enjoyed.
Now for the excerpt:
“Hey,” she said, standing up and brushing the back of her orange dress down before she started walked toward him.
“Hi,” he said, walking past her and sitting down on top of the picnic table.
“What are you doing?” she asked, spinning around and looking at him. “My Jeep’s over there.”
“Yes,” he said, grabbing a Coke and popping the top. “But lunch is over here.”
“I thought you were going to change my flat,” she said, frowning.
“I am, after I eat lunch. Care to join me?” he asked, patting the empty space next to him.
“You’re serious?”
“Paige, it’s almost one o’clock, so I’m going to eat. You can either stand there and watch me, or you can split this Cajun turkey sandwich that my grandmother made,” he said, taking the sandwich out of the bag.
She shook her head and smiled.
“You, Brendan King, are a whole mess of trouble,” she said, walking over to the bench and sitting down next to him.
“Good choice,” he said, taking his half out of the bag and handing her the other half. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, taking a bite of his sandwich.
“Taking pictures.”
“For?”
“The tribute program that Mr. Adams wants to start using during the memorial services. He wants to use local pictures instead of the stock pictures that are already in the program.”
“That sounds like it’s right up your alley.”
“It is actually,” she said, reaching for the other can of soda and popping the top.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Why? That I could actually fit in around here? It does surprise me.”
“Why?”
“I’m not used to this whole small-town thing, where everybody knows everybody and their business.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the things about small towns that sucks,” he said, opening a bag of chips and holding it out for her.
“You can say that again,” she said, reaching for a chip. “Why don’t you have oil stains on your hands? I thought all mechanics had oil stains.”
“I wear gloves,” he said, grabbing a few chips for himself and popping them into his mouth.
“Right.” She glanced down and frowned, reaching out for his arm.
“The tree,” she whispered, grabbing his elbow and pushing up the sleeve of his shirt.
Her soft, delicate fingers lightly traced the lines of his tattoo. It took only one simple touch from her for him to completely lose his mind again.
“I knew I’d seen it somewhere.” She looked up to the oak tree in front of them and then back down to his arm. “Why do you have that tree tattooed on your arm?” she asked, looking up at him.
She must have seen the heated look in his eyes because she let go of him and started blushing.
“Sorry, I just … yesterday when I’d been looking at your tattoo, it just sort of fascinated me, and … and it’s that tree,” she said, pointing to the tree in front of them.
“It is.” He cleared his throat and finished his sandwich. He grabbed an orange from the bag on the table and started peeling it. “My mom loved that tree,” he said, looking up at it for a second. “She would bring me and Grace here all the time.”
“Loved?” Paige asked.
“She died,” he said, turning to look at her. “Twelve years ago from breast cancer.”
“Oh God, Brendan. I’m so sorry.”
“I am too. She was a great woman. Grams still can’t talk about her without losing it.”
“Wait, your mom was Lula Mae and Oliver’s daughter?” she asked, confused.
“Yeah,” he said, looking over at her. “I know a little bit about being the center of town talk too. My dad walked out on us before I was born, and Grace’s dad, well, no one knows who Grace’s dad is. My mom wouldn’t tell anybody. That was a source of gossip for years,” he said, handing her half of the peeled orange.
The orange was still cold from being in the refrigerator. Brendan stuck a slice in his mouth, the juice bursting across his tongue. Paige sat next to him in silence, eating her half.
“How do you do it?” she asked, looking at him.
“Do what?”
“Accept stuff like that? Move on? I lost my job, my apartment, and my boyfriend all within a span of two months and I thought that everything was falling down around me. But you? God, Brendan, you had a girlfriend run off with another man, your dad abandoned you, and your mom she …” Paige trailed off. She looked down at her empty hands shaking her head. “You make my problems look trivial.”
“Paige,” he said, edging closer to her and pressing his thigh against hers.
She looked at him, her hair falling in her eyes. He reached out and pushed it behind her ear, letting his fingers trail down to her chin.
“That stuff happened over a long span of time, and I’ve had years to deal with it. You had to deal with a lot over a very short amount of time, and it didn’t happen so long ago. It isn’t trivial,” he said, rubbing his thumb across her jaw. “One day, you’ll wake up and it won’t hurt as bad. You’ll be able to move on.”
“I think I had that breakthrough a week ago,” she whispered, her eyes dipping to his mouth before they came back up to his eyes.
“Really?” He smiled, moving in closer. “And what was the catalyst for that development?” he asked, moving his hand to the back of her head, his fingers tunneling in her hair.
“A cracked radiator,” she said, putting her palms on his chest.
He brought her mouth to his. She parted her lips and when his tongue touched hers he lost himself. She tasted like oranges, like the sweetest freaking oranges that he’d ever eaten. He wrapped his free arm around her back, pulling her into his chest as he slanted his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss. One of her hands was in his hair, her nails racking the back of his head.
Brendan pulled back and looked at her, both of them breathing hard. He was still holding her face in one of his hands as he ran his thumb across her lower lip.“That was …” He couldn’t even find the words to describe exactly what it was.
“Yeah.” She looked at him, dazed as she fisted her hand tighter in his shirt and pulled him back to her. And then they were off again and neither of them had any desire to come back up for air for a long time.
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