Happy Sunday everyone! Just a little update for everyone and some more 2020 teasers! So Orlando is coming along slowly but surely. I’ve made some major New Years resolutions about my writing and intend to get back to you guys with a bang so expect a few stories from me very soon. But as I sit here on my very limited writing time I always get to thinking, I NEED to give them something so I start digging into my WIP’s and find something to dangle at you. 😉
This one is a stand alone I’ve been working on for quite some time. The taboo story line came to me one day when I was thinking about the stories I’ve written about characters with age differences. I got to thinking about say Noah and Abel who were much younger than their love interest but yet still full fledged adults. I thought what if they weren’t? What if they’d been much younger? As in not even legal? I decided it’d be much more believable that the youngin’ in the equation would be the female. Ya-know, as in we women would be the more mature one and better able to deal with such an age difference. Also, like Roni, it’d be less likely and less believable that woman THAT much older would give into and fall into this “situation.”
Here is the blurb of “Their Secret” and the prologue! Stay tuned for Chapter one which I’ll be sharing with y’all REAL soon!
It started off as an innocent alliance . . .
When Cami, my buddy’s sixteen-year-old daughter, came to me to vent, I thought I was doing the right thing. I’d listen to her teenage drama and pass along any information her parents should know about.
Only I couldn’t pass along what she confided in me about—her abusive father.
After assuring me she had a plan all set and would leave the moment she turned eighteen, I promised not to say or do anything that would land her in foster care. For almost a year, I was there to lend an ear as our innocent bond slowly grew stronger.
Until shit hit the fan.
Her parents had taken me into their home as a trusted friend in need. So, when they found out, they accused me of betraying their trust by luring their underage daughter into what they referred to as a secret and inappropriate relationship.
Months after being banished from their home and Cami’s life forever, I still couldn’t shake the guilt of leaving her in that abusive home. But I had too much to lose if I didn’t just walk away. Now that she’s reached out with a desperate plea for me to harbor her just until she’s eighteen, there’s no way I can refuse, despite the risk being so much bigger than when this all started . . .
PROLOGUE
The moment I walked in the house their accusing eyes nearly scorched me. I went numb because I already knew the reason. My parents stared at me in disbelief, my mother’s eyes red rimmed, and my father’s expression a cross between shocked and utterly disgusted.
The forbidden letters in his hand were never meant to be mailed. I’d only written them to appease the irrepressible feelings I knew I shouldn’t be having. The emotion had slowly begun consuming my every thought. The first time I’d unleased them on paper was only because I wasn’t supposed to be on my laptop that late. And it was always late at night when the emotions were most overwhelming. It felt so good to unload everything I held inside for so long. I wrote more and more each night. Other than everything I felt for him, writing those letters had become my other obsession.
Aside from all that I unleashed in those letters, there was something so comforting about doing so in that archaic way I’d read so much about. Seeing everything that was in me coming to life in rich dark ink across the bright white crisp sheets of paper was so incredibly therapeutic. Once on those sheets the suffocating thoughts were no longer inside of me but out there for real, not just hidden in some hard drive or cloud on the web. My feelings and thoughts became a reality and actually tangible on paper.
Despite the delight of finally having my reflections out there, those letters were meant for only me. While it felt like a release, they were still my uttermost private thoughts. My parents almost never went into my room. It’s why I’d been certain those letters were safe, tucked away in between the pages of some of the books on my bookshelf.
“Give me your phone,” my father demanded.
“Dad—”
“Give me your fucking phone!” he roared, charging toward me.
“Camilla, just—”
The slap across my face, that interrupted my mother was so fierce it threw me, and I fell against the wall. My mom was instantly in tears but as expected did nothing to come to my aid.
“No seventeen-year-old daughter of mine should even be thinking the things you wrote to whoever this is.”
He bent over and picked up my phone that spilled out of my bag as I held the side of my face that was now blazing for more than one reason. My heart raced because I’d addressed all the letters Dear You to play it safe even though I honestly thought no one would ever read them. My erotic fantasies about him got even more explicit with each letter I wrote. I could barely look at either of my parents in the face now and on top of it all they were this close to finding out who Dear You was.
“What’s your password?” he demanded, and I obliged immediately.
He tapped my password in furiously onto the screen. Then tapped the screen a few more times. His jaw dropped, and I knew then he saw the endless thread of texts between Danteand me. He’s who I texted more than anyone. In fact, there are very few people beside him that I texted at all. He’d been my obsession for months now—the only thing I thought about day and night and he didn’t even know it. As bad as this was, I knew it was about to get so much worse.
“Are those letters for . . .” My father’s eyes went darker even as they widened, and I could see the instant betrayal in them as it started to become clear.
This wasn’t just a boy from school or around the neighborhood like I’m sure they’d thought when my mother found the letters. This was a parent’s worst nightmare. Only it wasn’t!
“Yes,” I said frantically. “But he didn’t know anything about those letters. I swear to you! That was my secret. It’s why I’ve never mailed them. He has no idea it’s how I feel about him.”
“This is how you feel about him?” My incensed dad shook the letters in his hand. “He’s old enough to be your father.”
If he’d had me at fourteen.
I refrained from pointing that out. I knew it wouldn’t matter to him. Instead, I went back to pleading, horrified that he might tell Dante—my dad’s long-time trusted friend and employee—what I wrote in those letters.
“Daddy, please! I swear to you—”
“What’s this?” He swiped the screen, his eyes growing even more scandalized, and I knew he’d found all the photos. Selfies of me and Dante that would be otherwise innocent and just fun if it weren’t for those filthy letters. His murderous eyes bore into me. “Has he ever touched you?”
“Never!” I practically screamed. “He’s never said anything inappropriate to me. Read all the texts if you want. There’s nothing improper in any of them!”
It was the truth. While an infinite trail of digital conversations passed between us because I’d been confiding and exchanging secret texts with him for nearly a year, nothing incriminating was in any of them. Not even one.
It was at my request that we kept them clandestine. I was afraid my parents would say our friendship was inappropriate and end it. I needed the escape only being able to talk to Dante brought me, and he understood why. So he grudgingly agreed.
When my dad called the sheriff, I refused to cooperate. Dante is innocent. Instantly, I was labeled a spoiled, rebellious teen who was too young and naïve to know anything about love.
Oh, but I did.
They called him a pedophile, a predator who knew exactly what to say to an impressionable girl my age. A trusted family friend who’d betrayed his friend by brainwashing me into turning against my parents. What did any of them know?
They had no idea where I’d been that very day. Dante was leaving town soon, and I begged him to take me with him.
He adamantly refused.
I’d already planned and anticipated everything about my escape with Dante. My mother finding my secret letters ruined everything. I’d been certain I could still convince him to take me.
The confrontation between my father and his now ex-buddy was explosive. In an effort to right things with my father, Dante came clean about everything. Not just about the texts. He admitted to allowing me to hang out at his place often. Just the two of us. That too was completely innocent—had it not been for those letters that were completely unbeknownst to Dante when he confessed it all—but it’s what ultimately broke my father. His thirty-one-year-old friend, whom he’d trusted with his life, had been carrying on a secret relationship with his seventeen-year-old daughter.
Because of those letters, nothing either one of us said made a difference. Dante was banished from our home—our lives. If my parents had it their way, all communication between Dante and me would’ve ceased after that night forever.
The next day I ran away and the police arrested Dante.
I felt terrible, but knew they had nothing on him. I kept up with the local scandal on the internet. As expected, the very next day he was released. He was never formally charged with anything, but he was still considered a person of interest in my having gone missing. So even though I was now officially a runaway and no one knew where I was, I was forced to stay away from him. Have zero contact with him for weeks.
It was utter torment—until I walked into that cell phone store a state away from my parents’ home, just to get out of the rain. I flipped through the phones on display, pretending to browse, when I realized they were live. I dialed a random number, and it rang until a doctor’s answering service answered and I hung up.
Unlike how I’d planned my escape from my parents so meticulously for years prior to actually finally doing it, this was impulsive. Reckless. But I’d been dying to have even the tiniest of communication with him. I didn’t think it through. I just tapped his number in and the three words that were constantly in my head, I miss you. Then sent it, never once imagining how much it would cost me.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE TEASERS!!! I HAVE SO MUCH MORE FOR YOU!
