Add to your TBR List!

Excerpt

My gaze studied the tattoos covering his arm and up to his neck. Color and swirls of shapes covered his skin, but one caught my eye—a jar filled with fireflies, labeled 27 Club.

If there was one think I took away from recovery was that everyone had a story and the ways they told their stories were endless. Some people kept it closer to the chest, others made groups and organizations to share their stories to build community. Even after five years, I hadn’t quite figured out where I stood on that. I’d been surrounded with either people who saw me before death almost snatched my ass, or other people in recovery.

Micah had a story, too. And I wanted to hear about all of it.

“Hope you got past the club,” I said, looking up to Micah. “Otherwise, that’d be damn disappointing.”

Micah looked down at his arm, running the back of his knuckles over the jar of fireflies. His eyes flicked up to me, the confident flirt fading a little. “It’s not for me. But yeah, they just turned this year, so hopefully it works out.”

“Bro, I couldn’t have said it any better,” I said and lifted my cup, and Micah joined me, our glasses clinking. An urge I hadn’t felt before rumbled inside of me, taking on momentum until it was boiling so intensely, I couldn’t stop myself from saying something.

“There came this point in my life recently that I finally understood how sad it is to grow up. All that innocence we had as a child, to go about freely and enjoy the little things is all gone. One bad day, bad week, whatever, and your whole life will blow up.”

I ran my fingertip through the wrinkled napkin under my glass, watching as the thin tissue pulled back another layer. “And I ain’t saying there ain’t kids out there who don’t got it bad, because there are. They gotta grow up faster than they should, but damn, they got some hope, you know?”

Suddenly realizing how I’d just verbally vomited to a total stranger, a fucking hot one at that, had my head jerking up in alarm, ready to apologize. Damn, I couldn’t even use being drunk as an excuse. Hopefully I could get out of this without making myself look like an absolute fool.

But the apology stuck in my throat when I saw Micah’s face.

The heat that flared in his eyes was obvious, even to me who hadn’t gotten laid in over a year. He wasn’t freaked out at all. Far from it.

Micah looked over his shoulders as if we were in a room full of people and he was checking out who was paying attention. When he leaned forward, I caught the dark scent of his cologne, and my head swam. “Look, I don’t know if barking up the wrong tree, but I feel like we got something going on here and I have nothing else going on this evening. Wanna get out of here?”

Nowhere did my routines and schedules include hooking up with a guy I met barely fifteen minutes before. Micah radiated confidence and sex appeal, that was for sure. But instead of arrogance, there was a softness in his stare that made me want to be impulsive.

Maybe this is what it was like to live a little.

Micah stayed silent, his finger tapping to the beat of the music in the lounge. He was waiting for me to answer, no pressure, no insistence.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” I said.

Micah’s answered smile was so radiant, my breath caught. It was so beautiful it was almost painful to look at, but if I broke eye contact, I’d risk the chance it would disappear, and I didn’t want to live with that regret.

“Good deal,” Micah said, listing to the side. He pulled out his phone and slid it across the table. “Give me your number, and I’ll text you my address.”

It wasn’t until we were heading toward the exit that my body finally caught up to what was happening. I couldn’t fool myself that the buzz in my ears was from the chaos of the party or blame the hammer pounding against my chest on the music. This encounter had woken up a part of me I thought I had buried a long time ago. I was running back into unfamiliar territory, and one wrong turn could land me in a world of shit.

It was scary as hell. It was thrilling. It was spontaneous. That wasn’t a word I ever used, but it felt right. It was like jumping off the side of a building and wondering if the parachute was gonna work. I’d fucked around with my life like that for years. Now I knew that if this all went tits up, I still had my house, Duncan’s cooking, and a bunch of dumb videos to watch to go back to. I’d land on solid ground.

Pre-order Link

Giveaway

One of Five eARC's for The Wisdom Within

a Rafflecopter Giveaway

Other Titles Within this Series

THE WONDER WITHIN

The Collective Series - Prequel Novella

THE WILD WITHIN

The Collective Series - Book One

THE WEIGHT WITHIN

The Collective Series - Book Two

Connect with Gwen

Website: https://www.gwenmartinauthor.com/

Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3s3exCf

Facebook Author Page: https://bit.ly/3MbosfB

Facebook Reader Group: https://bit.ly/3rYOaxk

Goodreads Author Page: https://bit.ly/3SkVXQu

Instagram: https://bit.ly/45LJbhf

TikTok: https://bit.ly/3sf6Fxn

Amazon Author Page: https://bit.ly/3QrLWzL

BookBub Author Page: https://bit.ly/3Qecwev