The One For You is out today!
Hey y’all, good news! The final book of the new editions of The Ones Who Got Away series is out today! Kincaid and Ash are ready to break your heart and then put it back together again. 😊
About The One For You Twelve years ago, tragedy struck a sleepy Texas town. Only a small number of those impacted survived―a group the media dubbed The Ones Who Got Away. This is their story.
HER SECOND CHANCE AT LIFE: After spending years struggling to move on, Kincaid Breslin has put all of her energy into making life full and interesting. She may have lost her soulmate, but she doesn't have to let that young tragedy shape who she is now...or continue to complicate her relationship with former best friend turned near-stranger, Ash.
HIS CHANCE TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT: Ashton Isaacs has spent his life running―from his past, from the best friend he's always secretly loved, and from the truth of how he failed her when she needed him most. Now, over a decade later, it's time to stop running and finally face the girl his heart never forgot.
But Kincaid doesn't know about everything that happened that night. She doesn't know what he did, or why Ash is so certain she'll never be able to forgive him. All she knows is that she's missed having him in her life, and she's willing to fight―for them, for the kids they used to be, and for this one final chance to let the past go forever. With Ash, her heart may finally be ready to heal…or shatter completely once and for all.
By turns heart-wrenching and deeply romantic, this award-winning spicy contemporary romance will challenge the way you see life, love, and happily ever after.
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Want a sample?
CHAPTER ONE
Kincaid Breslin was the girl who was supposed to die first in the horror movie. In high school, it had been a running joke among her friends during their annual Halloween marathon of scary movies that she’d be the first character topless, screaming, and running for her life.
She was the dance team captain. The girl with the superstar boyfriend. The non-virgin. All those things spelled dead in those classic eighties horror movies. Her character probably wouldn’t have been on screen long enough to even get a name. In the credits, she’d be listed as Blond Cheerleader #1 or Hysterical Girl #2. But her friends had been wrong. When Kincaid’s life had turned into an actual horror movie, she’d somehow managed to get out alive. Most of those friends hadn’t. Real life didn’t follow movie rules.
So you would think after actually surviving what she had, she’d be extra vigilant about putting herself in any situation that resembled a scary movie ever again. But as she stared up at the rambling farmhouse that could star in the next teen slasher film, she fell head over heels in love.
“Holy shit,” her friend Liv said next to her, camera clutched in her hands. “Are we supposed to go inside that thing?”
Kincaid frowned. “Well, yeah. I need photos of the inside. There are none online yet, and Bethany wanted pictures ASAP. And what Bethany wants, she gets. Otherwise, I’ll get sixteen thousand demanding texts and voicemails by the end of the day. I need this sale. Please make this place look gorgeous.”
Liv gave her a wary look, as if she were now regretting offering her photography skills for Kincaid’s demanding real estate client. “Has it been opened and aired out recently? Maybe had some sage burned and a spirit guide cleanse the thing?”
Kincaid snorted, surprised at her normally unflappable friend’s reaction. “Honey, I didn’t take you for the superstitious sort. That’s usually my job. It’s just an old farmhouse.”
Liv gave her a pointed look, dark eyes holding her gaze, as she very deliberately made the sign of the cross and recited something in Spanish. “Chica, that thing for sure houses the angry spirits of serial killers or maybe vampires. I bet there are bones in the attic. Or portals to hell in the basement. I am not playing Willow to your Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Kincaid laughed. “You wouldn’t be Willow. Too mouthy. You’d be Xander. And there are no basements here.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at the house again. “I think it’s…quaint.”
Liv gave her a girl, please look. “Quaint? You’re using your real estate agent words. Cozy means small. Fixer upper means money pit. Quaint means…portals of hell demons ready to eat your soul for the mere price of—what’s this thing cost anyway?”
Kincaid checked her notes from her earlier chat with her fellow agent, Ferris. “Owner’s asking five-hundred.”
“Wow,” Liv said, lifting her camera and taking a shot of the wide sagging porch. “Someone’s proud of their creepy-ass haunted house.”
“That price includes a decent chunk of land. Plus, the home was owned by one of the founding families of Long Acre. It’s historic,” Kincaid countered, not sure why she was trying to defend the house. Maybe because if she didn’t make a big sale soon, the agency was going to start questioning if they needed three full-time agents.
“Ha. Another real estate agent word. Historic not old.” Liv stepped a little to the left and aimed her camera at the second story and all its peeling white paint glory. “I have faith in you, though. You could sell hair products to a bald guy. I’m sure you’ll find someone who finds it…quaint.”
“I think Bethany will love it.” Bethany Winterbourne was moving from Austin and wanted the perfect fixer-upper house to create her “super adorable, glam dream palace away from the city” after her divorce. Bethany Winterbourne had also watched too many home design shows and thought small town Texas would be chock full of big houses that would be cheap and fall in her lap.
Kincaid had been on the hunt for Bethany for six months now with countless smaller houses in Wilder discarded out of hand. Now finally, she’d come across this prospect in Long Acre, which had the square footage Bethany wanted. Plus, it hadn’t come onto the market officially, so no one had seen the house yet. Maybe she could get a good price without competition.
Ferris had given her a heads up because he knew Kincaid was more than ready to get Bethany out of her hair. Plus, after a particularly dry year where Kincaid had barely made a sale, Ferris knew she needed a win. This could be the answer.
However, now that Kincaid was looking at the old house, she got a spoiled milk taste in her mouth at the thought of it being filled with Bethany’s style, which given the decor of Bethany’s current condo, would be white lacquer furniture and pink sequined pillows that had things like Shine Bright on them.
Kincaid could appreciate unique tastes. She was currently wearing underwear with purple llamas on them, so who was she to judge? You do you, girl. But this house had old, beautiful bones—hopefully not the attic kind like Liv was talking about—and was begging to be restored to its former glory. She could almost feel it shudder at the thought of a sequin passing its threshold.
Kincaid let her gaze travel over the facade, her mind smoothing over the peeling paint and the warped windows, imagining what the grand house must’ve looked like when it was first built right outside of town. Nothing for miles around, the Texas wine country not yet rolling with grapevines and tourists, and the land rich with possibility. It was the kind of house she’d dreamt of living in when she’d walk home from school through the nicer neighborhoods on her way back to the broken down rental house she’d shared with her mom. Houses with warmth and laughter and good smells coming from the kitchen. Houses that didn’t have a dry-rotted hole in the floor of the bathroom, dingy tan walls, and nothing but boxed macaroni and cheese and Vienna sausage in the cabinets—food her mom knew a kid could cook for herself since her mother was rarely home at night.
I love that all four of these have gotten such gorgeous new covers and are now available in trade paperback size. (I also loved the old covers even though they were very different, but I know lots of you don’t love the smaller mass-market-sized books.)
And if you’re new to these stories, welcome!
If you collect all four, they do make a very pretty complete picture. :) But you don’t have to start at the beginning if you don’t want to. Each book is about a different couple and can stand alone.
Also, if you’ve already read these, I’d love help spreading the word! Please share with your readerly friends and you’ll get my undying appreciation.
Hope you have a great week!
Roni
