I’m not too proud to admit that finding Mr. Right involves swiping right. Right? Welcome to dating in avocado toastland.
Here I am, on my first blind date, ever, courtesy of a smartphone app and my two annoying best friends.
So what is Chris “Fletch” Fletcher doing, walking across the room, looking at his phone like he’s pattern matching a picture to find a real person he’s never met before?
Oh.
Oh, no.
The guy I drop-kicked in seventh grade cannot be my blind date. The guy who earned me this infernal nickname.
It was supposed to be simple. Graduate, get a job to keep my mom from drowning in mountains of medical debt, and maybe score a scholarship to a decent college.
All of that changed in a single breath. Because it turns out I’m not human. And I just knocked out the power on an entire city block.
In a split second, all of my carefully-laid plans go up in smoke. There’s no chance for college because I’m being hauled off to Kingwood Academy. They say it’s for my own protection and those around me. But I know one thing for sure…
I’m not welcome here.
The mean girls don’t stop at insults and tripping you in the halls. They’re wielding magic that could cost me my life. And the rest of the school sees me as either a halfling that should be cast out or a powerhouse to be brought down.
Everyone except them.
The charmer. The gentle giant. The psychopath. And maybe even the cruel prince.
The royals of Kingwood Academy have taken me under their wing and I can’t help but notice how my skin hums when they touch me. I shouldn’t be dreaming about a single one of them, let alone all four. But I can’t seem to stop myself.
Only someone doesn’t like the attention the royals are showing me. And when the attacks start, the princes will do anything to protect me. But they don’t know the true evil we face. The kind who will do whatever it takes to seize our power, even if that means stealing the very last breath from our lungs…
“I was in a fire.” I blurted it out in the hopes it might distract those two from coming to blows. But I had no idea what came after that fact.
Atlas turned back to me. “When?”
“I was eight. We still don’t know exactly how it started.”
Kai let one hand drop away but left the other on my neck, his thumb stroking back and forth. “But you got out.”
“I almost didn’t.” The words were barely a whisper. “I got trapped in my bedroom. The window was too high to jump out of. The fire was outside my door. I hid in the closet. The floor beneath me collapsed and I fell through to the basement, and a beam landed on top of me. Thought I was going to die.” I rubbed at the raised skin on the inside of my arm.
Phoenix stalked forward, grabbing my arm. He let out a string of curses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “I told you I didn’t like fire.”
“But not that you’d been burned. I wouldn’t have pushed so hard if I’d known you’d been through this.”
I tried to tug my arm free, but he held firm.
Atlas studied the scars leading up my arm as Phoenix held it. “You’re okay? Those look bad.
I gave my arm a hard yank and finally broke away from Phoenix’s hold. I wanted a sweatshirt more than anything right now, but I hadn’t shoved one in my bag this morning. “I know they look gross, but they aren’t that bad.”
Atlas got right up in my personal space. “That wasn’t what I said and it sure as hell wasn’t what I meant.” He lifted my arm gently and traced his fingers over the mottled and twisted skin. “There isn’t a thing about you that isn’t beautiful. But I know these mean you were in excruciating pain. That you were terrified. That’s what I meant by bad.”
I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat. “Oh.”
His lips twitched. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers tangling in the waves. “I could only ever see beauty when I look at you.”
Atlas leaned forward and my breath caught, but this time for an entirely different reason than panic. He pressed his lips to the corner of my mouth.
The buzz that lit my muscles was like nothing I’d experienced before. It was its own form of fire that terrified me in a completely different way. Sensation swept through me like a flood on the heels of the buzz.
Atlas jerked back, his fingers flying to his mouth and eyes going wide. “What the hell was that?”
A self-proclaimed ordinarily average girl meets the one larger than life person who will make her yearn for so much more.
Natalie Benton has nursed enough heartbreak in her twenty-one years. But she doesn’t like to complain even though her parents’ marriage might be falling apart, and she’s still mourning her brother, who committed suicide five years ago. On top of that, she was recently ghosted by her lover, an emotionally detached tattoo artist who ran off to California. She’s ready to graduated college in a few months but she’s not sure what her next steps will be. For now, she’ll take each day as it comes, which has become her mantra as an ordinary, average girl in Albee, Pennsylvania where nothing exciting ever happens.
But fate has other plans for Natalie, when a very not ordinary average girl enters her life. It’s the larger than life Gem Grove, one of the most popular singers of the past decade. Gem’s been hiding out in Albee while she also tries her best to take each day as it comes, but her addiction to bigger fame and fortune could lead to her downfall. The public may think she’s entitled and spoiled but she’s ready to prove them all wrong. She’s more than just a singer who performs on demand. She wants to create art with her songs and gain the respect she has always wanted.
Natalie and Gem shouldn’t fit together but they do. The ordinary average girl and the larger-than-life diva might be destined for more, but only if they can achieve it together.
“When you said you wanted to take me to your house, I wasn’t expecting on the lake.” We were twenty minutes outside Albee and surrounded by a huge lake where Dad fished almost every weekend. Most of the houses there were newer and expensive, which was definitely the case with Gem’s. She even had a hot tub in the back, facing the lake. Why would anyone need a hot tub when the lake was in their backyard?
She dropped her bag on the marble island in her kitchen that would make Mom jealous. “I don’t own the house. I’m renting for now because I was sick of staying in hotels. Also, this end of the lake has good security patrols, so I don’t have to worry too much about the press stalking me or trying to snap a picture of me, especially if I go skinny-dipping.”
I turned my head so fast, I might have strained my neck. “You swim naked in the lake in the winter?”
She lifted her hands to her mouth and laughed. “Oh my god, the look on your face is too much! I’m joking. I moved in here at the end of October, so I haven’t been swimming yet.”
“Oh.” I looked out the window again, wincing at how warm my face felt.
She opened the refrigerator. “Want something to drink? I have juice, seltzer…water?”
“No soda?” I scanned the large and airy room. The ceiling was so high!
“I don’t drink soda.” She made a face and took out a bottle of water. “I don’t have any booze, either—”
“Water is fine for me.” I sat on a barstool while she poured our drinks. “The only time I drink alcohol is Friday night at this bar called Bask’s for happy hour. And it’s usually beer.” I accepted the glass and clinked it to hers. “Cheers.”
She smiled. “To new friends.”
I lowered mine. “Is that what we are now?”
She drank almost half of hers while she stared at me, making my face warm again. “I’d like to be.”
Shirley Anne Edwards is a Northeast girl who first found her love for books when she read Nancy Drew’s The Secret of the Old Clock Tower at thirteen. Shirley found her love for writing at a very young age, and since then has let her imagination run wild by creating quirky characters and vast worlds in her head.
Shirley lives in New Jersey and works in the entertainment industry in New York City.
In the immortal words of Mark Twain: “Life is short, Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss SLOWLY. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret ANYTHING that makes you smile.”
Adelaide Snow has lived her whole life thinking she’s ordinary… but the startling truth has been locked away in her mind. Buried beneath an avalanche of lies.
The week before her twenty-first birthday, she wakes up in a mysterious castle that only exists in her dreams… or so she thought.
It’s nothing like the fairytales she read as a child. No charming prince, coming to save the day.
Only a brooding huntsman with a shattered moral compass.
A stranger to the kingdom, and an enemy to the crown, Adelaide has two choices— wake herself from this illusion or disappear into the dark winter woods alone.
The Black Forest can’t compare to the darkness lurking inside the palace walls.
Because the Queen has demanded her fragile heart… But the huntsman wants it for himself.
Once upon a time, Author Brittany Holland’s passion for reading and an active imagination inspired her to pursue her dream of writing. A lover of fairytales, folklore and mythology, the hopeless romantic pens a modern twist on happily ever after. Her books range from Contemporary Retellings to New Adult Romantic Fantasy. In her free time, she enjoys traveling with her husband and two children, perfecting her latte making skills at home and binge-reading her never ending TBR.
