BLURB
Edie had spent her whole life planning her future, imagining her husband, her kids, and even which minivan she’d drive. Lucky for her, she didn’t have to wait long, marrying her high school sweetheart right after graduation.
All of Edie’s dreams had come true, until they were no longer her dreams. Unable to deal with the lingering depression caused by having children, she left her whole life behind, walking away from the one thing she'd always wanted.
Donovan Leery loved his wife with everything he had and could never imagine life without her. Until he came home from work one day and found a letter from Edie, explaining she needed a break. Not only leaving him to live his life without her, but alone to raise their three small children.
But what happens when Edie is ready to come home? When she’s ready to fight for it all back? She knew it wouldn’t be easy. But she didn’t care. After spending years getting her life back together, she was ready to fight for her family. And a fight is what Donovan would give her.
She'd fight to make up for her Biggest Mistake.
BUY LINKS
TEASERS
EXCERPTS (PLEASE ONLY POST ONE)
He slapped his palm against the door behind my head, interrupting me and causing me to flinch. He boxed me in with the door to my back and his solid form in front. His forearm was so close to my face I could feel the heat radiating off it. My already clenched heart grew even tighter in my chest and I had a hard time breathing, as if the world had lost its supply of oxygen and I had to fight in order to find some. I’d never seen Donnie like this before and it both scared and saddened me.
“No…you don’t know, Edie. You don’t know a damn thing. I thought maybe you’d be gone a day and then come back. That didn’t happen and so I thought maybe a week. After a week, you’d surely come to your senses and be ready to come home. A week came and went and you were still gone. You were still not answering my calls, my messages, or my emails. So, okay…a month. A month is a really long break, but who knows, maybe you just really needed it.
“The kids asked about you every single day for that month. Every. Fucking. Day. I tried like hell to spare them from knowing you had abandoned them because the last thing I wanted was for you to come home and have them look at you differently. Yeah…I’m that fucking pathetic that after you ran away, I still tried to spare your feelings. Shortly after a month, they’d go a day or two without talking about you or asking where you were. I’d lie in bed at night and realize they hadn’t mentioned you, and it broke my heart. But do you know the moment in time when my heart stopped beating? When it ceased to beat in my chest? When my life went from falling apart to being completely obliterated?” he asked through tight lips that only grew tighter with each following question.
I shook my head, unable to answer. I didn’t want to hear it, the truth. I had asked him to talk, but I hadn’t been prepared for what he’d say. I wasn’t ready to hear about the pain and anguish I had inflicted upon the people I loved more than anything. But I’d asked for it, so the only thing I could do was stand there and bear it.
“Mikey was at the kitchen table coloring while I was making dinner. This was somewhere between month one and month two. Livvy was helping me, watching the water to let me know when it started to boil. Mikey brought over his piece of paper with random marks of green crayon and held it out to me. He was so proud of it.” Donnie’s voice had grown quiet yet remained hard as he retold a story I was sure I didn’t want to hear. “As always, I asked him what it was, preparing to give him my usual praise about how amazing it was and how I had a little artist on my hands. He pointed to a particular line and said, ‘me’ and then pointed to another one and said ‘mama.’ I hesitated for a moment since I hadn’t expected that—his usual art at the time had been unrecognizable doggies and trucks. Nothing more than scribbles of crayon that he believed to be something else. In the time I hesitated, Livvy decided to tell him that his mama was gone. She told him that his mama didn’t love him anymore because she left and wasn’t coming back. She was two and a half, Edie! Two years old, telling her little brother that their mother didn’t love them anymore!”
I gave in and succumbed to the grief that his words inflicted. Without moving, I allowed my tears to run free, to flow without a fight. I couldn’t help the feeling of complete inadequacy that filled me and poured out of me with every tear that made its way down my face.
“So now that I’ve talked to you, is there anything you want to say? Because once I turn around and walk away from you, there won’t be any more talking.”
His fingers started to move in and out of me again as he cupped his palm against my mound, applying the right amount of pressure against my aching core to send my head into a tailspin. “Edie, I promise, if you can hold on, I’ll make it worth your while. I just need this to last a little while. I need this. Please,” he begged, which caused me to nod and agree. He could’ve asked me anything at that point and I would’ve agreed.
He continued to assault me with his hand while alternating between biting and kissing various parts of my upper body. His other hand desperately groped my breast, kneading it and pinching my nipples as I fought hard to hold on to my promise to him. The ache between my legs had grown tenfold, causing my breathing to turn erratic and desperate.
“I know you need to come, Edie, I can feel it. But please hold out for a little bit longer. I’m not ready for this to end. I’m not ready stop touching you yet,” he said before taking my mouth with his, slowly invading me with his warm tongue.
I knew exactly what he meant. I wasn’t ready for it to end, either, but my body felt so tight I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer. His mouth moved from my face to my breasts as he took one nipple in at a time, scratching me softly with the short hairs around his mouth. He swirled the hard pebble around his tongue before sucking on it hard and then pinching it between his teeth gently. That only caused me to ride his fingers harder, matching the harsh intensity of his thrusts.
He slowly moved further down my body, leaving behind a warm trail of kisses until he knelt on the tile floor in front of me. His eyes locked with mine and a smile took hold of his entire face, never once letting up on the momentum of his fingers inside of me. His lips softly grazed my inner thigh, skipped over the part that ached for him the most, and then continued with the trail of kisses on the other leg. One more glance up at me and then I felt it. His warm tongue torturously licked through my wet folds before finding the pulsating nub that begged for his attention.
My hands moved to his hair, pulling on it roughly as he hooked one leg over his shoulder and began humming against my sex. He never removed his fingers from inside of me, but instead of thrusting them, he swept them against my inner walls, adding yet another sensation to my already taxing body.
“Fuck, Donnie! I don’t think I can hold out any longer,” I grunted through clenched teeth as my head tilted back and my eyes closed tight. “Please. Please. Please!”
The tips of his fingers dug into the flesh of my ass as he gripped me tight and pulled me even closer to his mouth. Sensation after sweet sensation consumed me. From the warmth of his tongue on my sex to the exquisite pain of his fingers digging into my flesh to the gruffness of his beard on the sensitive skin of my groin, it all mingled together and attacked at once. He didn’t need to give me verbal permission to let go, the intense suction and biting on my nub was enough to let me know what he meant.
With my fingers twisted in his hair and my eyes tightly shut, I gave into the overwhelming sensations and came on his tongue, feeling wave after wave of euphoria wash over me. My body became overheated and my breathing grew harsh and erratic. I don’t think I had ever come that hard before in my life, and Donnie had given me some pretty amazing orgasms in the past. Yet nothing compared to the intensity that just rolled through me, leaving me a quaking, trembling mess, barely able to stand on my own two feet.
We slipped through the spaces between the logs like we had done so many times so many years ago. It was harder than what I remembered, but still not difficult. Once I took in the sight in front of me, I gasped, trying to catch my breath.
The sand was gone. The random pine trees from before had multiplied and filled in the entire area with more pine trees. The ground was covered in pine needles and pods. It was as though our secret place had never existed and it filled me with sadness.
Once I took everything in, I turned to him, silently asking for answers.
He didn’t answer me; instead, he walked further between the trees. He stopped a little ways in and looked around. “We carved our names into a tree one time,” he started without looking at me. “We laid out a blanket somewhere over there, next to our tree, and we gave ourselves to each other for the first time. This was our place. I came here once after you left; I guess I needed to feel a connection to you. I needed to feel the sense of security this place used to bring me. So I came here, looking for peace. Instead, I found this. It was like God was trying to tell me something.
“We see things in our heads, making them what we want them to be. We see the perfectness of the past and avoid looking at the messiness of the present. I came here, expecting to find it exactly how it was when we were young and happy with a bright future ahead of us. That’s not what I found. I found land that has been overgrown with trees, making it impossible to find the single tree with our names carved in it. Just like in my head, you were perfect. But when I went searching for you in my memories, all I found was a shell of the woman I had fallen in love with, making it difficult to see the place in your heart where I had carved my name.” His words were so full of pain and despair as they echoed around me.
I reached out to touch his arm but he pulled away, looking right into my eyes.
“You destroyed me, Edie. You’re still destroying me.”
What the hell was I supposed to say to that? “What do you want me to do?” I asked in a pleading voice, needing him to tell me, direct me. I didn’t have answers or any clue as to what I needed to do. I just knew I wanted to make things right.
“I want you to have never left me.” His voice was broken, sounding the way one does just before breaking down into tears. It made my eyes flood with warm saltwater. I blinked them away as he cleared his throat and looked to the sky. “I want you to have talked to me instead of running. But you can’t change that now. Now…there’s nothing for you to do.”
“If you want me to leave—”
“NO!” he yelled, interrupting me. “I don’t want you to leave. Don’t you get it? I never wanted you to leave. I never wanted to live my life without you in it. I still don’t want to live without you, but I can’t live with you. I’m stuck in this endless space of purgatory because of you. I’m unhappy either way. You can’t make that right. You can’t make it go away.”
“Why did you bring me here?” My question came out in a whisper, barely heard above the rustling of the trees around us. His pain cut through me like a knife, killing anything left alive inside of me, and I wished for something that I could do to take it all away. This was the man I loved with my whole entire being. I had never loved anyone else. He was it for me.
He shook his head as if he needed to clear his mind before answering. “Because I need you to see that it’s over. Until you realize it, I can’t move on. You’re holding on to me, keeping me in this dark place. I can’t go back. I can’t give you what you want, but I can’t move forward, either. I’m physically stuck here until you let me go. That’s what I need from you, Edie. I need you to let me go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leddy Harper had to use her imagination often as a child. She grew up the only girl in a house full of boys. At the age of fourteen, she decided to use that imagination and wrote her first book, and never stopped. She often calls writing her therapy, using it as a way to deal with issues through the eyes of her characters.
She is now a mother of three girls, leaving her husband as the only man in a house full of females. The decision to publish her first book was made as a way of showing her children to go after whatever it is they want to. Love what you do and do it well. And to teach them what it means to overcome their fears.
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