EXCERPT 1

The universe had completely crapped on Kelsey Quinn’s life.

She dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose, and wadded up the tissue before dropping it to the pile on the seat next to her. Pressing her forehead against the car window, she watched the scenery fly by at seventy miles per hour. They passed Bob’s Stay and Go combination gas station—fast food restaurant—hotel, followed by some weird concrete starship-shaped pizza parlor. Next, three-foot fluorescent letters screamed about redemption across a junkyard fence surrounding rusted pieces of mangled metal. The few words of scripture painted there weren’t going change her fate. Her dad was in the driver’s seat and they were heading straight for the armpit of Texas.

With a sigh she slumped against the seat and tried not to think about the boyfriend who’d been ripped from her life, or the best friend she’d been forced to leave behind. But it wasn’t just her forced exile from Drew and Zoe. She’d lost her identity. At St. Monica’s, she knew who she was and where she fit in. It was her senior year, the year she’d looked forward to for as long as she was in school. They had taken it away with less thought than the car they’d sold one afternoon while she and Zoe were shopping. None of it was her fault. She was a victim of her dad’s incompetence on one hand and her sister’s immorality on the other.

Her dad exited onto a two-lane highway where they were greeted by a faded, Welcome to Hillside Texas, Population 5000, sign. They slowed to a crawl as they entered the town. At a four-way stop her mom screeched, “Oh my God Tom, look at the cute little diner. We’re all starving, let’s stop before we go to the house.”

“Sounds good to me. Jack’s not expecting us for another couple of hours anyway.” Dad angled the Infinity between two pickup trucks and turned off the engine.

The diner was nestled in the center of a row of dilapidated two story buildings. Early Bird Café was painted in bright blue letters across the glass. Kelsey pulled her compact mirror from her purse and studied her reflection. She’d been crying for two days, no amount of makeup magic would fix her swollen red eyes. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care about this place or these people. She sure as heck didn’t care what they thought about her. She shoved the mirror back into her purse.

Her younger sister, Ryan, looked all wide-eyed and curious. And worse, she actually looked excited to investigate this hick little town. Why not? It was her fault they were in this mess in the first place. Her parents would have been justified to ship Ryan off to some kind of school for troubled kids. But no—Quinns don’t give up on their own. Everybody had to suffer because Ryan couldn’t say no to drugs or boys.

Mackenzie, Kelsey’s youngest sister, flipped her compact gymnast’s body from the third seat to the back seat nailing Ryan in the shoulder with her foot.

“Watch it!” Ryan drew her fist back, but before she could get the hit off Mackenzie flashed a cherub smile and released a powder sugar apology. Yeah. That wasn’t an accident. Kelsey almost smiled when she saw foot impact with shoulder. Mackenzie had been fairly silent about the ruin Ryan’s exploits had done to her life. Apparently, she had her limits too.

 

Excerpt 2

Austin sat in the wicker rocker waiting for Kelsey. He supposed he could have gone ahead and started feeding the chickens, except the highlight of his day tended to be the moment she stepped onto the porch. In that instant, before she said hello, another side of her was revealed—a freer side. One that didn’t see every second on the farm as a prison sentence.

Not that she was bitchy to him or anything. She did her work and then retreated to the house. She was missing out on the beautiful aspect of farm life. Like the horses.

He couldn’t get her to go near them. He worked with them after the feeding and cleaning chores were done. By that time, she was in the house, probably texting her boyfriend, Dan or Don or Drew or whatever the hell his name was.

Austin had the stitches removed yesterday and now that he had full use of his hand, he hoped to change Kelsey’s view of life on the farm.

The front door opened and his muscles tensed with anticipation. She stepped across the threshold, smiled, closed her eyes for a split second, and took a deep breath.

There, that was it.

That was the moment he’d been waiting for. The instant she was experiencing the—the—splendor. Yeah, the splendor of the country. And the best part was, she was totally unaware of it. As soon as she let the fresh air out of her lungs, her smile faded and sadness returned to her eyes.

Austin wanted to grab that moment for her. He wanted to show her what she couldn’t see. In the week she’d been in Texas, he hadn’t even come close.

“Morning, Kelsey, ready to work?”

“No.” She sat across from him, like she did every morning, and drank her coffee.

“The chickens are hungry.” He handed her the pail of feed.

“They’ll live.” She set it next to her chair and propped her feet on the coffee table.

It was a silly game they played every morning. But this morning she seemed different. There was something beyond the sadness. “What’s up?”

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno. You just look different.” He tapped the toe of her tennis shoe with his boot. “You’re not all mad and ‘I hate Texas’ like usual.”

“Yeah, well I’ve resigned myself to this year long prison sentence.”

“So—you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.” She took a long sip of coffee.

Austin set his cup down and stood. “Well, I got my stitches out and can pick up more of the cleaning load so—I guess I’m gonna get started.”

He grabbed for the pail, but before he could lift it, Kelsey laid her hand next to his on the handle. “I got it.”

He let go and took a step back. “Okay. I’d like to get started before it gets hot. It’s already eighty-eight.”

“I’m coming.” She sat her mug next to his and followed him to the chicken yard. She scattered the chicken scratch across the ground. “I got a video from Zoe yesterday.”

Austin cleaned and filled the chicken waterers and filled the feeders with lay crumble. “Yeah?”

“A bunch of my friends were at the park playing in the Crown Fountain. Ever hear of it?”

“No.”

“It’s pretty awesome. Here, look.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and Austin leaned over her shoulder to watch the video.

There was a ginormous video screen with a picture of a face on it. The face was spitting real water onto the people below. Then the water stopped, the face closed his eyes, the screen turned off, and a waterfall cascaded from the top. It looked like it was at least three stories tall.

“Whoa. Now that’s cool.”

Kelsey shoved her phone back into her pocket. “Yeah. They’re going to be doing stuff like that all summer and they don’t have a clue how lucky they are.”

“Nah, this is lucky. They’re missing out on rural America. Look at you. You’re a pro at feeding chickens and gathering eggs. Just think, while they’re playing in some e-coli infested urban fountain, you are shoveling one-hundred-percent natural horse shit.”

Kelsey shook her head. “When you put it like that…”

He slung his arm around her shoulder, careful to make sure it didn’t look like he was trying to come on to her. They walked to the coop and Austin placed eggs in the empty chicken scratch pail that Kelsey held. “I mean would Zoe have a clue how to pick up a warm fresh-from-the-chicken-ass egg?”

“Unlike me, she probably would have grabbed the egg and not a snake.”

“But then I wouldn’t have had to have stitches and watch you do all the work for a week.”

Kelsey spun away from Austin and pointed an accusing finger at him. “I knew it! It was your plan all along.” Her eyes were bright with mischief and she was smiling, on the edge of laughing.

Austin slapped his hand over his heart. “You got me. I planted the snake there. If I’d only known you were such a greenhorn that I would still have to show you every little thing…”

He was a little worried he might have pushed the teasing too much, but Kelsey gave him the fake pout that girls tend to do when they’re flirting and said, “Poor baby.”

Wait. Was she flirting with him? Really?

She held the pail of eggs up and continued. “I’ll just run these little ol’ chicken-shit-covered eggs to the house and you can start slopping Winifred.” She batted her eyes at him dramatically.

Yes. She was definitely flirting.

“A Texas boy can’t say no to a plea like that, even if it does come from a Yankee.” This was new territory for him, and he felt like he was walking across those eggs with spurs on. For once, Kelsey seemed to let the anger she held at her situation go and she was having fun—they were having fun—and he didn’t want it to go away.

She grinned a big cheesy grin and headed to the house, bucket of eggs in hand.