Page 3 of Gone Away Home

But she didn’t give up and I found myself giving in. There wasn’t really another choice to make.

“Look,” Noel’s voice takes on an edge, one I need to hear, “I get you’re not sure how everyone is going to react to you being with your sister.”

“Stepsister,” I seethe, “and we’re adults now. Damn it.” My tone has a note of resentment, a feeling I’ve been battling for years, “It should have been me with her first before Dad ever met Janice.”

I might not begrudge Dad his happiness, but the fact that I waited just a little too long to ask Zayla to be mine still burns in my gut like battery acid.

“And that’s why this is right,” he sounds pleased with himself. “Someone who isn’t sure, someone doing the wrong thing, would not be as pissed about how everything went down. If you could have moved on, you would have done it a long time ago. For some reason, I think she would have too.”

“Maybe,” I try and deflect.

“You’ll regret it the rest of your life if you don’t try. Have a little faith in what you felt for her all those years ago. You were trying to do right by her and then life stepped in with other plans, but maybe it’s worked out just the way it was supposed to.”

I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it for a moment, wondering if I’m really talking to my friend Noel or if he’s a pod person now. “Are you sure I’m talking to Noel Burns?” I throw the sarcastic ass question his way and can almost hear the way he rolls his eyes.

“The one and only,” he schmoozes. “Go get your girl and name your first son after me,” he makes his demand and instantly hangs up.

Probably because he knows I would have told him there’s no way I’ll name any of my kids Noel. Hell no.

The car door slams with a little too much force when I step out and start to head toward Zayla’s front door. Its time to claim my woman. I might be several years late, but I’m not going to let anything get in the way of seeing her and doing what I should have done years ago. Not now, not ever again.

My feet eat up the distance to her front porch and door. I hold my breath when I knock, knowing this will come as a complete surprise to her.

I hope she’s happy to see me.

CHAPTER 2

ZAYLA

My vision starts to blur a little as I stare at the screen in front of me. I know I shouldn’t push myself so much, but it’s so easy to do. It certainly helps that the book I’m editing is amazing, and I’ve been hooked from the moment I read the blurb, not to mention the first page.

How am I supposed to walk away for something as trivial as stretching or food? It’s just not going to happen. I need to know if the man in the shadows stalking the heroine is the person I think it is. Or is it someone we haven’t even met? I can see a twist coming up, but I have no idea what it is.

And that’s why I love what I do.

Not only am I sucker for romance, which is the only genre I edit, but I love to get lost in the worlds and lives created in the imagination of a talented author. The world can be rough, and we all need to find a way to escape to somewhere the bad can be balanced by the good.

Not everyone gets that balance in their real lives.

When I reach the end of a story, my reality sets back in. Sure, I don’t have it as bad as a lot of people, but that doesn’t matter when the sadness and the loneliness is almost too much to face. Everyone struggles, everyone has things they wish they could change in their lives, everyone is looking for more, for a purpose. Everyone needs someone at their side to help shore them up for the curve balls and the parts of the path which are hard to traverse.

I love my family and they’re as supportive as I allow them to be. I even have some people I consider my friends.

But there’s a gaping hole in my soul that I yearn to have filled. I feel incomplete. It’s a feeling which is bleeding into all aspects of my life now, no matter how good I’ve gotten at pretending like I’m whole, happy, and fulfilled.

It’s all a lie.

When I get to the end of the chapter, I force myself to minimize the document and lean back in my ergonomically rated chair to stretch my back. My eyes snag on the file icon for the book I’ve been trying to write.

I figured since I love the genre so much and read a lot of romance, even when I’m not working, I could write a novel. It hasn’t gone well. When I started, I was all in and the words were flowing; it felt like I was on the top of the world.

Then I got to the part where the hero and the heroine come together for the first time. All the tension and the reasons why they shouldn’t have been together fall away. The kiss they share is hot and heavy, but then, just as his hands reached for her to take it further…the words dried up.

There is nothing more frustrating than feeling like everything I want to say, all the beauty of love that I want to express, is right there but unreachable.

It would help if I knew what the kind of passion I want my readers to be able to almost taste actually feels like. But I don’t.

It’s a huge problem, one I have no idea how to fix. It’s not like I can put an ad in the Jasper Ridge Gazette for a soul mate who is going to stand by my side and never let me down. If I thought I could do it and be successful, I would have done it a long time ago.

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