Welcome to the Official Blog Tour for Barbara J. Hancock's After Always! We will kick off this tour with an exclusive excerpt! Not only that, we are celebrating this book birthday today, too! We even have a cool tour-wide giveaway! So... Check it out and grab your copy today! Don't forget to follow the tour, HERE!
Genre:
Young Adult
Mystery/Suspense
Publish Date:
October 1, 2018
Publisher:
Entangled Teen
Synopsis:
Lydia’s life felt like it ended when Tristan died. Sure, they had their problems and he could be a little…intense at times. But he’d promised to love her forever…
When her parents propose a summer across the country with a music teacher who runs an inn, Lydia agrees. But it’s different from what she expected. There’s a presence there she can’t quite reconcile—and it feels like it’s hunting her. It seems Tristan’s promise followed her…and may have graver consequences than she could have known.
Then there’s Michael Malone, the one light spot in an otherwise dark existence. Lydia can’t help but be drawn to him, and as they try to uncover the evil plaguing the inn, they grow closer. But guilt over Tristan’s death still consumes her. Can she and Michael uncover what evil lurks in the inn before it takes another victim?
*Excerpt*
The hard gravel in my chest tried to beat faster, but I
breathed in and out, slow and steady, and told myself it didn’t matter. The
sudden beauty I’d seen in his everyday sort of features didn’t matter.
But when Michael’s amber eyes cut
sideways and he caught me looking at his face, it did matter.
He got quiet. Even quieter than usual.
I got quiet as well.
We both seemed to hardly breathe for a little
while.
I wasn’t only drawn to him because I’d
noticed his physical attractiveness. And it wasn’t only his warmth, although
I’d had a constant chill for months that seemed to ease as we stood there, side
by side, as it always eased around him. It was his calm. His stillness. More
than anything I was like a skittish wild creature being lured by an
outstretched hand. I stared at his face because I didn’t know whether I should
trust my instinct to run away or follow the urge to edge closer and dispel the
cold a little more.
Then, he spoke again and I looked away
from the movement of his finely shaped jaw.
“There’s always something that needs
doing. And I like the work. I like Stonebridge,” Michael said.
I looked back at him thinking “like”
was such an odd word for the monstrously huge old place. I wasn’t sure I liked
it at all. I found myself strangely nervous in dark stairways and blind
corners. And uncomfortable with all the closed and locked doors.
“I like the activity this time of year
especially. The guests coming and going. I like staying busy. And Mrs.
Brighton. I like her, too,” Michael said. “She hired me several years ago. I
was sixteen. Lied. Said I was older. She must have known. I was a foot shorter
back then. And I’d never even changed a light bulb. She hired me anyway.”
I couldn’t imagine a shorter version of
the guy beside me. Or one who hadn’t always known exactly what he was doing.
The young man I knew seemed to face the challenge presented by the aging hulk
of Stonebridge with undaunted determination and know-how.
“She started paying me more when I
decided to take engineering classes at the community college,” Michael
continued.
“You’re an engineer?” I said. I had
been so certain that I would be a concert pianist. Before. After, my high school
graduation had come and gone in a blur of grief. Now, I was in limbo. Uncertain
if I could face tomorrow much less a future at a conservatory that once
threatened to come between me and Tristan.
“Will be. One day,” Michael replied. So
simple. So certain.
I looked behind us at the great hulking
house I’d needed to escape from that morning. I saw something very different in
it than Michael saw. He saw opportunity and possibility. I saw dust and decay.
Just then, one of the swirling gulls
above us shed a feather. I had turned back to the cove but the fluttering
movement of the black-tipped gray feather as it fell caught my eye.
It would fall down, down, down to the
ocean in the cove and be washed out to sea. I watched it fall. The haphazard
dip and swerve of its trajectory was hypnotic in its inevitability.
Michael had seen it, too.
He didn’t wait for it to fall. He
stepped to the edge of the cliff where a low rail at his knees would probably
be useless in stopping his momentum if he slipped. He reached up and out for
the feather until it floated into the palm of his hand. Then, he closed his
fingers and pulled it back over land. All so sudden and quick and carelessly
graceful. I found myself holding my breath again.
“I like gulls, too,” Michael said,
twirling the saved feather in his dexterous, calloused fingers. “Some people
think their calls sound sad, but they would change their minds if they would
only watch them fly.”
He held the feather out to me and I
reached and took it from him, like a gift, before I stopped to consider.
From
his hand to mine, the gull feather passed and with it came the realization—I
didn’t know how I felt about Stonebridge, but I liked Michael. More than I
should. The feeling was warm and soft in my chest, unexpected and frightening.
I was never supposed to be warm and soft again. I was supposed to continue to
harden and cool until I was an unfeeling statue of Lydia, incapable of love and
loss and remembering pain. I didn’t want to risk another relationship. Not only
because I had promised Tristan forever, but because that vow had turned out to
be a mistake even before he was lost at sea.
~~~~~
**About the Author**
Barbara J. Hancock lives in a cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her many rescued pets and the guy who lured her into the wilderness with promises of lots of peace and quiet for writing. To this day, the Appalachian wildwood is the best gift she's ever been given. Her favorite pastime (besides animal rescue) is bringing darkly romantic stories to life by firefly light.
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