Breaking the Rules (Pushing the Limits, #1.5)(114)

Noah goes after Echo: “Highway Don’t Care” (feat. Taylor Swift) by Tim McGraw

Songs to describe Echo and Noah’s future:

“Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts

“Home” by Phillip Phillips





About the Author

Katie McGarry was a teenager during the age of grunge and boy bands and remembers those years as the best and worst of her life. She is a lover of music, happy endings and reality television, and is a secret University of Kentucky basketball fan. She is also the author of Pushing the Limits, Dare You To, Crash Into You, Take Me On and the novellas “Crossing the Line” and “Red at Night,” as well as Nowhere But Here, the first novel in a brand new series coming soon.

Katie would love to hear from her readers. Contact her via her website, katielmcgarry.com, follow her on Twitter @KatieMcGarry, or become a fan on Facebook and Goodreads.





Katie McGarry and Harlequin TEEN

are thrilled to introduce

a brand-new series about teens being raised

in the exhilarating world of motorcycle clubs.

Read on for an exclusive sneak peek of

NOWHERE BUT HERE, coming soon!





Oz

It’s three in the morning, and Mom and I continue to wait. The two of us deal with the heaviness of each passing second differently. She paces our tiny living room at the front of our double-wide while I polish my combat boots in my room. Regardless of what happens tonight, we have a wake to attend in the morning.

The scratching of the old scrub brush against my black boot is the lone sound that fills the blackened house. We both pretend that the other isn’t awake. Neither of us has turned on a lamp. Instead, we rely on the rays of the full moon to see. It’s easier this way. Neither of us wants to discuss the meaning of Dad’s absence or his cell phone silence.

I sit on the edge of my twin mattress. If I stretched my leg, my toe would hit the faux-wooden-paneled wall. I’m tall like my dad, and the room is compact and narrow. Large enough to hold my bed and an old stack of milk crates that I use as shelves.

Mom’s phone pings, and my hands freeze. Through the crack in my door, I spot her black form as she grabs her cell. The screen glows to life, and a bluish light illuminates Mom’s face. I quit breathing and strain to listen to her reaction or at least hear the roar of motorcycle engines.

Nothing. More silence. Adrenaline begins to pump into my veins. Dad should have been home by now. They all should have been home. Especially with Olivia’s wake in the morning.

Unable to stomach the quiet any longer, I set the boot on the floor and open my door. The squeak of the hinges screeches through the trailer. In two steps, I’m in the living room.

Mom continues to scroll through her phone. She’s a small thing, under five four, and has long, straight hair. It’s black. Just like mine and just like Dad’s. Mom and Dad are only thirty-seven. I’m seventeen. Needless to say, my mom was young when she had me. But the way she slumps her shoulders, she appears ten years older.

“Any word?” I ask.

“It’s Nina.” My best friend Chevy’s mom. “Wondering if we had heard anything.” Which implies neither Eli nor Cyrus have returned home.

From behind her, I place a hand on Mom’s shoulder, and she covers my fingers with hers.

“I’ll be out there watching their backs soon.” Now that I’ve graduated from high school, I’ll finally be allowed to enter the family business.

A job with the security company and a patch-in to the club is all I’ve thought about since I was twelve. All I’ve craved since I turned sixteen and earned my motorcycle license. “They’re fine. Like I’ll be when I join them.”

Mom pats my hand, walks into the space that serves as our kitchen and busies herself with a stack of mail.

I rest my shoulder against the wall near the window. The backs of my legs bump the only piece of furniture in the room besides the flat screen—a sectional bought last year before Olivia became ill.

Without trying to be obvious, I glance beyond the lace curtains and assess the road leading to our trailer. I’m also worried, but it’s my job to alleviate her concern.

I force a tease into my voice. “I bet you can’t wait until Chevy graduates next year. Then there will be two more of us protecting the old men.”

Mom coughs out a laugh and takes a drink to control the choking. “I can’t begin to imagine the two of you riding in the pack when the image in my mind is of both of you as toddlers, covered in mud from head to toe.”

“Not hard to remember. That was last week’s front yard football game,” I joke.

She smiles. Long enough to chase away the gravity of tonight’s situation, but then reality catches up. If humor won’t work, I’ll go for serious. “Chevy would like to GED out.”

“Nina would skin him alive. Each of you promised Olivia you’d finish high school.”

Because it broke Olivia’s heart when Eli, her son, opted out of finishing high school and instead tested to gain his GED years ago. Eli’s parents, Olivia and Cyrus, aren’t blood to me, but they gave my mom and dad a safe place to lay low years ago when their own parents went self-destructive. Olivia and I aren’t related, but she’s the closest I have to a grandmother.