If You Stay (Beautifully Broken, #1)(74)

My kids. Thank you for being you. For making me laugh and cry and showing me what the purest love actually is. I will love you forever and ever and ever.

My husband. I don’t even know what to say. You are truly my better half. You support me, let me cry on you, make me laugh. I would be lost without you. If only you would learn to cook, you would be perfect. Haha. Seriously, I love you more than I can say and am more thankful for you than words can express. Love never fails. We’ve proven that a hundred times already and I can’t wait to prove it a hundred more with you.

And…. My readers!!! Thank you so, so much for reading my work. Thank you for your emails, your Facebook posts, your tweets. I am so grateful for you. It is because of you that I do what I do.

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About the Author



Courtney Cole is a novelist who lives near Lake Michigan. Her favorite place in the world is on the shore with her toes in the water. Courtney is the author of several Young Adult series, as well as several Adult books. To learn more about her, visit her website: www.courtneycolewrites.com

Or, you can view her Amazon Author’s Page to see a complete collection of her work.

If you enjoyed If You Stay, you might enjoy other work from Courtney Cole. If you’d like to view samples of her other work, please continue reading.





Other Excerpts



Of Blood and Bone (Book One of the Minaldi Legacy)

Genre: Dark Romance, Adult

By Courtney Cole





Prologue


Luca is gone.

I know it before I open my eyes. The weight of his body next to me is absent, the scent of him gone from the air. I sigh, reluctant to begin this day because I know what it holds for me. I know that if Luca is truly gone, I will spend every hour frantically searching for him.

Gazing around, I find my large suite empty. Everything is neat and tidy and exactly in place. Each lavish piece of furniture is polished with lemon oil, each extravagant painting on the wall carefully dusted. Each expensive vase, each crystal lamp, each woven rug is perfectly aligned and exactly how I left it. Something is different, though, somehow changed in this room that I fell asleep in last night.

My sleepy eyes do another quick sweep, and this time I notice the balcony doors standing wide open while the bright morning sun streams onto the mahogany floor and the white sheer curtains on either side flutter in the sea breeze.

This is the difference and it slams into me like a concrete wall. I didn’t fall asleep with those doors open. I would never do that now, not since I know what dangers lurk in the world, the darkness that can find me.

Immediately after I notice this inconsistency, I also see that across the room, my bedroom door is tightly closed and the bolt is still slid firmly in place.

Just as I left it last night.

My heart stutters as I realize what this means.

While I slept, Luca must have climbed from my balcony ledge to escape. But the drop is well over thirty feet and there are sharp rocks at the base of the house. There are gardens directly behind, but beyond that, there is a cliff with a hundred foot drop to the sea below.

I leap naked from bed and rush to the balcony’s edge. My bare breasts press against the cold railing as I peer down at both the gardens and what I can see of the pristine sand beyond that. Luca is not lying broken and bleeding there, so I try to still my racing heart. I search the beaches and craggy landscape on both sides of my periphery and I still do not see him.

He somehow survived the fall.

A hundred different things run through my mind, but the one that stands out in the forefront is the image, the possibility, that he managed to drag himself, broken and bleeding, to a different location, somewhere where he is even now waiting for me to help him.

Because I promised.

I promised him that I would help him, that I would keep him from the darkness that plagues him, that I would heal him.

That I would save him.

I swallow hard and as I do, I realize that my throat is tender from Luca’s hands last night. I know that if I look into a mirror, there will be a bruise in the perfect formation of his long fingers around my neck.

As I softly touch it, I remember his face from the night before. It was shadowed in the moonlight and like always, he was beautiful. Luca is handsome in a very classic and beautiful way, dark hair and cut cheekbones. His bangs are long and almost hide his magnificent dark eyes until he shakes his hair away. And when he does, the sadness that dwells there is apparent to anyone who knows him.

But last night, I didn’t need to look into his eyes to see that his darkness had returned. I knew it from the moment he stepped into my room.

I can always see it. It changes everything about him, even the way he walks and moves. The way he stands. The way he speaks. The way he feels.

He is an entirely different person when the darkness comes.

These are the moments that he dreads with every breath when he is himself; the moments when he is no longer Luca. In these moments, he is filled with thoughts that are no longer his own.

He cannot help it, he cannot control it, he cannot stop it.

But I promised him that I would.

And I have failed him.

I scramble to my wardrobe and pull on clothing, choosing a shirt with a collar, hoping to somewhat hide the bruise on my neck. The only other people here at Chessarae are servants, except for Luca’s mother in her lonely wing. But she is locked in so she never comes into the main part of the house. No one will see me but the staff. And they are used to seeing strange things.