Today we have the sales blitz for Jayne Frost’s MISSING FROM ME audiobook! Check it out and be sure to grab your copy now!
Title: Missing From Me
Author: Jayne Frost
Genre: Contemporary Romance
About Missing From Me
Sean
As the drummer for the band Caged, I’m the poster boy for living the fucking dream. I’ve got it all. Success. Money. A new woman in my bed every night.
Too bad it’s all a façade.
The only thing I really want, I can’t have — Anna Dresden.
When I decided to follow my dream, she was the price. But I never forgot her. Never moved on.
And then she was there, backstage after one of our shows. That’s when I knew — Anna was mine, would always be mine. And if she gave me a half a chance, I’d convince her.
Anna
When Sean Hudson walked out of my life, he shattered me. Broke me in untold ways. Now it was my turn to run.
The last thing I expected Sean to do was follow. Especially since I was wearing another man’s ring. Never mind it was just for show.
My marriage was over — had been for a year.
But that didn’t matter. Sean was my past. I couldn’t survive his brand of hurt ever again.
Soul mates, he used to call us. Too bad there was no such thing.
Missing From Me
Exclusive Excerpt:
Chapter One
4 YEARS AGO
Sean
Chapter One
4 YEARS AGO
Sean
The front door slammed, shaking the
walls in our small apartment. I snuggled closer to Anna’s side and buried my face in her hair.
Logan’s agitated voice cut through
the fog of near sleep.
“Dude, wake up!”
Whatever mess my best friend had
gotten himself into, he’d have to solve it on his own. This was one of Anna’s
rare mornings off, and since we’d had the apartment to ourselves, we’d stayed
up late, listening to the rain and having lazy sex until we’d passed out.
Smiling at the thought of a repeat,
I grumbled in Logan’s general direction, “Go away. I don’t have any condoms.
Carry your ass to the store like a normal person and leave us alone.”
His footsteps echoed in the tiny
room, and then he was beside me, his long fingers digging into my shoulder as
he gave me a hard shake. “I’m serious. Get up.”
Not
happening.
A frustrated groan escaped my lips
when Anna twisted in my arms. She propped herself up on one elbow, wiping
the sleep from her eyes. “What do you
need, Lo?”
A
swift kick in the ass.
Rolling onto my back, I smothered
my face with the pillow, hoping he’d get the hint. Of course, he didn’t.
Cursing under his breath, Logan
rooted around under the comforter.
“Hey!” I snarled, tossing the
pillow at him. “Whatever you’re looking for, I don’t have it.”
Running an agitated hand through
his blond hair, Logan glared at me.
“Where’s your remote?” Anxiety
laced his tone when I didn’t answer right away. “For the TV, douchebag—where’s
the remote?”
Anna fumbled around on the
nightstand and then handed him the clunky device. “What’s wrong with the TV in
your room?”
Logan walked to the end of the bed
and took a seat.
Anna sat up, scowling. “Make
it quick.” She slumped against the headboard, glaring at the back of Logan’s
head. “Seriously, Lo, hurry up. I have to pee.”
Logan ignored her, all his
attention focused on the screen as he flipped through the channels. His
shoulders sagged when he reached CNN.
Cable News? Now he had my
attention. The only things Logan ever watched were
MTV, VH1, or the Cartoon Network.
I popped up to see what was so
important, but something told me I didn’t want to know. “What’s going on?”
“Quiet,” Logan whispered.
Buttoning my lip, I reluctantly
focused on the screen where a stone-faced commentator stood in a field, fat
droplets of rain pelting her microphone.
“.
. . live footage from the scene of the
tragic accident outside of Fredericksburg, Texas this morning where two members
of the super-group Damaged lost their lives in a fiery crash. At this point,
we’re unable to confirm the identities of the deceased. Damaged, arguably the
hottest band in the country, just completed a series of shows in the Southwest
and . . .”
The camera panned out for a
wide-angle shot. Wisps of smoke rose from the wreckage, dissolving into the
gray morning sky.
A gasp from Anna. “Oh my
God.”
She crumbled against me, her small
hand curving around my waist as she buried her face in my chest. Unable to make
sense of what I was seeing, I stroked her hair with numb fingers.
After a few moments of stunned
silence, Logan jumped to his feet. “What the fuck is she smiling about?”
Confused, I blinked at him.
“Who?”
“The fucking reporter.” He pointed
at the TV with a shaky hand. “What the hell is she grinning for?”
I shifted my gaze back to the
screen, and sure as shit, the reporter was smiling. Just a slight upturn of her
glossy lips.
I tightened my grip on my girl.
“It’s her job, man. She doesn’t . . .” Emotion clogged my throat, and I
struggled for breath. For words. “She doesn’t know them.”
But then, neither did we. Not
really. Damaged hailed from Austin, our hometown. And over the last five years,
as their star ascended, our paths had crossed on occasion.
Our band, Caged, was one of the
many groups on Sixth Street that loosely followed the Damaged blueprint. Since
high school, we’d been playing the same bars where Damaged got their start,
hoping a little of their magic would rub off.
The news report abruptly cut to
KVUE, the local ABC affiliate. Terri Gruca, the nighttime anchor, sat stoically
behind the half-lit desk, her co-anchor nowhere in sight.
“Thank you, Sandy.” Terri blinked
into the camera. “We’ve just got word at the studio that Rhenn Grayson, lead
singer for the Grammy winning band Damaged, and Paige Dawson, lead guitarist,
were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident on Highway 290 this morning.”
She looked down at the copy wobbling in her shaking hand. “Rhenn’s wife, singer
Tori Grayson, and drummer, Miles Cooper, were airlifted to Brackenridge
Hospital via Care Flight. According to band manager, Taryn Ayers, Mrs. Grayson and Mr. Cooper are both in critical
condition. The bus driver was also pronounced dead at the crash site.” Still photos of Rhenn and Paige appeared on a
split screen in the background behind Terri’s head. “Our prayers go out to the
families. After a brief commercial break, we’ll cut to the CNN studio for
further updates on this tragedy and a look back at the lives of these two
gifted musicians.”
My head pounded as a commercial for
toaster strudel flickered across the screen. Smiling faces and cheery voices,
touting the virtue of strawberry jam tucked inside a fluffy pastry shell.
Somewhere, people were probably eating that shit.
But not Rhenn or Paige.
“They were twenty-four years old,”
Logan murmured.
As he turned to face me, questions
clouded his arctic blue eyes. The same questions I’d seen every day since the
first time we met. About death, and why it visited some while leaving others
alone. Death was what brought Logan and me together, after all. Our shared
bond. Two kids whose mothers would never sit at the long table in Mrs. Varner’s
classroom handing out cookies. Because our mothers had “passed.”
That’s the polite term people used
when someone died. The same folks made sure to tell you they were “sorry for
your loss.”
Which I always found funny, since
my mother wasn’t lost. She was dead.
Rhenn’s voice boomed from the
speaker on the worn-out TV. Smiling his most iconic smile, he stood back to
back with Paige as he crooned the band’s latest hit.
I leaned forward to drink it all
in. Because that’s all that was left now, bits of light and shadow caught on
tape.
Slithering from my loose hold, Anna
stumbled to her feet. “I’ve got to pee.”
Before she got away, I swung my
legs over the side of the bed and then slipped my arms around her waist to pull
her between my knees.
Resting my forehead against her
chest, I breathed deeply, her peach scent soothing me like a balm. “I love you,
Anna-baby.”
She sifted her fingers through my
hair until I stopped shaking, and then kissed the top of my head. “Love you
too.”
Reluctantly, I let her go, and she
retreated into the tiny bathroom. Through the paper-thin walls, I heard her crying
softly.
When she returned, her face
splotchy and her eyes glistening with leftover tears, I gave her a soft smile
and lifted the covers so she could crawl in beside me.
An hour later and we still hadn’t
moved, like if we stayed here, it wouldn’t be real.
But it was.
When they showed the Care Flight
helicopter on the roof of Brackenridge Hospital for the second time, I
snapped. “Change that, will you?”
Logan flipped the channel to MTV
while I reached for the pad of paper I kept beside the bed to jot down lyrics.
Like everyone else, the music
channel was covering the Damaged story. But instead of reporting what everyone
already knew, they were running a special broadcast about the three
lesser-known bands that had followed Damaged up the ladder.
A solemn voice spoke over a montage
of snippets flickering on the screen.
“While
it stands to reason that Leveraged, Revenge Theory, or Drafthouse will fill the
gaping hole left by today’s tragic event, a few lesser-known groups from Austin
have amassed quite a following.”
Jolted by the familiar beat, my
gaze snapped to the television where footage of Caged performing at the Parish
flashed on the set.
“One
such group, Caged, is currently playing the same venue where Damaged got their
start some five years ago.”
The camera panned to the front of
my drum kit where the band’s logo, a lion inside a gilded cage, shimmered under
the lights.
“Like
many of the smaller Sixth Street bands, Caged is still fighting for notoriety
outside this small, but illustrious, stretch of road.”
“Oh my God,” Anna whispered,
squeezing my hand. “That’s you.”
Guilt flooded my insides, sweeping
away the momentary jubilation.
They’re
dead, I reminded
myself, turning my attention back to my lyrics.
Voices
dying on the breeze, eyes now see what no one sees.
Will
you be among the masses, forever frozen as time passes?
As I pondered the morbid
compilation, the incessant ringing roused me from my next thought.
“Answer that call, dude,” I
grumbled to Logan’s back.
He glanced down at his hand as if
he just realized he was holding the phone. Swiping a finger over the screen, he
took a deep breath before lifting the device to his ear.
“Hey, Chase.” Logan pushed to his
feet and began to pace in a tight circle, glancing at the television every few
seconds. “Of course I heard.” Stopping in his tracks, he listened intently.
“Tonight?” He glanced at me, brows drawn together over troubled blue eyes. “I
don’t know. Let me talk to Sean first.”
Tossing the phone on the bed, Logan
dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “That was Chase. He wants us
to do a set tonight.”
My stomach twisted as the shock
rolled through me. “Why tonight?”
Logan’s eyes met mine, conflicted.
“There’s going to be some kind of candlelight vigil.” He cleared his throat.
“They’re expecting music, so someone’s got to take the stage.”
Might as well be us.
About the Author:
I’m an author who hails from Texas (by way of California), currently living in Sin City.
A romantic by nature, I believe in fairytales and happily ever afters. And music. Because the best stories always have a soundtrack.
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