Reclaiming the sand by A. Meredith Walters BLOG TOUR STOP~ EXCERPT & GIVEAWAY

Bully and victim. 
Tormenter and tormented. 
Villain and hero. 

Ellie Mccallum was the bully. The Tormenter. The Villain. Taking what she wanted, stomping over anyone that got in her way. Feelings, futures, and relationships be damned. She felt no emotional connection to anyone or anything. A sad and lonely existence for a young woman who had come to expect nothing more for herself. Her only happiness coming from making others miserable. 

Particularly Freaky Flynn. 

Growing up, Flynn Hendrick was known only as “Freaky Flynn.” He lived a life completely disconnected even as he struggled to become something more than that boy with Asperger's. He was taunted and teased, bearing the brunt of systematic and calculated cruelty, ultimately culminating in acatastrophic turn of events that brought Ellie and Flynn’s worlds crashing down.

But then Flynn and Ellie grew up. 

And moved on.

Until years later when their paths unexpectedly cross again and the bully and the freak are face to face once more.

When labels come to define you, finding yourself feels impossible. Particularly for two people disconnected from the world who inexplicably find a connection in each other. 

And out of the wreckage of their tragic beginnings, an unlikely love story unfolds.

But a painful past doesn’t always want to let go. And old wounds are never truly healed…and sometimes the farther you try to run from yourself the closer you come to who you really are.

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“What are you doing here?” I demanded roughly, trying to hide my growing discomfort.

Flynn’s hands clenched together in front of him as he looked up at the large, white farmhouse.  “I live here,” he said shortly.

My stomach dropped to my feet at his statement.  He was living here?

“I thought it had been sold…” I began.

“No, I took it off the market last year after my mom died,” Flynn said and I heard emotion in his voice for the first time. 

Then I registered what he had said and I felt an uncomfortable familiar crush of feeling. 

“I’m sorry, Flynn,” I told him sincerely.  Because I was.  I recognized the look of grief on his face as surely as if it had been my own.  I wasn’t one to empathize.  It was almost impossible for me to identify with the emotions of others, but it had always been different with Flynn. 

And for the first time in six years I identified and felt someone else’s feelings as if they were my own.

It scared me shitless.

Flynn’s eyes that had been shadowed and dark flickered my way and met mine for an instant.  A flash of understanding arched out between us.  Awareness that I had thought dead and buried under the mountain of our past.

“Thanks,” Flynn responded, his voice cracking on the one, simple word.

We stood silent.  Locked in place by the weight of a thousand memories and words unspoken. 

I wasn’t quite sober enough for the heaviness of the moment.  It was overwhelming me.  I though I would suffocate in the tension. 

“Did you do the work on the house?” I asked him, not knowing what else to say.  I should probably just leave but for some reason, I couldn’t make my feet travel back the way they had come. 

I didn’t want to go backwards. 

Flynn nodded and looked back up at the house.  I remembered that the shutters had once been yellow.  I recalled flowerbeds overrun with blossoms and an apple tree laden down with fruit.  His mother’s banana bread and hot cider on a cold fall night.

These memories slammed into me with the force of a wrecking ball.  I hadn’t allowed myself to think about any of this in years. 

But being here, with Flynn, it came flooding back whether I wanted it to or not. 

A. Meredith Walters 

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Contemporary and Paranormal romance including The Find You in the Dark and Bad Rep series as well as the upcoming stand alone romance, Reclaiming the Sand, and a dark new adult series for Gallery Books.

A. Meredith spent ten years as a counselor for at risk teens and children. First working at a Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault program and then later a program for children with severe emotional and mental health issues. Her former clients and their stories continue to influence every aspect of her writing.

When not writing (or being tortured with all manner of beauty products at the hand of her very imaginative and extremely girly daughter), she is eating chocolate, watching reality television that could rot your brain and reading a smutty novel or two.

A. Meredith is represented by Michelle Johnson with the Inklings Literary Agency.

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