She’s FBI and he is ex-military. It is said that opposites attract, but for them, it is much more. Nothing will stop Michael Chavez from protecting the woman he loves.
Gabriel always left immediately when a reading was finished. This time, he took a step closer. “Feel like dancing?”
“What?”
Without breaking eye contact, he spoke over his shoulder. “Ben, leave us.”
My nerves fluttered. He sent Ben away. Ben was gone. Just the two of us left. This was not good. Then again, good things were reserved for other people.
Leave! my brain begged.
I couldn’t mask the growing agony much longer, the pain that would constantly plague my future, forever chaining me to the past.
His face was void of expression. “Dancing. I asked if you wanted to go dancing.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. The past Cypher used to go out afterward, as if this whole process energized her.”
“Maybe she was too outgoing. I’m not a good dancer.”
My pained heart scrambled to calm down, which only caused it to beat more furiously.
“No. You struggle.” He took a step toward me. “I’ve been watching. I know this is abnormal for a Cypher. Your soul is gone, and it should know its duties, why it’s gone.” He claimed another step. “Your body shouldn’t crave the loss as it does. It should accept its freedom.”
This man—no—this vampire was about to figure out a secret that could not be told. Not yet. Not ever. The sting in my heart couldn’t grow much worse than the squeezing, irregular thumping it had adopted from the impact of his words.
Was Gabriel really that observant? I should have known. He wasn’t stupid, and he was definitely malicious. I should have been nicer to him. Why couldn’t I ever just be nice? Maybe because my soul had been pried from my body, leaving me with an uncertain afterlife and a hollow space next to my heart. Things like that tend to leave a girl a tad bitter.
Download Souled Out by Blakely Chorpenning while it’s free on Amazon December 5th – 9th.
Max took another snapshot of Fade leaning against the wall wearing a yellow sundress and a leather jacket, naked legs long and ankles crossed. “So, what kind of artist do you want to be?”
“I want to be myself. Authentic.” Fade ran a hand through her hair. “Down to earth.”
“Why not just go by Faye Devereux? Or even Faye?”
Fade caressed the neck of her guitar and Max captured it on film. “Gotta have some mystery.” She smiled. She lifted the hem of her dress to show more thigh. She turned to Max and walked toward her while Max walked backward. Her legs hit the loveseat. Fade put her hand over the polaroid camera and lowered it from Max’s face. Fade’s skin smelled like peaches and cream, her mouth tasted like mixed berries.
When the kiss broke, and Fade came in for a second one, Max leaned back. “I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Fade smiled, a sharp but gentle crescent. “That’s why I want to.” She kissed Max again, and Max was receptive.
Book Excerpt:
It was a hot night in late June 1966. Eighteen-year-old Misty and her twelve-year-old brother, Jeremy, were in the recreation room of their home in the Chevy Chase suburb of Washington, D.C. They were watching summer reruns of their favorite TV shows while their parents were at a neighborhood party. Misty had just graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School and had plans to attend the University of Maryland in the fall.
It was nearly 7:45 p.m., and Misty’s boyfriend, Tom Salmonti, was due to call any minute. The work shift at his summer gas station job would be ending soon. After a few minutes, the phone rang and Jeremy raced to reach it. “Hello men’s room,” he answered.
“Don’t answer the phone saying stuff like that,” said Misty. “What’s the matter with you?”
Tom laughed at Jeremy’s prank and asked for Misty. “You want Gertie,” said Jeremy, “Gertie, the dirty birdie?”
“Cut it out, Jeremy,” said Misty, whose real name was Gertrude Pauline Klotz. She grabbed the phone saying “I hate that name. Why did they ever name me Gertrude? Grrrr! You’d think Klotz was bad enough, but they had to add insult to injury. Well at least I adopted the cool nickname of Misty.”
“Oh hi, Tom,” said Misty, changing her voice from harsh to pleasant. “Sorry you had to hear me blow up, but Jeremy is really being bad.”
“That’s okay,” said Tom. “I just got home. How’d you like to go down and cruise the Pit (Bob’s Burger Pit Drive-In restaurant) and see who’s hanging out?”
“That would be great,” said Misty, “but I’m stuck here babysitting wonder twerp and we would have to take him along.”
“Well, we can stuff him in the trunk or something,” said Tom.
“Oh, anything to shut him up,” said Misty.
“I’ll pick you up in 45 minutes, after I get out of the shower and fly on over,” said Tom.
“Okay bye,” said Misty, as she hung up while dodging a pillow thrown by Jeremy.
“Listen, Jer,” said Misty. “Tom is coming over to take us to the Pit. I want you to act normal for once in your life and sit in the back seat and keep your big mouth shut. If you can’t do that, I’ll have Tom tie you up and gag you and shove you in the trunk, like he just told me.”
“Oh yeah, Gertie,” said Jeremy, “you just try. I’ll tell Mom and Dad.”
It was 8:30 p.m., and Misty and Jeremy sat on their front porch waiting. Soon came the deep-throated rumble of Tom’s car with its hot rod exhaust system. They could hear it from half a mile away. It grew louder and louder, and soon Tom pulled his shiny red customized 1957 Chevy Impala convertible (with the top down) into the driveway. He revved the engine twice and turned off the ignition.
“Well stump jumper,” said Jeremy to Tom. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you know you died two weeks ago? I guess no one bothered to tell you.”
“Be quiet, Jeremy,” said Misty, “and cut out all of the nonsense. She opened the car door and pulled the seat forward to let Jeremy into the back.
But Jeremy, with ideas of his own, ran to the open convertible, slapped his hands onto the side, and vaulted right in saying, “Ride ‘em cowboy, yee-hah.”
“You little idiot,” said Tom. “You’ll ruin my custom paint job and rolled and pleated interior.
Some scholars argue that the Atomic Age began with the first atomic explosion and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since that time frame neatly brackets all the stories found here, I’m not about to debate a pack of scholars and ruin a good subtitle, i.e., Growing Up in the Atomic Age. I wish to make it clear, however, that I had nothing to do with either event. For one thing, I was born in 1947, two years after the first atomic bomb test. And while I was in Washington, D.C., when the Soviet Union collapsed, I had other things on my mind.
Of the thirty-three chapters in this memoir, twenty-one of them have at least one boot firmly cemented in the 1950s, so, for the most part, Duck and Cover stands as a personal history of that era. While this admission may alarm younger readers, let me put your mind at rest by saying that I never start a single sentence with, “Kids today don’t…” or, “Young people today should…” or any sentence that blames the young for not being old. I have no animosity toward your generation; in fact, at the age of seventy-four, I wish I could throw off the aches and pains of an old man and join your ranks–even if it means wearing my baseball hat backward. If I have any gripes, they’re against my generation. Specifically, the ones who say, “Kids today don’t…” and “Young people today should…”
Many who lived in the 1950s, or wished they had, see it as a Golden Age. It truly was a Golden Age for television, but only because TV was still a novelty. In the Philips’ house, television brought our family together mainly because we couldn’t afford two TVs and the screen was so small that we had to sit shoulder to shoulder. When not watching our old TV, which Dad bought used, we watched the TV repairman work on it. To many families, TV repairs were so frequent that repairmen became honorary member of the family. Only a child of the ’50s can say, as I can, “Bill Deamon was our TV repairman.”
Some old fogies whine about the bad influence of today’s TV shows, but to my knowledge, not once did Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones encourage kids to wreck their TVs. Readers of a certain age know which ’50s show I’m talking about—Winky Dink and You. Numerous times during Saturday morning episodes, Winky and his dog, Woofer, would find themselves in peril and pleading with their young audience to save them. The catch was that parents had to fork over 50 cents for a piece of transparent vinyl, called a “magic drawing screen,” and stick it to the TV screen before Winky came on. Kids could save Winky from danger by using ordinary crayons on the vinyl screen to draw in a bridge, a ladder, or whatever it took to help the boy and his dog. I know you’re way ahead of me on this, so I’ll be brief—not every parent bought the “magic screen” or even knew they needed one, but most kids had crayons. So in many homes, Winky and Woofer survived, but future TV viewing was seen through a waxy haze.