I’ve not talked about Forever Last Night much, but if you bought a signed copy of 99 Days of Laney MacGuire from me, you probably got a little postcard teaser about it, saying to was coming out…well, already.
That was the plan. Before Geek Husband got a new job and we had to pack and move to another town and try to find a new house (which we still haven’t done). It was the plan when I had a husband who would be running a farm over winter – who would have plenty of time to stay home with Boy Sprout while I wrote. (I’m not a fan of winter in general – boo to cold! – but I learned to love it when we were farming, because it was the time when my husband wasn’t working around the clock, so I could get way more writing done and actually see him occasionally.)
Now we’ve been back in Montana for two and a half months, and I am just barely getting settled into a good schedule for our new life. Finally figuring out how to work writing back in around everything else. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about Forever Last Night. So, I thought, why not a fun teaser for y’all?
Enjoy.
“How do you put up with it?” I asked.
He shrugged, an attempt at casual, but his eyes squinted slightly, and his mouth formed a hard line. “You get used to it.”
“You don’t look very used to it,” I said.
Asher turned the TV off and put the remote back on the table. “You’re right,” he said, slouching back against the couch. “It blows. Every single time. But it’s just something that happens, and I have to deal with it.”
“Do you ever…” I trailed off and played with the hem of my dress. Asher nudged me with a shoulder and gestured for me to continue. “…wish that, maybe…”
“That I wasn’t famous?” he finished for me with no emotion behind his words. I nodded. Asher sat beside me silently. Had I pissed him off with my question? It wasn’t like I knew him, no matter how many articles and interviews I’d read, and I had no right to ask him that. Just as I was opening my mouth to apologize, he said, “All the damn time.”
“Seriously?”
He pulled a hand through his hair again. “Yeah. I mean”—he paused to pull his legs up under him on the couch, and turned to face me, cross-legged—“I’m grateful, really, but all this shit on the TV? I hate it. I hate when people follow me around with their cameras, and I hate when women press themselves against me in airports—”
“Oh, come on. You don’t really hate that last one,” I teased.
The corners of his mouth ticked upward, but he said, “No, I do. It gets old really fast.”
“There must be something you like about it.”
Now he smiled fully. “There is. I still love the music. There’s nothing quite like running my fingers over my guitar and creating something. Hearing Colin sing my lyrics is a high every time. It’s an amazing rush. It’s just the rest of the shit I hate.”
Asher’s face lit up as he talked about his music, and he seemed to be a completely different man from the one who’d complained about the tabloid reports. His eyes sparkled, and laugh lines formed around them with his deepening smile. His love for the music was infectious—my skin buzzed with it.
His energy was like a magnet, pulling me toward him. I felt myself leaning forward, eyes closing. A small voice in the back of my mind told me what a bad idea this was, but I shut it out.
And kissed Asher James.
I don’t have a new release date for this one yet, but I’ll keep you all in the loop!
