by J. A. Huss
So I speak.
“OK,” I croak out. My voice cracks a little and Vaughn rushes to offer me a cup of water off the bedside table. I take a sip and try again. “OK.” It’s just two letters. Hardly my best work—not even one hashtag—but definitely my most pithy when it comes to getting Vaughn Asher’s attention.
His face lights up immediately and that makes my stomach flutter. He’s in like with me. And I’m in like with him. We’re married. He is, in fact, my husband.
“What kind of fairytale is this?” I say it out loud, but I really didn’t mean to.
“It’s real, sweets,” he says back, as he plants a kiss on my cheek. “It’s real. Now tell me how to make you happy right now.”
I drop my head and cry. I hate to cry. Crying is the weakest thing in the world because it does nothing except make you feel worse.
Vaughn sits down on the bed next to me and I hear the click, click, click of the doctor’s shoes as she exits the room.
“Grace,” he says as he pulls me into an embrace. “You can tell me anything. I’m your own personal secret-keeper. Nothing you tell me can hurt you.”
“I’m sad,” I whisper, trying to pull myself together.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry he took you and my security wasn’t good enough—”
“No,” I cut him off. “That’s not why.” I look up at the great Vaughn Asher. His eyes are glassy and his smile is gone. “I’m sad about…” But I can’t say it. It wasn’t even a baby. The nurses all told me that when they came in that first night. Not even a baby. Just an empty sac of nothing.
So why do I feel like crying just thinking about it?
“You know what I’m sad about?” he asks as he lays me back on the bed and then joins me.
“What?” I turn to look at him and the tears stream down my cheeks. I bite my lip to stop the sobs, but they break through anyway. “What?” I ask again, because he looks shell-shocked.
He manages a tight smile and then blinks a few times. “I’m sad…” He stops to take a deep breath. “I’m sad that I imagined a whole life with you and that life included a baby. I mean, back before they told me it wasn’t going to be. I imagined the doctor visits. The shopping. You slapping me and cursing my name during natural childbirth.” I laugh at that and he smiles. “Just kidding. I’d never be able to watch you in pain. So good God, please. Take the drugs when they ask you, OK?”
“When they ask me?”
“Yeah, sweets. When. There’s babies in our future, Mrs. Invisible Man. Lots of them. We just got married. We’re just hitting our stride. Bad things have happened over the last few weeks. But the good things will outweigh them soon enough. So don’t be too sad, Grace. Don’t let the sad take over your life or make you afraid. Don’t let it stop the words.” I look up at him and I know he’s been talking to Bebe or my parents. They must’ve told him how I clammed up last time. “Don’t let those bad things steal away your future. Or make you hide behind a Twitter handle. Or force you into a fantasy life because reality sucks. Because I’m gonna be here with you. From now on, when life comes at us, we’re gonna fight it back together. We’re gonna grab it by the horns and ride the fuck out of it. So please, Grace. Please. I’m begging you. Don’t be afraid. And don’t be too sad.”
I lean up and kiss him. His hand cups my face and pulls me close. This is the first kiss we’ve had in forever and it feels different somehow. It feels special. Passionate. Real. “Please take me home, Asher.”
He smiles at my use of his last name. It’s not an insult. It’s… familiar. When I look closely, I can see the tears in his eyes. “Where’s home, Grace? Just tell me where home is and I’ll take you there.”
“Home is…” I look up at Vaughn. He’s not the man I dreamed about. He’s disappointed me plenty of times. He’s as far away from my imaginary prince in the Land of Far, Far Away as they come.
But I’m not complaining. Because he’s better. He’s better than anything I could ever have hoped for. He’s romantic and tender. Commanding and kind. He’s protective and loving and generous and… mine.
He’s all mine.
“With you,” I tell him. “As long as I’m with you, I’m home.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I CLOSE the limo door after helping Grace get in the back seat and walk around to my side. My phone buzzes in my pants and I grab it from my pocket, thumbing the accept tab as I bring it to my ear. “Yes.”
“Vaughn Asher?”
I stop walking. “Who is this?”
“Is this Mr. Asher? Because what I have to say can only be said to him.”
“Who. Is. This?”
The woman on the other end of the phone huffs out a breath of air. “Carey Keefe. And I’m going to assume you are, in fact, Mr. Asher?”
Keefe? Why does that sound so familiar?
“I’m the editor-in-chief at Buzz Hollywood?”
Oh, fuck.
“You still there, Mr. Asher?”
“I don’t have time for this, so what do you want?”
“You do have time for this, Mr. Asher. Take my word on that. Because I’ve got pictures of you here on my desk. Actually, pictures of your wife, as well. Pictures my head gossip reporter got off Twitter.”
Fuck again. “I’m going to ask you once more, and then I’m hanging up. What do you want?”
I can almost hear the smile on the other end of the phone. “No denial, huh?”
“What’s to deny? You say you have pictures. Three seconds and you get the beeps.”
“OK, wait. I’m wavering between allowing my reporter to publish these and making her bury the story. In fact, we had a huge fight over it. She really has it in for you.”
“What’s new? That bitch has been after me for years.”
“Right. I’ve noticed that it seems a little… how should I say it… personal with her? Do you know each other?”
Do I know her? I ponder this question for a moment and then Grace knocks on the back window and silently asks me if everything is OK from inside the car.
“I just don’t have time right now.”
“Mr. Asher, if I don’t get the story behind this, I’m going to let my reporter go to print with whatever she wants. And believe me, this spreadeagle selfie of your wife is not even news-worthy compared to what she’s got on you. So I’ll give you twenty-four hours to get your poor wife settled back home. And then I need a phone call and a personal meeting. Twenty-four hours.”
She gives me the three beeps.
I let out a long breath of air and continue my walk around the car. I open the door and slide in next to Grace with a huge smile.
I’m an actor. It’s what I do.
“Everything OK?” Grace asks.
“Perfect, sweets.” I lean over and kiss her, then drag her up to my chest until she scoots down to lay her head in my lap. “Perfect.” I play with her hair as we make the trip south to the airport where the jet is, and by the time we get there, she’s asleep again.
I carry her to the plane, set her down gently on one of the couches, and then help myself to a beverage as the pilot performs the pre-flight check.
Do I know her, Keefe asked.
Fuck, I wish I could forget her.
I’d do anything to fucking forget that night.
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End of Book Shit
Holy fuck, I might be out of shit to bitch about!
Kidding. I have something, don’t worry.
Not really a rant, though. Just something Jana and I discuss every now and then.
So when FOLLOW first came out I only gave ARC’s to my street team. This is my new normal. Unless you win one in a giveaway or you’re on the street team, no one is getting ARC’s from me. And it’s not because I’ve got a weird thing about pirating copies. As far as I know, that’s never happened to me with an ARC (but it just happened to a good friend of mine). It’s mostly because I just don’t feel like
giving them out anymore.
But then my author friend from Indie Inked, Alexia Purdy, had an opening in the Indie Inked NetGalley account. I never used NetGalley to give out ARC’s. I’m so picky about who gets one that it just seemed like a huge time suck. But Alessandra Torre gave out a shitload of ARC’s for Black Lies and she made NYT three weeks in a row. So I was like – hmmm… maybe I should give out more ARC’s?
So I put FOLLOW up and it got several hundred requests that weekend. I was pretty determined that it would archive on the LIKE release day, and this was about a week before that was going to occur, so I didn’t have much time. So I went through the list and went back to Jana and said, OK, I gave out twenty more ARC’s.
And she was like Five when Rory said she knew her address on her first day of Kindergarten. Not impressed. She’s like, Why the fuck do you bother with twenty stupid ARC’s. Why not just give one to everyone. Widen your pool.
And my answer was… and still is… I’m not looking to invite more people into my pool. I’m looking to weed people out. And she did the online equivalent of walking away shaking her head.
But this is how I work. I can’t help it. I want to weed through the people who will never like my books and find those who will either give them a chance or fall in love immediately. And even if this is the only series of mine you’ve ever read, you should be able to get this by now. Because if someone only reads FOLLOW, they have no idea what this series is about. FOLLOW is the world Vaughn and Grace live in before they meet. The world post-vacation on Saint Thomas looks nothing like FOLLOW.
So I made Vaughn an asshole on purpose. Jana hated him. Seriously hated him. She didn’t change her mind about him until the third book. And part of the reason I made him such a #dick was to get rid of readers who weren’t going to like the story I had to tell.
Some people have patience, some don’t. My books require a little patience and a lot of trust. Trust is something you earn. I hope I’ve earned it by the time you’re done with HOME. Patience is something readers have, or not, and it has nothing to do with me. Some people like long complicated stories, others don’t.
So to all those people over at Goodreads who hated Vaughn and didn’t finish the book because they had no patience for my story or no trust in me as an author—that was the whole point of making him so unlikable. I’m not out to waste anyone’s time, so their DNF rating was a big win for me. Saves me from bad reviews on the subsequent books.
Obviously, none of you guys are those people because this is Book Five and you’re still reading. I have tried to explain this rationale many times over the course of my career as a writer, but almost no one understands it. So let me give you two more examples and see if I can clear things up.
I started doing this whole weeding people out thing with my very first book, Clutch. It’s a six book, hard-core, science fiction thriller and I knew the heroine who was carrying the plot was two things right from the start—insane (because I like the crazies, right) and an unlikable bitch. She has to be both those things the make it to the end of the sixth book and complete her destiny.
So I started Clutch with the f-bomb and hint of the depths of Junco’s insanity problem on page one. I wanted people to read that first page and either say, Huh. I’m curious. Or, No, thank you.
I’m in this business to write stories and sell books. I think the best way to do that is to be honest with you about what my story is about. Because I don’t want to waste your time. And if it’s not your thing, that’s OK. Put the book down. Don’t one-click. Find something that is your thing.
I’m not interested in getting bloggers to review me just to get another review on Amazon. I want fans to review me. I want people who love the way I write, the characters I create, and the worlds I build, to review me. How the hell do you think I have such high ratings? It’s not because my books are better than others out there. It’s because I’m better than most at finding my audience.
The Rook and Ronin series is another good example. There are a few bloggers who occasionally promote this series when I have sales. And I always know who read the series and who didn’t because they preface the sale blurb with something like – The series about erotic models.
Well, anyone who read all the way to PANIC knows the fucking series is not about models. And I don’t really care if people who promote me read the books or not. It’s a business and I am grateful for all promotion. But when they say that, I know they only read TRAGIC, because there are virtually no plot hints in that book. Or they never read any of those books because PANIC is about as far away from modeling as you can get.
And I wrote the series that way on purpose because when I was writing TRAGIC I needed more readers so I could find my fans. I was at the very beginning stages of this whole audience-finding process. So that book is mostly fluff to get people hooked on the characters so that I could expand the plot in the other two books and prove myself as an author.
I had the complete opposite goal for FOLLOW. It was the perfect book to weed people out. Social Media is not about a fake BDSM dom and an indecisive Twitter queen. It’s about how the media shaped the lives of two people over the course of many years.
But who the fuck wants to read a romance about that? Seriously. Isn’t #WhatADick a much better hook? So I started FOLLOW with the idea that I’d take a few books to establish the characters before I introduced the plot.
Even if you love the story now, if I told you that FOLLOW was the set up for a very twisted psychological thriller when you got to Profile, would you have read it?
Some of you would’ve because you trust me to deliver a certain type of story. But new readers would just pass.
So I used Vaughn’s over the top behavior as a dom and Grace’s psychological struggle to establish their personalities in an entertaining way, all the while getting rid of the readers who had no interest in learning how these two characters come to terms with each other in real life.
Because I don’t want more readers. I want more fans.
So in my mind, it’s worth a thousand bad reviews over at Goodreads saying Vaughn is a fake BDSM dom if I get one of YOU who know the difference.
You matter.
I write for you.
I’ve said this before when I wrote the EOBS for GUNS— I like stories about family, about loyalty, and about extraordinary characters who struggle with basic human emotions while dealing with bigger than life problems. And if I can get that with a man who makes you swoon and a woman who makes you jealous—well, that’s called success in my book.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for being patient as this story unfolded. Thank you for making every single book in the Social Media series a #1 Bestseller in my category before release day.
Oh, and if you’re new to me—welcome to my world. I hope you stay a while.
<3
Julie
Wanna know about upcoming books? Sign up for the newsletter or promo posts at www.jahuss.com and never miss out on an upcoming event. Follow me on Facebook and you’ll get all the deets.
Also, I have a very cool Facebook group called Shrike Bikes where I hang out every day. My street team is in there too, along with some crazy fun ladies. So if you’re a Facebooker, request to join and we will add you. We also have a group just for the Social Media series called the Filthy Blue Birds. Ask to join and we will add you there too.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Other Books by J.A. Huss
About this Book
CHAPTER ONE - VAUGHN
CHAPTER TWO - GRACE
CHAPTER THREE - VAUGHN
CHAPTER FIVE - VAUGHN
CHAPTER SIX - GRACE
CHAPTER SEVEN - VAUGHN
CHAPTER EIGHT - GRACE
CHAPTER NINE - VAUGHN
CHAPTER TEN - GRACE
CHAPTER ELEVEN - VAUGHN
CHAPTER TWELVE - GRACE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - VAUGHN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - GRACE
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - VAUGHN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - GRACE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - VAUGHN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - GRACE
CHAPTER NINETEEN - VAUGHN
CHAPTER TWENTY - GRACE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - VAUGHN
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - GRACE
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - VAUGHN
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - GRACE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - VAUGHN
End of Book Shit