This runaway might want to get caught.
El Glasse’s mother controls her life. What she does, who she dates, even what she’s allowed to say. El only has two ways of holding onto her freedom. One is her popular anonymous blog, hidden from Mama Glasse. The other is what she so often blogs about: her feelings for Riley, the girl who works at the ice cream parlor. Riley is fierce, free, and rides a killer motorcycle, and El cannot help but love her. But Mama Glasse can never find out about her sexuality—unless El is willing to rebel.
When El runs away, Riley feels responsible. She knows what it’s like to be alone, and she can’t deny her deep desire to learn El’s story. In a move she might end up regretting, she makes a devil’s bargain with Mama Glasse to hunt El down.
Riley isn’t trying to bring her home though, because she knows an evil spell when she sees one—a spell of fear and shame El is finally starting to break. This huntress might lose her own heart, but it’s a risk she’s willing to take.
Excerpt...
Chapter One
Fairest
The girl slid down the tree trunk, her coat tumbling up over her shoulders in a mantle of black and deep greens. Knees peeking from her torn jeans, she reclined against the roots. As if dismissing the world, she inserted earbuds with the flick of a wrist. Seconds later, she was mouthing lyrics, kissing the humid air with a pout.
El’s skin tingled and her pulse rattled in her veins. She was never going to run out of reasons to stare at Riley.
Never.
She pressed against the classroom window as the girl performed a recumbent dance move, face dappled in shade. She moved as if every single tiny gesture had a deeper meaning, and all of it could be decoded if set to music.
There was just no other way to think about Riley. Her face was always composed. Her eyes were always glittering with awareness. She didn’t hide in the shadows she could make for herself. Her height and shape were perfectly defined in the mind of every person around her, because like her or hate her, Riley Vanator never folded herself up for anyone . . .
“Elyrra!”
Startled, El’s forehead cracked against the cold glass and woke her to reality. At once, she felt small again as a heavy arm fell across her shoulders to the tune of a mean-spirited laugh.
“Hey, I’m gonna pick you up today, okay?”
Shrugging uncomfortably, El clutched her notebook to her chest and tried to look as if she’d been doing something more productive than yet again fantasizing over the gorgeous figure beneath the tree.
“Why?”
Jay was fresh from gym and ruddy, but even physical exhaustion couldn’t wipe the perpetual smirk off his face. “Because you’re my girlfriend, and I want to take you out.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s cool! I already cleared it with your mom.”
“I don’t—”
“Look, you haven’t been out with me in a couple of weeks.” His arms coiled around her waist. He clung to her like some kind of sweaty sloth and tried to fondle her. “I’m starting to think you don’t like me.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, but it was the first time she wanted to spit her agreement in his face. He didn’t want a girlfriend. He wanted an orgasm. El shoved at him, but there was no disentangling, and not a soul in the quickly emptying study hall seemed to care. While he rooted around in her neck like a pig, she leaned against the glass and rolled her face to the view below.
Riley was sitting cross-legged, eating a small snack before she went to work as she always did right after school. Her thin fingers picked it apart delicately. When her tongue slid out and cleaned them each in turn, El sighed, and the boy attached to her body like a leech gave himself a congratulatory snicker.
“You’re gonna have fun tonight. I promise.”
“What if I don’t?” she whispered.
“What’s that mean?” He pulled back and stared at her, brows drawn together in a confusion of wrinkles that somehow painted a perfectly predictive image of his face in twenty years, after he’d done a failed stint in the Army, or bought a car dealership, or something.
Why wouldn’t El like him? Jay was the boy. The one everyone fought over, the one that the other girls would slander her to obtain, if not for the fact that El was demure and had a powerful family. He was the boy that could do no wrong. He was the boy who just had to be left to be, because boys were boys.
“I don’t want to go out tonight.”
“Uh . . . but we are.”
That was that. His smug grin said it all. He’d long ago figured out that if he went to her mother, it meant that he held the power. El could never get in a moment of defense, because Jay kept her safe. And that came with certain sacrifices.
As he sauntered away, she pictured her mother’s face, perfectly feminine makeup below her meticulously highlighted hair. All the little smile lines around her mouth would harden. Her eyes would turn to lead. Her lips would pinch over words that were harsher than anyone else could ever manage.
Why wouldn’t El want to go out with a boy, especially that boy? Didn’t she likeboys?
Her mother could make doubt into a knife, and carve out the truth like she was delicately eviscerating a quail in her neon pink hunting jacket. Life was bad enough already without the distractions of her sister’s pageants and admirers, with her mother downing two bottles of wine a night to counter the stress from the election, with school about to be out. El was alone and center stage.
She hated it.
Kristina Meister is an author of fiction that blurs genre. There’s usually some myth, some mayhem, and some monsters. While Kristina’s unique voice and creative swearing give life to dialogue, her obsession with folklore and pop culture make for humor and complexity.
She and her mad-scientist husband live in California with their poodles Khan and Lana, and their daughter Kira Stormageddon, where they hoard Nerf toys, books, and swords—in case of zombie apocalypse.
2018 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner - LGBT
Connect with Kristina:
- Website: kristinameister.com
- Twitter: @kristinameister
To celebrate this release, Kristina is giving away a custom ordered biker-style patch that represents El and Riley, as well as a signed copy of her award-winning novel Cinderella Boy! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on August 31, 2019. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!
I am looking forward to this one. Love the patch idea.
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Thank you for the excerpt!
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