Heartless Tour Stop!

 All the other girls had a normal childhood, full of Girl Scouts and sleepovers, but Charlie Evans wasn't so lucky. Her life had been spent in and out the Cardiac Care Unit and moving across the country with her military father.

So when Charlie finds out she's moving back to her home town, she hopes things will finally be different. She has learned the hard way not to let anyone in. People always let her down, and it wasn’t easy to trust anyone new. That was until Sam Greyson walks into her life and threatens to knock down every wall she’d ever built to protect herself.

With Sam in the picture, Charlie decides to take one last shot and open herself up. With Sam’s help, she is finally able to let someone see the real, bruised and damaged girl inside. That is until she is forced to make a decision between her own happiness and ruining Sam’s life to be with him. If giving him up meant he could have a normal life…She would do it, in a broken heartbeat.

This Book is Rated 18+ for MATURE content and Language.

I am already dying for the next book in this series, not because of an OMG cliffhanger, but because Charlie is the kind of girl you can’t help but love and Sam is the man of most women’s dreams.  Joe is the strangest father ever but would win father of the year in my book any time.  Callie is a woman to be admired for taking care of Charlie like she did and Jules and Sarah………they are such awesome characters that will keep you laughing, wiping tears and just wishing you had BFF’s like them.  Yes I don’t need drama; I need more of this family. 

Charlie hasn’t had a charmed life at all.  She was born with a heart condition that sent her straight to surgery while her mother died during childbirth.  Each year after that Charlie couldn’t celebrate her birthday because of survivor’s guilt or she was back in the hospital for another heart surgery.  Her dad was a Marine and they spent the rest of her life moving so many times it became a waste of effort and time to even unpack.  Finally she was going back home, to the place that Jules and Callie were. 

Callie was Charlie’s mom’s best friend; she took over the mother role after her mom’s death and had Julian.  Charlie and Jules are like brother and sister from different mothers and never lost contact even through all of the moves.  Even though she is 19 she promised her dad she would finish high school, so that is the only dream or goal she has right now. 

While guarding her heart from any more loss, she developed this very sarcastic attitude that comes in handy when trying to ward off people, that is until she meets Sam.  He sees her and is instantly attracted to not only her looks but the bike she drives and her talent for quick come backs.  He isn’t sure if she is attracted to him right away but after come lucky encounters he is sure she feels the same and their relationship takes off. 

Nothing in life has come easy for her so why should this relationship be easy?  She is confronted with an embarrassing situation that could not only hurt her but ruin Sam and she decides it is fight or flight time and runs.  Once the new rules are established yet another thing happens and she runs again.  I usually am frustrated with stories that have the woman running from relationships all of the time but with Charlie I understood it.  She wasn’t running out of fear, she was running out of love for Sam.  She didn’t want him to suffer the same pain her father suffered when her mom died. 

The ending was tear jerker.  Once Sam learned the secret she was carrying instead of running away from her he ran to her.  Now he just needed to convince her it was time to stop running and to trust him to stay around.  I can hardly wait for the next book to get here.  I feel in love with this family and the way they approach life.  I love how Charlie took in Sarah at school when Sarah had spent her whole life trying to be invisible and stay away from people, Charlie taught her to speak out and flip the world the bird. 

I really recommend this book and make sure you keep an eye out on my next review for book 2.  This is a series I NEED to finish, I need to see what the next step is for Sam and Charlie and how Jules deals with the truth about himself.  

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Always the cause of shenanigans, Vanessa is a heavily tattooed, sarcastic motorcycle enthusiast who started her career as a Jeep tech at the age of sixteen. The happily married mother of three little monsters—oops, children—lives in Kentucky by way of Las Vegas, Nevada. Once her life took a different direction—sidelined by Heart Disease at 26 and becoming a pacemaker recipient—she decided to write as a creative outlet, and Heartless was born. She realizes life can be dark clouds and acid rain at times, but her outlook on life puts a positive and sarcastic spin on it all.

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She dove in the water and swam a couple of laps. All she could think about was Sam wanting to talk. What the hell would I even say? She couldn’t tell him the truth, but she didn’t want to lie to him anymore. It tore her apart inside.

As she swam lap after lap, she tried to play things out in her head. Unable to clear her mind, she couldn’t get herself into the headspace she usually did when she swam. There was no way to avoid what she needed to do any longer.

Charlie got out of the pool and wrapped her towel around herself. She rang her hair out and tossed it into a messy bun on top of her head. She walked down to his room and knocked on his sliding door. Oh shit, what did I just do? With her nerves a mess all of a sudden, she turned to run back to her room, but it was too late. He opened the door. All he had on was a pair of shorts and everything in her head disappeared as she stood there with a blank stare on her face.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, his eyes full of concern. Charlie just shrugged, how the hell was she supposed to concentrate when he looked like that? She regretted knocking on his door and had no idea what she was going to say.

“Come in before someone sees you,” he said, and stepped aside to let her in. She walked past him and he slid the door shut. Crossing the room, she leaned on the table against the wall as he sat on the coffee table across from her. The Civil Wars “The One That Got Away” was playing on his iPod Radio. She’d listened to that song so many times since she’d broken things off she couldn’t keep count. They held each other’s gaze but neither of them said a word.

He leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. “Why’d you come here?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged.

“Are you ready to talk to me?”

“I don’t know what you want to talk about?”

“Us, what’s going on with you for starters.”

“Nothing’s going on with me,” she said, and re-wrapped her towel around herself.

“Cut the crap Charlie. You haven’t been the same since your surgery. You totally shut me out.”

“You’ll never understand what I’ve been through.”

“You’re right I don’t, but I can be there for you, if you let me. And yet you won’t.”

“I’m just better off alone. I’ve always been on my own. I don’t know how to be any other way.”

Sam stood and walked toward her. “Bullshit. We were great together. You let your guard down and you let me in. You can’t sit here and tell me that you being alone is better than that.”

She looked at her feet and her heart raced faster the closer he got. She couldn’t argue with him. He was right. The only time she’d ever felt whole was when they were together. Sam lifted her chin with his finger and his bare chest was just inches from her. Glancing up, she met his gaze. With the urge to reach out and touch him, she held onto her towel even tighter.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re better off alone,” he said, as he cupped her cheek and tears streamed down her face. Wiping them away, he leaned against her, supporting his weight with each hand firmly planted on either side of her on the table. Just inches from her face, she stayed silent, but her eyes said it all.

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