What are you willing to sacrifice
for love? Your family? Your freedom? What about your life?
She’s a wealthy, forty-three-year-old
Upper East Sider with a PhD – He’s a twenty-three-year-old Dominican drug
dealer from Washington Heights.
Kate Champion always did exactly
what was expected of her. She was the perfect wife, the perfect mother – until
the day she met Jaylee Inoa.
Their journey travels a path
riddled with danger, deceit, scandal and loss – where nothing is as it seems.
Yet Kate and Jaylee’s passion for one another remains nearly unstoppable.
Will this daring pair of lovers
from two different worlds triumph over circumstance? Can they deny the past in
their quest to be together? Or is fear the ultimate navigator - a force more
powerful than love?
After I finished the first book in this series, I immediately delved
into this one. I HAD to see where the
story lead me, and I was not disappointed.
This book picks up where Heights of Desire, and believe me, with that
surprising cliffhanger you will not be able to stop yourself from grabbing this
one and diving right in. I don’t want to
give too much away, but Kate and Jaylee are faced with some big choices in this
book, and must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to do right by one
another. Love isn’t simple, and neither
is this story.
This is a pretty tough read for sure.
It deals with some really big choices that are sure to pull at your
heartstrings as a reader. I mean, I’m
not sure what I would do if I were Kate, and I still don’t think I understand
some of her choices, but even with what happens in the end, I can’t hold
anything against Kate. She was a woman
facing choices that didn’t seem to end well no matter which way she chose.
Again, this is just a really well written and crafted tale. In this book you just jump right in and
there’s action and drama that just pulls you right in. It’s a very intense read, and the characters
will take you through the full gamut of human emotion. I really felt for Kate, even if I thought she
was making some bad choices. In this
book you really get to see more of her life with Robert and how she has been
living, so it makes her feelings for Jaylee more understandable and heartbreaking. And the ending…oh man, that will stay with me
for a while. I guess forbidden love is
forbidden for a reason, huh?
Overall, this series is going to go down as one of my favorites of
this year. It’s not an easy read and
challenges the reader to keep going on the journey with Kate and Jaylee that is
difficult to read at times. It’s gritty
and messy and real, and I really admire this writer for avoiding the fluff that
has seemed to flood the market in this genre and write a book that is real and
thought provoking. Bravo. 4.5 stars.
Jaylee
Rikers Island, East Elmhurst, New York
Rikers Island, East Elmhurst, New York
My stomach growls from the
shit lunch of bologna and American cheese. I’ll die before I’m
twenty-five in here from all the crap they been feeding me. I need more
calories because of my workout routine, and the commissary just don’t cut
it. Half the time I probably burning muscle, but what the fuck you gonna
do about it? You can’t change this fucked-up machine. What I
wouldn’t give for some Spanish food—just a goddamn plate of my grandma’s rice
and beans.
I flip the pen around and
around in my hand, trying to think of what to say. It brings me right
back to being eight years old, the school-assigned social worker jabbing at me
to “write him whatever you please!” I pick at a popped blister from going
at the weights in the yard. Soon enough it’ll get hard and callous—just
like everybody who been up in here too long.
“He’d love to hear anything
about you. Why don’t you tell him about basket-ball?” As if it was easy,
when you hadn’t talked to him in years. An’ my ma bent over the kitchen
table with cried-on love letters to my dad, praying on lighted candles and over
special oils to Dios Santísimo, that he don’t get sent to Sing Sing.
We couldn’t afford the trip
up there, so we saw him less and less. The sound of his voice just became
a memory to me, and when we did get up there, I pitied the man I saw.
Couldn’t get past the fact that he fucked up. I felt like he let them put him
away. I swore to myself if I ever got there, I’d be smarter than he
was. That I’d get revenge before I’d let ‘em make me live my life behind
bars. Now look at where I am.
At least I got a plan.
Love letters. Kate wrote me one once. There’s a trick to them,
right? You gotta try to convince a woman that you’ll love her
forever. It’s not just about the first time she reads it, she’s gotta see
it every time she looks. Try doing it on jail-issued stationery. I
had to earn the privilege to use a pen. How the fuck you tell someone they
everything you got—when all you got is a page? How do I tell her how much
I want her to have my kid? I love knowing that he’s inside her, that
there’s part of me with her. Thing is, I can’t control the lies she’s
being fed; she’ll choose the lawyer over me.
How do you say all
that on paper when all you ever got through was public school? She
got everything she needs—or at least that’s how it’d seem to anybody looking
in. But I know—I know—how much Kate needs me.
I crumple up the last sheet
of the ones they gave me and toss it onto my bunk. I don’t know how to
put my heart on paper. I can’t make her understand why I did what I
done.
On Friday they call me out for a visit, though I’m not expecting nobody.
Mamá, Janinie, and everybody coming next week—or that’s what we said on
the phone. I’m never expecting Kate again. I have no idea what she
decided to do with the baby. I don’t know if he still here with us or
gone already. The baby’s the only thing I ever cared about more than her,
but I’m not gonna let myself hate her for it. She shouldn’t a’ had to go
through it by herself - either way. If I’d watched my back, I wouldn’t a’
ended up here.
I stick my hands out the drop door in the cell so they can cuff me. The
corrections officer calls me “Dorado,” ‘cause that’s what they called my pops
when he was here. I try not to get involved, but it ain’t easy when your
ties run deep like mine do. My old man spent a minute in Rikers; he up
the river now in Sing Sing. He’s spending his days at the big house, but
he got connections all through the whole system. He got his reputation
too, and I’m expected to keep it.
Probably an ex or somebody I was messing around with before Kate who come to
see me. Girls got something about visiting guys in jail. They love
the drama. They love the attention they get from everybody else.
Girls that won’t even give you the time of day on the outside start
writing you letters about how much they miss you when you in the box.
It’s bullshit. But I admit—it do make the time go by faster.
And right now I got nothing but time.
I get stuck in the hall for
the count—which means whoever waiting for me is stuck too. The guard I’m
with lets me do wall push-ups after he cuffs me to a door. I go at it,
hard as fuck, until I’m dripping sweat and my muscles are burning.
Working out helps me not to think about her—or the baby. The burn
is good. It shuts up the furia. There ain’t shit I can do
anyway, so why make myself crazy playing it all over again in my head?
The count takes forever and
I’m betting whoever’s out there waiting is regretting this. First and
last visit. Nobody want to see me that bad.
When we finally walk into the
visiting room, my eyes catch her before anything else, even though the place is
packed. I’m a homing pigeon. I can’t see nothing else.
She’s Kate, but she ain’t
Kate. Same black hair, same pale face. Same scared blue eyes.
Her body is slamming too, less hip, more tit, and she a little taller.
Maybe it’s the heels. She looks good. But I know who she is.
It’s the sister.
Arriving like the grim reaper. She come repping for the other side.
I gotta smile that this mina got herself into Rikers. I can
tell she’s shitting herself, even worse than Kate. She ain’t never been
in no place like this before, that’s for sure. All dolled up to come see
a criminal like me.
There’s some part of me that
wants to run to her just ‘cause they family. And then another part that
wants to refuse the goddamned visit. I know Kate feel like she ain’t good
enough for her own family. Makes me fucking hate ‘em. Kate is
good—that’s her main problem. It’s something she won’t let herself see.
Now she’s
starting to work her hands like she in full-blown panic mode. I guess I
take pity on her. She looks too much like my girl. Shit, it’s
messing with my head—and my dick.
I pull out a chair and sit
down, drilling my eyes into the back of her head. She spinning around,
looking across the whole room. She don’t know who the fuck I am.
She turns and stares, her eyes taking everything in. I can
practically hear her heart pounding from over here. She like a baby
bird—ready to flip out and fly into the fucking window. She looks at me
and I gesture to the chair across the table. Relief hits her whole face
and her shoulders relax. She smiles quick and then it disappears and she
look scared again. She marches over to the table and sits down fast.
“Jaylee?”
Why she gonna ask me after
she already sit down? I’m tempted to say no, but I just stare at her
instead. I can see how much they look alike, but I can also see how they
different. She got doubt all over her face. She wanna fly the fuck
out of here. That makes two of us.
“Emily,” I say not giving
anything away. I’m gonna make her work hard for it.
“Oh, Kate told you about me?”
“She didn’t tell me much.
‘Nough to know you exist. Otherwise I’d think I was seeing ghosts.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Pfft. Naw, not since she
came in here to tell me she was pregnant. Not that it’s your business.
They send you to come tell me she got rid of it?”
“I came on my own, Jaylee.”
She stops and looks down.
“Kate’s missing; I was hoping
you could tell me where to find her.”
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I’m a reader, a writer, and a lover of all things romantic. I’m also a coffee, hot sauce, ink, telenovela and Bikram Yoga enthusiast. I live in New York City with my husband and two children, and I spend a lot of time on the playground.
Kindle Voyage
Thank you so much for the lovely review and post!! <3
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