Saving Ella (39 page)

I have to thank all my family and friends who put up with a few months of the mindless, monotone life I existed in while my head drifted in a constant daze of Jax and Ella. Being a writer can send you into a catatonic state for long periods of time and no-one but a writer can comprehend the feeling. Thank you to my awesome sister-in-law/friend/manager/partner-in-crime and everything in between, Kylie who kept me focused, motivated and moving through the entire Saving Ella journey. She didn’t have to pick up a whip once! Her enthusiasm and love for the story was motivation enough for me. Jax and Ella were her babies. I hope the story is everything you dreamed it would be Kylie; it’s yours my friend……

My life and love of writing was cultivated by so many people, but began wi
th my mother who read to me endlessly as a baby. Thanks mummy for starting my dream. I especially have to thank David Russell for encouraging me to pursue my ambition of writing. I never imagined I could actually be a published author. It was merely a hope that seemed too hard or distant to grasp. David made me realize writing was within my reach! Thank you….. Also a big hug for my Aunty Robyn on the Sunny Coast, thank you for providing me one of the most valuable tools a writer could ever possess, Stylewriter editing software.. A-mazing!

Thank you to the awesome bloggers and reviewers out there who really are the backbone to a writer’s existence. The likes of An
gie’s Dreamy Reads, The Reading Vixens, The Book Hookers, A love Affair with books, Reading fiction for Life, Can’t Read Just One, Totally Booked, you guys literally keep us ‘indie’ author’s afloat and inspire us to create these awesome characters and as always, the all-important book boyfriend!! I hope you all drool and swoon over Jax and he ruins you for all other mere mortal men!!

Thanks to my team of Beta readers,
‘TEAM W.P’, (and only the privileged members of that team will understand what that means), Sandy, Kylie, Trish, Kim, and Nadine. All your advice and notes helped mold Saving Ella into the perfect tale.

A big shout out to my model
s, Kyle Low and Danielle Suffredini, my Jax and Ella who were used for the book cover and or book trailer and teasers. You guys were utterly amazing!!! I have so much love and appreciation for my father who is the most beautiful, gentle soul in existence and the best photographer in the world. It was his eye behind the camera lens that gave me my cover photo and my mum’s expertise with photoshop who put on the finishing touches!

To my
fellow writers who fill my Facebook newsfeed and keep me dreaming the dream; Amy Bartol, Shelly Crane, Paullina Simons, Kresely Cole, Jessica Sorenson, Abbi Glines, thank you!! Your books and words fill me with inspiration. You all rock and man I hope to meet some, if not all of you one day.

And lastly, thank you to the readers, the fans of romance that live for that moment where they slip into an alternate universe and become immersed in a life
outside of their own. A world where anything is possible, where love is never perfect but so all-consuming and passionate that it is worth every hiccup and shit fight that it endures. Thank you fellow book geeks, you are all so awesome!

About the Author

I'm just a little Aussie girl with a big
imagination, so much to write and so little time to do it. When I'm not writing (or reading) I am kept smiling and sane (for the most part) by my 5 year old daughter. She is the light in my world. I have a wonderfully supportive family who keep me completely grounded. Trust me, they will never let any success go to my head!! And I love them for it. I enjoy ice cold ciders, barbeques, music and art. My feet rarely grace anything other than flip-flops and even in the middle of a hot Aussie summer, I love my jeans!!! To sum me up in a few words, easy going, laid back, dreamy and passionate.

I hope you all love reading my novels as much as I love writing them.

Follow me at
www.facebook.com/KirstyDallasAuthor

And please read on for a snippet out of my next novel, Breeze of Life……

Breeze of Life

For Andy

(who I wouldn’t kiss because that would just be weird)

“
Friends will be at your side until you die;

But a best friend knows where to find you after that.
”

Harper

When I woke I knew immediately that the oppressive ball of fire in the sky was glaring down on me in all its blasphemous glory. I peeled my eyes apart slowly, squinting against the fierce glare and somehow found the energy to move my heavy limbs. My head disagreed with every attempt to drag myself from sleep, my stomachs disagreement was even more vehement. Somehow I forced my body into an upright position and I took in my surroundings. I knew this place though I had no recollection of how I came to be here today. This was Peniche Beach, Portugal, the very beach I had won the last round of the ASP World Tour a distant month ago. I was covered in sand. It was in my hair, on my skin, in my clothes, even my mouth. How in the fuck had it got in my mouth? In a very undignified and manly way I scratched my groin, shit, it was there too. A bottle of Portugal’s finest beer, Super Bock sat on a precarious angle, shoved carelessly into the sand beside me. I picked it up and squinted down the long dark neck and grinned with lazy satisfaction when I realized the bottle wasn’t empty. I took a mouthful of the warm nectar and swilled it around my mouth, spitting it into the beach at my side trying desperately to rid my mouth of sand. Then I took a second mouthful and drank it down with a grimace. I was alone on the beach but that wasn’t unusual. Most of my fellow competitors had either gone home for a short break before Pipeline or had followed the waves to some unknown destination elsewhere on this massive globe we call Earth. I however was still here, stuck in Portugal, unable, or perhaps unwilling to go home, drowning my sorrows in a bottle, actually many many bottles. My folks were in Greece, yippee for them. I rarely saw them and that was fine with me. My real family though was back in Australia, on the Gold Coast, at home. My Breeze. My best damn friend in the entire world and I hadn’t spoken to her in eight months. God I missed her. The few brief emails we had exchanged remained in a special folder in my inbox and I read them over every day. Her words had been far too civil and bland for what our relationship was. Bree and I usually teased each other mercilessly. That was gone now. It was my fault; I was the one who fucked everything up by letting my tongue loose, literally. Finally, after so many years of hedging around it I had told Bree how much I loved her and then I had kissed her. The first problem in the long list of fucking problems with this confession was I was drunk, like completely ripped and legless drunk when I declared my slurred avowal and then shoved my tongue down Bree’s throat. Second problem was she had kissed me back and damn had she kissed me and damn it had felt right. Some might not see this as a problem, but it became one when Bree withdrew from my horny embrace and told me it couldn’t happen, that our friendship meant too much for her to screw it up. Then came problem number three, Noah McDick, or McNeil as his friends called him, Bree’s boyfriend for the last year. He was a complete douche and I was certain that the only thing that was standing between Noah cheating on Bree was time. Forth a final problem was how easily I walked out of Bree’s room and proceeded to fuck my always reliable fuck buddy Nadia, on the couch in mine and Bree’s apartment. Really, if I honestly loved Bree how on earth could I do that? Obviously the high percentage of alcohol in my blood had something to do with it, but it still sickened me before, during and after the actual event. I left for Bells Beach the next day, to get away from the awkwardness that was now mine and Bree’s relationship, and to get away from the mistake that was Nadia. Somehow I had driven my life into a hard regime of surfing and drinking, sometimes drinking and surfing, and somehow I still managed to rank in third position on the tour. Obviously that was proof that I didn’t need brain cells to paddle and rip. The one thing I had avoided this tour so far was women. I had sworn off them, indefinitely. I couldn’t even bring myself to want another woman following my lapse in judgment with Nadia. Nobody compared to my Breeze, and she didn’t want me. Fuck the pity party Harper Somerville, you’ve got it made my man! The internal berating was one I gave myself often, unfortunately it didn’t seem to help. I still knew I had fucked up, I hated that I had pushed Bree from my life and I had no idea how to fix it.

From my back pocket my phone vibrated, Nirvana’s Smells
Like Teen Spirit hummed low and proud, it was my favorite song, period! I reached back and smiled at the familiar name on the screen, this was another good friend I hadn’t heard from in eight long months.

“George man, how you doing?”
I exclaimed through a husky sleep stoned voice.

“Did I wake you Harp? I thought it was like the middle of the day over there?”

I chuckled and tried to comb my fingers through my knotty hair, like George might see me through the phone or something. “Yeah, the suns definitely up. What’s been happening, did Breeze burn the fucking condo down yet?” George owned the condo next door to me. Bree and I had lived together since we escaped our craphole homes right out of high school. I would never let anyone else live with me. I trusted Bree with my stuff and she was quite literally the best flatmate ever. She was obsessively clean and quiet as a mouse, except for her music. She loved her music and played it loud and proud, which was fine with me and the neighbors never seemed to mind. George and Bree had quickly developed a close relationship when we moved in. That friendship had once been the cause of great jealousy on my part, but over the years I came to understand that George and Bree gave each other something both of them needed. Bree got the daddy she never had and George got someone to fuss over. When George hesitated to answer my burning down the condo joke I immediately began to panic.

“Did she burn the fucking apartment down George, is she alright?” George let out a small bark of laughter but it lacked his usual hearty luster.

“Harp, I wanted to call you long before now, seriously man, like months ago. But Bree wouldn’t let me and you know Bree. She can be as stubborn as a damn mule!” My heart was pounding heavy and hard with worry, the tone in George’s voice was off, I knew something was wrong.

“What the hell is wrong George you’re freaking me out here.”

With a big sigh, George spoke. “She’s been sick Harp, like real sick. Like struggling to survive type sick.” I immediately tried to stand but the weight of George’s words forced me to my knees. “She was diagnosed back in March with
Hodgkins Lymphoma.”

“What the fuck is that?” I growled.

“Cancer.” The world began to swim as that word echoed through my mind. Fucking cancer? I sunk forward and somehow managed to catch myself with one hand, now crouching on the beach on my hands and knees I must have looked quite the sight, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I wanted to bury myself in the sand and hide from the pain that currently racked my soul. “She didn’t want you to know, she didn’t want to fuck up your year. She finished her last course of radiation and chemo a couple of weeks ago and she has to wait another three weeks for her last lot of tests to come back. She’s freaking out Harp, she won’t admit it but she’s struggling. She’s depressed, lonely, she cries all the time. She won’t leave the apartment.” George took a big sigh. “I don’t know what happened in March between you two, but you need to put that shit behind you man and come home, now. Survival and recovery for this particular cancer for someone of Bree’s age is good, her chances are optimal, but she’s preparing herself for the worst and she’s caving under it. Harp, I caught her looking at a damn funeral home on the web the other day.” My body was trembling so hard I had to clench my fingers tightly around the phone and press it hard to my ear to prevent myself from dropping it. “She needs you Harp.”

“I’m on my way,” I whispered through a clenched throat and I hung up. I didn’t say goodbye or tell George when I would be back, I couldn’t talk anymore if I tried.  I looked over the perfect waves before me. The sky was blue the breeze was warm, such a stunning day and yet it might as well have been bucketing with rain, grey and dull. The glorious world around me suddenly seemed ugly and cold. I hadn’t cried since I was eleven when I broke my arm trying a
noseslide on my skateboard down the slippery rail of a stairwell. But now under the bright Portuguese sun a lone tear slipped through my thick eye lashes and chased an invisible line down my cheek.  I screamed into the heavens with the unbearable guilt that rocked my entire being. I should have known. She was being so damn vague in her emails. When I had asked her how work was going she never said a thing. She loved her job at the Jungle Juice bar. They let her sing down there on weekends and she flitted about that damn café in her little skirt and too tight shirt like the fucking juice fairy she was. I should have called, I should have sucked up my pride and made that call I had come so close to making so many damn times. Finally I drew in a deep breath and scrambled to my feet. I had failed her and I could have lost her, I still might. I should have fought harder I should have damn well done it right the first time around. But I wouldn’t fail her again. I would make this right, somehow. With a body now rigid with worry and tension, I staggered back to my hotel room with only one thing on my mind, Breeze.