2 months until CALL YOU MINE
A sneak peak into this childhood friends to lovers romance.
We are officially less than 2 months out from CALL YOU MINE being published and honestly, I have no idea how it snuck up on me like this.
Call You Mine is still at editor for at least the next week. Then, my process looks like quickly editing and getting this adorable romance up for ARCs on Net galley and to other bloggers ASAP at the beginning of August.
So much is happening, and I feel like no matter how much I post about it over on social and instagram, Call You Mine is getting swept under the rug. I wanted to make sure that you lovely readers are right on schedule with me and ready for what is (seriously) my favorite book I’ve written yet.
Don’t believe me?
Here is an unedited sneak peak from NOW.
(Excerpt from CALL YOU MINE by Kendra Mase, Chapter 7)
“Kieran.”
When romantic comedies went on and on about how when the main character finds “the one" and they use the phrase “their heart stopped,” I always rolled my eyes. I turned the page. But when I saw Kieran Rose, my heart stopped.
When I looked at Kieran, I saw him. All of him.
I saw Kieran from his goofy, always slightly unsure smile to his tortoise framed glasses that he only ever changed once at his mother’s insistence during sophomore year. He promptly went back to return them the next day. I saw his mousy brown hair that he never let get over his ears but was always floppy up top. I saw him at the age of five even though I only ever saw pictures of the toothy, stuttering child his parents were so proud of. I saw him standing before me at sixteen with his dad’s car keys begging me to drive slowly so I wouldn’t go over a curb—which I did. I saw him, bright and shiny at graduation at eighteen, playing with the tassel on my hat.
I saw Kieran, shivering in the cold in front of me the last time we stood just like this. We were outside, mouths parted, waiting for the other to speak and hopefully have the right words. The snow was high and heavy and neither of us had anything good, let alone the right things to say.
And now, maybe that last part was still true. Neither of us said a word. We took the other in, like ghosts coming back to haunt the other.
Swallowing, the action triggered something in my brain. I stared at the way his lips parted. “I…”
“Still not dressing for the weather I see,” Kieran commented, cutting me off. His eyes lingered as he gazed at my apparel, or lack of it.
I felt every pinpoint where he looked at me. I could feel the way he stared at my shoes that didn’t do well in snow all the way up to where my jacket wasn’t properly covering my neck.
I cupped my bare hands, trying to fit them back up my sleeves.
“I didn’t pack well,” I said, though that was a lie. I packed everything.
Kieran’s chest rose with a deep breath. He likely considered his next words. Kieran didn’t usually speak without playing the conversation out in his head first. It was the biggest reason I always thought he’d be a better writer than I was.
Imagine the dialogue of someone who worked through a thousand different ways a conversation could go without even opening their mouths.
“I didn’t know that you were coming home,” he said.
“I didn’t either.” I tried to add a humorous jilt. Still, it came out flat. I waved a hand back towards the center of town that would be crowded with families for the next hour at least. “I got a grand welcome back to Marshall for the holidays.”
Kieran seemed to part his lips, chapped and pink from the cold, but said nothing before sucking them back into his mouth, biting them between his teeth.
“It was kind of unplanned coming back here. I didn’t think–”
“You said you’d never come back,” said Kieran, his voice deep and steady. He clearly remembered the last time we spoke as well as I did.
“Right. I did say something like that.”
“You said exactly that,” Kieran insisted.
“Okay. I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight or when I decided to come back home. I mean I thought that I saw you before at the lighting ceremony but then I wasn’t sure. But here you are.” I tried to hide the shake of my voice.
“You still call this place home?” he asked.
I guess I did.
Kieran took my lack of answer as one. “I was hoping that I didn’t see you.”
I blinked, feeling the punch to my stomach. “Ouch.”
“Not really, Sylvia. Not ouch. You left.”
“You know why I left.” He let me leave.
“And?”
“I was hoping that if I did see you…”
“What?” Kieran snapped, his forehead creasing in thick concentrated lines. “Did you think when you saw me that we could pretend that everything was okay?”
“Well, no.”
“What option did you want? Did you want us to smile and wave at each other like you didn’t do what you did? Did you think everything could go back to normal?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you just wanted to stand there in front of me and give me some fake small talk like it hasn’t been four years?” Kieran asked. “Like you didn’t ignore me even after I tried to reach out and talk to you? After you missed…”
“Kieran.” I didn’t know what to say, but I didn’t want any of that. I didn’t know what I thought or wanted or what I needed to do right now, when lately everything I decided and did was wrong.
Before I could figure out the right thing to explain it all, on the verge of letting him know just how much the past four years hurt me, likely just as much as him, Kieran’s voice broke.
“I needed you.”
My nose scrunched. The burn of tears rushed back up behind my eyes.
Neither of us moved. Feet stretched between us and neither of us could bridge the gap. “I um… I–”
“No,” Kieran shook his head. “I think it’s my turn to talk.”
Who is excited to read this upcoming release?