U-R-A-QT

If I can keep Hush Note's leading guitarist, Nixon Winters, on the straight and narrow for the next six months, I'll finally get my own band to manage - assuming we don't kill each other first. The egotistical, irritating rock star is fresh out of rehab, but it's obvious his demons followed him home - and now I'm sleeping down the hall. I've watched him self-destruct every summer, and with album deadlines and tour dates looming, I can't let it happen again. My career is in his hands.

I told myself I'd never fall in love. It just wasn't the trajectory my life was going to take. Maybe I should've read the fine print on that vow because not falling in love doesn't mean no marriage. I woke up with a gold band on my left hand and very few memories of how it got there. Beth Moore needed an escape, and I needed one more night like we shared. When she asked if she could come back to New Mexico with me, I opened my mouth to tell her that wouldn't be a great idea but YES came out instead.

Nixon Swagger had learned a few things as a Navy SEAL—adapt, improvise, and overcome were among the many. In the middle of an inferno, so ominous even Dante wouldn’t buy a ticket, Nixon must adapt to his new surroundings and overcome multiple threats before he loses the woman he loves.

The last thing I remember is having drinks at Brady's and trying to avoid eye-contact with my life-long crush - the gorgeous, unattainable Maximilian Hallowell. They tell me that was a year ago, but I have no memories of anything since then. What I do have is this ring on my finger that Max says he gave me, and this much-thinner body I've dreamed of most of my life. Aside from a case of retrograde amnesia, everything seems almost... perfect.

The average song is three and a half minutes long; those three and a half minutes could lead to a slow blink, a glimpse of the past, or catapult the soul into heart-shattering nostalgia. At the height of my career, I had the life I wanted, the life I’d always envisioned. I’d found my tempo, my rhythm. Then I received a phone call that left me off key. You see, my favorite songs had a way of playing simultaneously. I was in love with one man’s beats and another’s lyrics. But when it came to the soundtrack of a life, how could anyone choose a favorite song?

Once upon a time… there lived a man with a vengeance-filled heart that held too many secrets and a woman, pure of soul, intent on uncovering them. What they failed to realize is that through the storm their love would create, a legacy would be born.

Through the years, I lived more as an enigma than a man. For so long, I denied I had a beating heart of my own. Until her. Until she unearthed the starving vessel inside, forced me to acknowledge it, forced me to understand that I’m capable of bleeding the same as any other. For that, we paid. We're still paying. Yet she demands it still; the useless heart of the ruthless thief and shameless villain she fell for. My fear is that I’m no longer that man.

It’s a ghost town, this place that haunts me, the one that made me. It’s clear to me that I’ll never outgrow Triple Falls or outlive the time I spent here. I can still feel them all, my boys of summer. Even when I'd sensed the danger, I gave in. I didn’t heed a single warning. I let my sickness and my love both rule and ruin me. I played my part, eyes wide open, tempting fate until it delivered. There was never going to be an escape. All of us are to blame for what happened. All of us are serving our own sentences.

Triple Falls wasn’t at all what it seemed, nor were the men that swept me under their wing. But in order to keep them, I had to be in on their secrets.⁣ Secrets that cost us everything to keep.⁣ That’s the novelty of fiction versus reality. You can’t re-live your own love story, because by the time you’ve realized you’re living it, it’s over. At least that was the case for me and the men I trusted my foolish heart to.⁣ Looking back, I’m convinced I willed my story into existence, due to my illness, and all were punished.

From Wall Street Journal best-selling author Nicole Snow - old promises and jaw-dropping secrets collide in a small town love-storm. A punished mountain of a man retakes the girl who hasn't told him he's a dad. Surprise!