Release Blitz: Paper Dolls by Hanna Peach
Title: Paper Dolls
Author: Hanna Peach
Genre: New Adult Romantic
Suspense
Release Date: April 24, 2016
My life comes down to this. Two faces.
One choice.
Salem is my twin sister. She loved me. She
protected me. She forgave me, even after I failed her. I just got her
back after searching for three long, lonely years.
Then
there’s Clay. Sweet yet intense and nursing a dark past of his own,
he’s all the redemption I don’t deserve. He wants to open me up
and know the insides of my soul. I want to let him, but I’m scared
he’ll run from what he finds.
But I can’t have them
both.
My name is Aria. And today, I must choose. One of the
two people I love has to die.
Prologue
In moments like these,
everything slowed. Salem always joked that it was life’s way of
making sure you didn’t miss the turning points, the important bits.
As if gravity sank heavier and heavier with the weight of the moment
until the world was too heavy to turn and everyone held their
breath.
It certainly felt like that now. My next action, my next
word, would change all of our lives.
“Aria,” Clay’s deep
voice reached my ears. “Whatever happens…I love you.” The usual
assuredness and authority was gone. Instead, strain and hurt had
crumpled up and shoved into his throat. Choose me. Save me. Love
me.
Before him my life had felt like a stack of old movies; frames
missing or out of order, muted crackling sound, flickering and
shuttering away, unloved and unseen in an old unused cinema.
Then
I found him. Or he found me.
He created a warm shield around me
where I could be safe. He coaxed away all my layers and shed all my
masks and his love soaked right into my skin, right into the very
soul of me. He pulled out the fossil buried inside that had been my
heart and breathed life into me.
How could I give up the man I
loved? The one who loved me with a fierce and unwavering passion, the
man who made me feel like I could defeat demons as long as he was by
my side.
Winking in the threads of sunlight piercing through the
solemn gray clouds, seed fluff twirled about me like swirling,
dancing couples. Spinning around like Salem and I used to do in our
backyard, hands clasped together tightly, turning round and round,
eyes to the sky, our twin voices giggling and floating into the air
like dandelions.
She had been my shield before Clay.
“I’m
nothing without you, Aria,” Salem’s voice trembled, desperation
leaking into the breaths between her words. Choose me. Need me. Love
me.
How could I end her? I just got her back. For so long we
shared almost everything, and she protected me. Her whole life had
been about protecting me. Because she loved me that much.
How
could I turn against her, toss her away like an old broken toy?
But
I had to choose.
I could see us now, the three of us making a
chain like when I was a kid, folding pieces of colored paper into
rectangles, cutting out an arm, a leg, and half a head, and unfurling
my new patterns in the light to reveal a line of paper dolls. Clay,
Salem and I − we were all just paper dolls in a paper chain, me in
the middle, each end pulling tighter and tighter until something had
to tear.
Even now as I stare between Clay and Salem, trying to
digest our impossible situation, Hope is still there, that terrible
pixie, fluttering on my shoulder, whispering.
Maybe it doesn’t
have to end this way?
Fuck you, Hope. Here’s the truth.
Nobody
is coming.
No one will save us.
And someone isn’t going to
make it out of this forest today.
“Choose,” my sister
screamed. “It’s either him or me.”
My fingers tightened
around my gun in a reflex. This was it. I either ended her. Or
destroyed Clay.
I squeezed my eyelids shut for a moment, just for
a moment of peace. Just for an instant I could shut out the
inevitable, and in this blessed darkness I believed I could conceive
a way that both could exist in my life. A way that I could choose
Salem and Clay.
You can’t have both.
You
tried.
You.
Can’t.
Have.
Both.
Choose now.
But
how?
What do you do when someone puts a gun to your head? Clay’s
words came back to me, echoing as loud in my mind as if he had just
spoken them. You refuse to bend. You push back. You find another way.
You take that gun off him and put it back in his face. But you do not
give in.
Find another way…
I knew what I had to do. A kind of
peace settled on my skin, as delicate as gossamer, as light as
silk.
I opened my eyes to a world of bright light until my vision
adjusted. The torn and pained faces of the two people I loved came
into focus. The only two people I’ve shared air with while we
slept, the same two people I’d crawl into Hell to be with, and the
only two people I would die for. I forced the ghost of a smile
forward.
And turned the gun on myself.
Hanna is the bestselling author of the
Bound romantic suspense series and the Dark Angel fantasy series.
Although she writes in more than one genre she can’t write a book
without weaving together a complicated plot and filling it with
twists. She writes what she believes: good people can do bad things,
ordinary people can do great things, and choose love above
everything.
Eternally restless, Hanna has lived in
Indonesia, Australia, Germany, Scotland, England, Croatia and Ireland
– everything she owns fits into one suitcase. She’s planning her
next move with her gorgeous (and understanding) partner right now. If
not writing, she can be found wandering a dusty market in Marrakesh
or trekking a mountain in Peru, often using her travels as settings
in her novels.
To WIN a copy of her next release go
to www.hannapeach.com/subscribe.
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