Before He Was Gone by Becky Wicks
(Starstruck #2)
Publication date: Summer 2014
Genres: New Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
Sometimes, you have to get lost to find yourself…
When her rock star boyfriend breaks things off out of the blue, Alyssa applies to hit reality TV show Deserted and to her shock she gets through. Abandoned on a remote island with a bunch of strangers and none of the luxuries she’s become accustomed to, it’s not long before an undeniable attraction to the mysterious Joshua starts complicating things even further.
Joshua’s different to everyone she’s ever known – a traveller, a man with no plan, a world away from the celebrity life she’s left behind. As a series of challenges test their wits and weaknesses, things start heating up in paradise, but in a game designed to break people down, it soon becomes clear that Joshua is hiding a painful secret – one he won’t risk anyone finding out.
Struggling to know where she belongs, Alyssa will have to choose – a life she once loved that wants her back, or a brand new reality that heartbreakingly may just have its limits.
˃˃˃ “Becky does it again, delivering a searingly hot, emotionally intense and brilliantly written book. I loved it.” – Sarah Alderson (author of Hunting Lila, Fated, The Sound)
***Warning: this book contains graphic language, sex, and mature situations. Not intended for young adult readers.***
Excerpt
I love the native look, by the way, Joshua said to me the other day, as we lay across the rocks by the water and he traced my hip bones and pelvis with his fingers. You know, there are hippy communes you could move to after this, if you want to keep that up.
I actually wouldnt mind, I said. Youve been to these places, too?
One, in New Mexico. I spent three months up just north of Taos, helping this cool lady dig up hippy trash from a collapsed pit house. It was all stuff from the sixties and seventies, you know, lamps and bongs shoes. Youd find all kinds of stuff for your eBay auctions up there.
I stared at him in amazement as he fixed me with those eyes. Theyre so impossibly beautiful, but its not just that and it never has been. Its the way the world seems so impossibly beautiful when I look at it with him. Ive lost count of the jobs Joshuas had. He never stays in one place for long. I lived in a teepee while we worked, he continued, on a commune site in Arroyo Hondo. Most of the woman didnt wear clothes.
I want to go there, I told him, curling my legs around him and pulling him down on top of me. I want to live in a teepee and be naked. I want to see all the places you have.
Youve seen just as many, havent you,M-lister? he grinned, as I ran my fingers along his stubble.
I told you, Ive seen the insides of hotel suites and buffets and famous people being spoilt. Ive been spoilt, I told him. You know I havent lived like you have.
Youre twenty-three, Alyssa. You have time.
He got that look on his face again then the one he gets when hes about to close off; then he licked and kissed his way downwards and took me into his mouth till I literally had to beg him to make love to me for the third time that morning. I dont know where he goes, my fellow emotional drifter, but every time I ask in private he just kisses all my questions away and theres nothing else I can do except live in the now.
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Author Bio:
Becky Wicks lives in Bali and scribbles books, and she’s mostly powered by coffee. Her first book in the Starstruck Series, Before He Was Famous recently reached #1 in Amazon’s Coming of Age and New Adult & College categories, and her three travel books, published by HarperCollins are online to make feet nice and itchy. Mostly though, she loves to write love stories. She blogs most days at beckywicks.com and always welcomes distractions on Twitter @bex_wicks. Especially if you have photos of cats.