Time is moving forward again for Willa Hawthorne. She is making a name for herself in the art world and beginning a new life with her estate attorney, Evan Mercer. But soon after Willa and Evan become engaged, she is reminded why she can’t let go of the past. With an uncanny sense of timing, Jamieson Corbin pushes his way back into Willa’s life. Not only does his reappearance threaten her relationship with Evan, it challenges her very sanity because there’s an impossible catch: Jamieson has been dead for three years.
From a small idyllic town in Rhode Island to a remote hamlet in the Highlands of Scotland, Willa and an unexpected ally embark on a provocative journey of love and betrayal. When the two uncover long-hidden Corbin Family secrets, they are beckoned to a place where light and darkness intersect and spiritual boundaries are redrawn. The painful truths Willa unearths from the past force her to question everything she believes about life and death while she searches for a passage to connect the two worlds.
When I think of little hollows, I think of a hollow in a tree or in a thicket of brush. I think of the slight concave area just above a hip or collar bone. The dip at the top of a man’s shoulder or the soft depression at the top of a woman’s inner thigh. But I also think of the hollow places we all have inside us that most will never see. Those small voids that become full when we experience extraordinary love and connection. These are the hollows that draw us in and make us seek ways to fit together.
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
He wanders down the path for the not undeserving, to a place where sometimes is enough. A place where electricity surges and hums through his chest, as the yellow light filters down through the canopy, glimmering like a bright spirit who understands – one of the happy few.
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
Et que ce n’est pas chose étrange S’il en est tant que le loup mange. Je dis le loup, car tous les loups Ne sont pas de la mesme sorte : Il en est d’une humeur accorte, Sans bruit, sans fiel et sans couroux, Qui, privez, complaisans et doux, Suivent les jeunes demoiselles Jusque dans les maisons, jusque dans les ruelles. Mais, hélas. Qui ne sçait que ces loups doucereux De tous les loups sont les plus dangereux.
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
It came in rushes, then slowed – that longing for a place that wasn’t enough. Her skin glowed around his shadow, and with her ear to his heart, she let it pulse.
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
“It’s evening in the morning when he finds his dirty little shrine. She is surrounded by torches that coax the truth like he coaxes the sound that her tongue cannot make.”
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
“The forest is dark and damp, and she feels the soft, loamy earth underneath her. The night brings them fear, and awakening, and a language that has no home.”
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
“When he awakens her, they begin to build a confessional from all that they have. A sacred place, where words can be stripped bare. A sanctuary for thirst and ambition.”
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
Excerpt from Pour Mon Bzou:
“A blaze of epiphany. Like baneberries in dim light, he could not have imagined the whites of her eyes. Her stare caught his flaws, like fireflies in a bell jar, and his good fortune wandered off like a gypsy.”
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
Excerpt from The Dirty Little Shrine:
“She sees the hunger in his face, but not in his heart, because like the sound on her tongue, it has been hidden. “If my heart was pulled out of my chest and put, beating, in front of you, would you know what it wants?” he asks. Look how easily he betrays his heart for her, ripping it out of his chest like an Aztec god. She just nods as they sit in their dinner bath, and play like warriors, and he sees how her fire begins in her mouth. Like a dragon.
Photo of Elle Wonders by E. Andreas – Artwork by HenriAltersLife
C’est Lou qu’on la nommait
Il est des loups de toute sorte Je connais le plus inhumain Mon cœur que le diable l’emporte Et qu’il le dépose à sa porte N’est plus qu’un jouet dans sa main
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 – 1918)
There are wolves of all kind.
I know the most inhuman.
My heart, the devil takes,
and deposits at his door,
is no more than a toy in his hand.
