Title: Fear of Heights (The Heightsbound Series #2)
Author: Mara White
Series: The Heightsbound Series
Genre: Erotic \
Publication Date: September, 12, 2014
Event Organized By: Literati Author Services, Inc.
~ Synopsis ~
What are you willing to sacrifice for love? Your family? Your freedom? What about your life?
Sheâs a wealthy, forty-three-year-old Upper East Sider with a PhD â Heâs a twenty-three-year-old Dominican drug dealer from Washington Heights.
Kate Champion always did exactly what was expected of her. She was the perfect wife, the perfect mother â until the day she met Jaylee Inoa.
Their journey travels a path riddled with danger, deceit, scandal and loss â where nothing is as it seems. Yet Kate and Jayleeâs passion for one another remains nearly unstoppable.
Will this daring pair of lovers from two different worlds triumph over circumstance? Can they deny the past in their quest to be together? Or is fear the ultimate navigator - a force more powerful than love?
Prologue
Jaylee
Rikers Island, East Elmhurst, New York
My stomach growls from the shit lunch of bologna and American cheese. Iâll die before Iâm twenty-five in here from all the crap they been feeding me. I need more calories because of my workout routine, and the commissary just donât cut it. Half the time I probably burning muscle, but what the fuck you gonna do about it? You canât change this fucked-up machine. What I wouldnât give for some Spanish foodâjust a goddamn plate of my grandmaâs rice and beans.
I flip the pen around and around in my hand, trying to think of what to say. It brings me right back to being eight years old, the school-assigned social worker jabbing at me to âwrite him whatever you please!â I pick at a popped blister from going at the weights in the yard. Soon enough itâll get hard and callousâjust like everybody who been up in here too long.
âHeâd love to hear anything about you. Why donât you tell him about basket-ball?â As if it was easy, when you hadnât talked to him in years. Anâ my ma bent over the kitchen table with cried-on love letters to my dad, praying on lighted candles and over special oils to Dios SantÃsimo, that he donât get sent to Sing Sing.
We couldnât afford the trip up there, so we saw him less and less. The sound of his voice just became a memory to me, and when we did get up there, I pitied the man I saw. Couldnât get past the fact that he fucked up. I felt like he let them put him away. I swore to myself if I ever got there, Iâd be smarter than he was. That Iâd get revenge before Iâd let âem make me live my life behind bars. Now look at where I am.
At least I got a plan.
Love letters. Kate wrote me one once. Thereâs a trick to them, right? You gotta try to convince a woman that youâll love her forever. Itâs not just about the first time she reads it, sheâs gotta see it every time she looks. Try doing it on jail-issued stationery. I had to earn the privilege to use a pen. How the fuck you tell someone they everything you gotâwhen all you got is a page? How do I tell her how much I want her to have my kid? I love knowing that heâs inside her, that thereâs part of me with her. Thing is, I canât control the lies sheâs being fed; sheâll choose the lawyer over me.
How do you say all that on paper when all you ever got through was public school? She got everything she needsâor at least thatâs how itâd seem to anybody looking in. But I knowâI knowâhow much Kate needs me.
I crumple up the last sheet of the ones they gave me and toss it onto my bunk. I donât know how to put my heart on paper. I canât make her understand why I did what I done.
On Friday they call me out for a visit, though Iâm not expecting nobody. Mamá, Janinie, and everybody coming next weekâor thatâs what we said on the phone. Iâm never expecting Kate again. I have no idea what she decided to do with the baby. I donât know if he still here with us or gone already. The babyâs the only thing I ever cared about more than her, but Iâm not gonna let myself hate her for it. She shouldnât aâ had to go through it by herself - either way. If Iâd watched my back, I wouldnât aâ ended up here.
I stick my hands out the drop door in the cell so they can cuff me. The corrections officer calls me âDorado,â âcause thatâs what they called my pops when he was here. I try not to get involved, but it ainât easy when your ties run deep like mine do. My old man spent a minute in Rikers; he up the river now in Sing Sing. Heâs spending his days at the big house, but he got connections all through the whole system. He got his reputation too, and Iâm expected to keep it.
Probably an ex or somebody I was messing around with before Kate who come to see me. Girls got something about visiting guys in jail. They love the drama. They love the attention they get from everybody else. Girls that wonât even give you the time of day on the outside start writing you letters about how much they miss you when you in the box. Itâs bullshit. But I admitâit do make the time go by faster. And right now I got nothing but time.
I get stuck in the hall for the countâwhich means whoever waiting for me is stuck too. The guard Iâm with lets me do wall push-ups after he cuffs me to a door. I go at it, hard as fuck, until Iâm dripping sweat and my muscles are burning. Working out helps me not to think about herâor the baby. The burn is good. It shuts up the furia. There ainât shit I can do anyway, so why make myself crazy playing it all over again in my head?
The count takes forever and Iâm betting whoeverâs out there waiting is regretting this. First and last visit. Nobody want to see me that bad.
When we finally walk into the visiting room, my eyes catch her before anything else, even though the place is packed. Iâm a homing pigeon. I canât see nothing else.
Sheâs Kate, but she ainât Kate. Same black hair, same pale face. Same scared blue eyes. Her body is slamming too, less hip, more tit, and she a little taller. Maybe itâs the heels. She looks good. But I know who she is.
Itâs the sister. Arriving like the grim reaper. She come repping for the other side. I gotta smile that this mina got herself into Rikers. I can tell sheâs shitting herself, even worse than Kate. She ainât never been in no place like this before, thatâs for sure. All dolled up to come see a criminal like me.
Thereâs some part of me that wants to run to her just âcause they family. And then another part that wants to refuse the goddamned visit. I know Kate feel like she ainât good enough for her own family. Makes me fucking hate âem. Kate is goodâthatâs her main problem. Itâs something she wonât let herself see.
Now sheâs starting to work her hands like she in full-blown panic mode. I guess I take pity on her. She looks too much like my girl. Shit, itâs messing with my headâand my dick.
I pull out a chair and sit down, drilling my eyes into the back of her head. She spinning around, looking across the whole room. She donât know who the fuck I am. She turns and stares, her eyes taking everything in. I can practically hear her heart pounding from over here. She like a baby birdâready to flip out and fly into the fucking window. She looks at me and I gesture to the chair across the table. Relief hits her whole face and her shoulders relax. She smiles quick and then it disappears and she look scared again. She marches over to the table and sits down fast.
âJaylee?â
Why she gonna ask me after she already sit down? Iâm tempted to say no, but I just stare at her instead. I can see how much they look alike, but I can also see how they different. She got doubt all over her face. She wanna fly the fuck out of here. That makes two of us.
âEmily,â I say not giving anything away. Iâm gonna make her work hard for it.
âOh, Kate told you about me?â
âShe didnât tell me much. âNough to know you exist. Otherwise Iâd think I was seeing ghosts.â
âHave you talked to her?â
âPfft. Naw, not since she came in here to tell me she was pregnant. Not that itâs your business. They send you to come tell me she got rid of it?â
âI came on my own, Jaylee.â
She stops and looks down.
âKateâs missing; I was hoping you could tell me where to find her.â
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~ About the Author ~
Iâm a reader, a writer, and a lover of all things romantic. Iâm also a coffee, hot sauce, ink, telenovela and Bikram Yoga enthusiast. I live in New York City with my husband and two children, and I spend a lot of time on the playground.
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