Excerpt: 'The One That Got Away' by Bethany Chase
HEA shares an excerpt from Bethany Chase's debut women's fiction book, The One That Got Away. Kirkus Reviews says, this "sparkling debut packs serious emotional punches ... This utterly enjoyable romance will have readers swooning, sobbing, and eagerly anticipating Chase's next book."
First, here's the blurb about the book (courtesy of Ballantine Books):
Sarina Mahler thinks she has her life all nailed down: a growing architecture practice in Austin, Texas, and an any-day-now proposal from her loving boyfriend, Noah. She's well on her way to having the family she's hoped for since her mother's death ten years ago. But with Noah on a temporary assignment abroad and retired Olympic swimmer—and former flame—Eamon Roy back in town asking her to renovate his new fixer-upper, Sarina's life takes an unexpected turn. Eamon proves to be Sarina's dream client, someone who instinctively trusts every one of her choices—and Sarina is reminded of all the reasons she was first drawn to him back in the day. Suddenly her carefully planned future with Noah seems a little less than perfect. And when tragedy strikes, Sarina is left reeling. With her world completely upended, she is forced to question what she truly wants in life—and in love.
Full of both humor and heartbreak, The One That Got Away is the story of one woman's discovery that, sometimes, life is what happens when you leave the blueprints behind.
EXCERPT
It's funny how, when you only get to spend a very finite amount of time with someone you wanted to know better, you find that certain details have cut deeper tracks in your memory than others—something about the way they looked, or one particular comment that made you laugh, out of hundreds of sentences. The image of Eamon that flits into my mind at that moment is of him, sprawled half on top of me in my bed, swearing as he struggled with the zipper on my favorite jean skirt. Laughing into my eyes, his smile so beautiful it could stop a bullet. The same smile he's giving me right now.
The thing is, it's not as if I haven't seen him between then and now. I just haven't seen him in person. In the two years after we met, he went from a talented NCAA star to one of the marquee swimmers on the American national team. So after living with former top-ranked—and still fanatical—Texas Longhorn swimmer Danny through two rounds of Olympics, I have seen a lot of Eamon Roy on TV. Culminating in a stellar performance at last summer's Olympics, less than two years after a brutal car crash almost killed him. But I haven't actually spoken to him since he kissed me goodbye that morning all those years ago.
I stare as he and Danny collide in a back-thumping embrace, then begin picking their way across the courtyard to our table. The Eamon I remember was twenty-one, with the lanky beauty of a colt, still growing into his young athlete's body. He looks the same in all the basic ways: same yield-sign torso, defined jawline, and unfairly long-lashed brown eyes, though his dark hair is cut shorter than I remember. His face still has that openness that invites you to slide a chair next to him and tell him all the stories even your best friends don't know.
But whether it has to do with the hell he must have lived through as he recovered from his injuries, or it's as simple as a college kid growing into a man, there's a gracefulness about him, a completeness, that wasn't there before. I had been hoping that, with the perspective of the intervening years, I wouldn't be able to understand what I thought was so special about him in the first place. Especially after almost four years of basking in all of the countless things that amaze me about Noah. But as I watch him walk toward me now, attraction whomps me in the chest, and I realize, to my irritation, that my previous policy of avoidance was more sensible than I had given myself credit for.
Beside me, Nicole is peering at him like Gollum at the Ring. "Damn," she hisses in my ear. "He got even hotter. I can't believe you hit that, you lucky bitch."
"If you mention that, I will shank you and leave your child motherless." I wipe my damp palms on my jeans as Danny and Eamon reach our table.
"And you remember these two," Danny says, gesturing to me and Nicole. "Also known as Trouble and Hell on Wheels."
"Which one is which?" Eamon's smile is like sunshine.
I extend my hand to him, but he pulls me in for an easy hug, and kisses my cheek affectionately. I inhale his scent: a mellow mix of shampoo, laundry detergent, and a faint whiff of chlorine. He must still train regularly—hard habit to break, I guess.
"Hey, Sarina. It's been way too long since I've seen you."
Excerpted from The One That Got Away by Bethany Chase Copyright © 2015 by Bethany Chase. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.