Welcome to STARSTRUCK, a showplace for talent, a playground for love. A new contemporary continuity series by Beth Ciotta, Cynthia Valero, and Elle J Rossi. Three authors. One world. The hot nights continue with Valero’s emotional new-adult novella, Wrecked. A Secret Crush… Talented songwriter, Sunny Burnett, shelves her dream of Nashville when her older sister is killed in a car wreck and helps her mother pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Two years later, her mother’s still struggling and Sunny is desperate to help her. Dusting off her guitar, penning a new song, and marshaling her courage, she enters a duet contest, hoping to use the prize money to turn her mother's life around. She’ll do anything to win. Even if it means partnering with the last man she should ask—her sister’s ex-boyfriend, a gifted singer and Sunny’s longtime secret crush. A Clandestine Choice… Curtis Bliss blames himself for Tuesday Burnett’s death. And so does her family. Haunted by regret, he forfeits his musical dreams for years, until he’s challenged by an unexpected source—his ex’s younger sister. Sunny Burnett blows him away by asking for his help and, in turn, offering him a tentative forgiveness. Even more surprising is the burning attraction that ignites and consumes them both. Can the new lovers make their dreams come true after all? Or will the secrets they keep wreck them forever?
They stood facing each other, like desperadoes destined for showdown in a deserted alley. Her cowboy hat dangled from her fingers, her unshaded eyes zeroed right in on him. Bright blue to stop a train. And his heart felt like it indeed slammed to a halt and everything inside him collided forward, right toward her, just as it had yesterday. But those eyes didn’t swallow him whole, willingly and languorously, like her sister’s deep brown ones had. There was no refuge in Sunny’s gaze. They glinted and reflected everything right back to him. No more sixteen year old with thick glasses. No more curling around herself with awkwardness. No hiding behind the porch steps to watch him and Tuesdaysing, thinking he didn’t know she was there. She didn’t move. He didn’t move. “You’re here,” she finally said. “Again.” It was an accusation. “It’s the last time.” He tore his gaze from her. The unbound hair, thick and dark like Tuesday’s, flowing free around her shoulders, almost to the small of her back. He gripped the hand truck handles, his fingers desperate to touch that hair instead of the damned grass at Tuesday’s memorial every night. Just once, to feel it against his cheek, to— He yanked the keg onto the service ramp. “Wait.” No. Everything inside him shouted no. “Please.” He stopped. She tapped her knuckles against her mouth as though in thought. She smacked her hat against her thigh. After a few breaths, she eyed him from an angle, as though he were suddenly painful to look at. She sighed and it sounded just a little bit defeated. He knew the feeling. She gripped her handbag with white-knuckled fingers and stalked toward him. She was beautiful beyond any memory of her, and his gut twisted. Perhaps it was best to get this done. Perhaps it was what he should’ve done from the start because now that it was here, he was suddenly ready for it. He gripped the hand truck for support, ready to take whatever she could give, ready to take it and bear it because it was what he deserved. He was ready for her to hurt him. He wanted it. Bring it.
Cynthia Valero is an award-winning author of two solo novellas as well as three paranormal romance novels and two anthologies written with Beth Ciotta as CB Scott. Her newest novella, Wrecked, is an emotional, new-adult tale in the new contemporary continuity series, STARSTRUCK, which also includes Beth Ciotta and Elle J Rossi. A student of Natalie Goldberg, Zoetrope All-Story, and The Writers Studio, Cynthia is currently writing a fantasy novel of forbidden love and deadly feuds set off the coast of early America.
Cynthia lives in the northeastern United States, is a student of kung fu and history, and believes that the rumble of a classic hot rod is music. Her family will tell you that she is a grudging cook but a great reader of bedtime stories.
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