Hello, Therians!
I am super excited to share a bonus scene from Jen McLaughlin's OUT OF MIND with you today!!
It's from Finn's POV so I know you're going to love it :)
I'm sad to see this series come to an end, but also feel so blessed to have met these wonderful characters.
If you haven't read the first two books in the series yet, you'll find buy links below. So, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of OUT OF LINE and OUT OF TIME before OUT OF MIND releases April 29th!!
Out
of Mind by Jen McLaughlin
April 29th
Reaching for
sunlight...
Finn survived the ambush and came home to me, but in
his head, the battle is still raging. He’s falling apart and I’m trying my best
to pick up the pieces of him, to find the us
we used to be. I love him as much as I ever did, but love isn’t enough to fix
this. I thought telling my father about our relationship would be the hardest
thing we’d ever have to face. I was wrong.
Lost in shadows...
All I wanted was to be worthy of Carrie. One mission,
just one, and I’d be able to give her the future she deserved. Then everything
went wrong, leaving me tainted and broken. Carrie wants me to be who I was, but
all that’s left is what they made of me. I’m no good for her. No good for
anyone like this. I have to figure out how to move forward. Alone.
Sometimes love isn’t enough…
Bonus Scene
Finn
This scene takes place a few weeks after the
end of OUT OF TIME, but a couple of weeks before the beginning of OUT OF MIND.
I woke up slowly,
blinking away the sunlight streaming through the hospital windows. I must have dozed
off for a little while. By some miracle of miracles, I hadn’t had a nightmare.
I usually did. Sighing, I reached out and pushed the morphine button on the
machine next to me. My head and arm hurt like a fucking bitch.
The door opened,
and I tensed. My last visitor had been Senator Wallington. He’d reminded me
exactly how beneath his daughter I was, then left. Ya know, the usual. But this
time? It was a most welcome visitor. Carrie’s red head peeked inside the
hospital room.
“I’m awake,” I
said, smiling and adjusting myself against the pillows. “Come in.”
She grinned at me
and slipped through the crack of the door. “I came by earlier, but you were
sleeping, so I went to the gift shop. Here. It’s for you.”
“Thank you.” I
took the yellow rose she held out for me, not quite sure what I was supposed to
do with a flower. I was a dude. We were supposed to be the one’s giving out the
flowers—not the other way around. “I didn’t realize they made yellow roses.”
“They make them in
every color imaginable,” she said, sitting down on the side of the bed gently. “You’re
probably wondering why I got you a flower, right?”
I chuckled and
stared down at the gentle bud. “Uh, yeah, kind of.”
“From what I’ve
seen, roses are the toughest flowers out there. One year, my mother’s gardener
planted the garden way too early. A frost came through, and it killed all the
flowers outside.” She leaned in and touched the soft petal. “All of them except
the roses. They were the only flowers that thrived, despite the cold and the
frost. They had the biggest batch ever that year. And they were gorgeous.”
I swallowed hard.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She cupped
my cheek. Her soft touch was so soothing and perfect that I closed my eyes and
savored it. “And those roses remind me of you—of us. You are so strong, and I
know it’ll be tough, but you’ll get through this, and you’ll be stronger
because of it. I know it.”
My heart clenched.
“We’ll get through this.” I squeezed her hand with my one good one. “Together,
we can do anything.”
“Together,” she
echoed, her eyes filled with tears that didn’t spill out. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,
Ginger.”
I kissed her, my
lips fleeting over hers. My grip tightened on her hand, and she strained to get
closer. I drew in a ragged breath, my body responding to her closeness. Her
tongue flicked over mine, making my stomach get tight and other things go hard.
What I wouldn’t give to be out of this hospital room, and back in California
with her in my apartment so I could take care of this need for her that was
trying to kill me.
But we wouldn’t
have privacy until I got out of this one in D.C., though, so we had a while to
go. With that knowledge ringing in my head, I pulled away. “I can’t wait to go
home.”
She sighed. “Me
too. It’ll be here soon. We just have to get back to my parents house, then get
through Christmas. Then things will go back to normal.”
Normal? Nothing
about me was normal anymore. I was a fucking mess. But I smiled for her even
though I knew it was a crock of shit. “Yeah. Normal.”
Her smile
faltered, as if she saw through my façade, but she didn’t say anything. Her
phone dinged. She didn’t pick it up. “We’re going to be okay,” she said again.
“Yeah, we will.” I
hoped to hell we would, anyway. “Are you going to see who messaged you?”
“It’s just my
daily inspirational message of the day.” She lifted a shoulder. “You know how I
love those little messages.”
I ran my thumb
over her lip. “I love that you love those little messages. It’s a-dork-able.”
She flushed. “Shut
up.”
“Gladly.” I leaned
in, the morphine making me feel high and kinda out of it. “Or you could shut me
up.”
“Gladly,” she
echoed, completely oblivious to the fact that I was a fucking wreck.
She kissed me, and
I tried to stop thinking. Stop feeling.
To just stop it all.
See where it all began...
Grab the first two books in OUT OF LINE Series!!
OUT OF LINE (Book #1)
OUT OF TIME (Book #2)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jen
McLaughlin is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. She writes
steamy New Adult books for the young and young at heart. Her first release, Out
of Line, came out September 2013. She also writes bestselling Contemporary
Romance under the pen name Diane Alberts.Since receiving her first contract
offer under the pen name Diane Alberts, she has yet to stop writing. She is
represented by Louise Fury at The Bent Agency.
Though
she lives in the mountains, she really wishes she was surrounded by a hot,
sunny beach with crystal clear water. She lives in Northeast Pennsylvania with
her four kids, a husband, a schnauzer mutt, a cat, and a Senegal parrot. In the
rare moments when she’s not writing, she can usually be found hunched over one
knitting project or another. Her goal is to write so many well-crafted romance
books that even a non-romance reader will know her name.
