Celebrating 100 Amazon Reviews--A Sneak Peek at IN MY SKIN

You guys are awesome. That's all I have to say. Not only has Every Ugly Word hit 100 Amazon reviews, but it's averaging 4.4 stars. Thank you!!!

In celebration, I'm releasing this sneak peek at my next book. So first, I'll introduce you to "Tully". Then you can see what she has to say at the beginning of her story.

Thanks again for all your support. I'm humbled.
 

IN MY SKIN (Working Title)

(c) Aimee L. Salter, 2014

Since Tulip "Tully" Harden was little she's known two things for certain: That she hates her real name, and that there's something wrong with her.

No, seriously.

Tully's not the kind of wrong that talks too much stupid, or looks like a douche. She's the kind of wrong that shouldn't exist. And worse, whenever she touches someone else, they feel everything she feels. Every dark, decaying inch of her sick. Every ounce of her pain.

No one wants more pain in their life, so no one wants more Tully.

Until she meets Chris.

If Tully had known people like Chris existed, she might have fought the darkness longer.  But now the blackness in her past is threatening to swallow her and even Chris can't shine enough light to push it back.

The only person who can save Tully, is Tully. And maybe she doesn't want to.

1.

 

I have to put it down to the fact that the first time Chris saw me, I wasn’t me. He saw someone who didn’t exist. My ugly got in through the back door. Slipped up behind him like a thief. And by the time he figured that out, he didn’t care anymore.

 

He should have cared.

 

He cares now.

 

We’re in my room. Dust motes hang in the air so thick I can smell them. In the half-light of my pitiful bulb, everything looks gray. My narrow bed is unmade, sheets shoved back to the wall. The quilt mom stitched when I was two lies twisted, half-on and half-off the mattress, its corner flung across the floor, towards the door, like it too would flee this room if it could. The rest is bare – the drawers, the closet door, the walls. Even the clothes strewn over the chair and rug on the boards are plain and dirty and blank, and that’s never bothered me before.

 

But Chris is here and alive, and so much, I can’t help feeling the room should bust wide open for him.

 

The black inside me stretches and I tamp it down.

 

I can only see the side of his face. His eyes are closed, those burnished lashes quivering because he’s screwed so tight, everything’s shaking under the pressure. The little muscles in his jaw twitch. His hand is a white-knuckled fist. His shoulders… oh, Lord, help me, those shoulders that have lifted things I can’t carry and swept me along too…they’re hunched. Knotted. Pressing in on themselves. On him.

 

There’s so much of him that I always feel small beside him. Yet he’s become the place where I can breathe.

 

At least, he was.

 

My insides are in freefall because I did this to him.

 

I shouldn’t have that power over him. I shouldn’t have that power over anyone. But he gave it to me and refused to take it back.

 

“Chris?” My voice is barely above a whisper, but he flinches as if I screamed. My throat is raw and full of sharp angles. “It wasn’t about–”

 

“Don’t.” It’s a hard syllable. A word bitten off. He doesn’t even open his eyes. “I swear, Tully if you say one word…” His fist becomes a hammer.

 

I am ugly. I am black inside, rotting and putrid.

 

I have told him this. Many times.

 

But tonight, finally, he believes me.

 

And as he turns on his heel and stumbles out the door, I can’t even call after him.

 

Because when he gave me the power to turn him inside out, I gave him mine. And even though I knew this day would arrive, even though I knew he was wrong about me, he gave me hope.

 

As I watch him walk out the door, turn down the hallway and disappear, my hope begins its death throes.

 

It doesn’t die quietly.

 

It screams and curses and shoves at me.

 

And for the first time ever, I am grateful for my life, for my father, and for this house. Because if it’s taught me anything, it’s how to take a blow.