M. L. Stevens Books
African-American Contemporary romance and trauma recovery novels with happy endings
When Ash Robards and Tayshia Cole head out to the hot springs behind their boarding school on graduation night, Ash is unaware that three things are inevitable.
His father's going to prison.
His mother is dead because Ash never told her secret.
And he really, really cannot stand Tayshia Cole.
The legend of the hot springs says that if you step into it with your soulmate under the stars, you'll be together forever. No one believes it, especially not Ash and Tayshia. It's a myth. It's false. It can't possibly be true.
So why can't he stop dreaming about her?
Ash and Tayshia are in pain.
They've suffered together through something so unexplainable and so horrific that the only solace is in dreams.
Ash can't look at her without feeling like she's going to shatter. Tayshia can't look at him without remembering what she tried so hard to forget.
When they discover that they truly can meet each other in the their dreams, the search for answers is not as easy as they hope. As the search unfolds, Tayshia's strange mannerisms begin to fall into place like the pieces of a terrible puzzle.
What is she hiding?
After witnessing Tayshia doing the unthinkable, Ash makes a decision that will eradicate the careful web of denial he's woven after his mother's death.
When Tayshia tells a lie that sets into motion a fire that could have been avoided, Ash finds himself making wrong choice after wrong choice. His secrets threaten to destroy the control that Tayshia tries so desperately to maintain. As he tries and fails to sort manipulation from the truth, Ash finds himself fading into the same flames that devour the sun.
But there's a darkness that surrounds Tayshia.
A darkness that Ash will stop at nothing to ignite.
After all the mistakes Ash has made, he never thought that Tayshia would be the biggest one of all.
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She has set them both on fire and there is no room in his lungs to scream. They are blackened to a crisp, splintered with cracks that have scorched his spirit barren. The only air the cosmos see fit to grant him is hers. She breathes in the stars. He exhales starlight.
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It’s all come to this, the final decision he must make to keep her alive. A decision in a game that she’s been playing with him from the moment she first accepted his kiss in their apartment hallway. A decision that will either save her life…
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…Or burn them both to ashes.
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Ash will soon find out that no matter how hard he tries to quell the flames that Tayshia has set alight, as long as he keeps making the wrong choices, she will continue to scorch him until no piece of him remains.
The final book of the Apricity series.
