17 year old Justine Leonard wants to be happy for her widowed mother when she meets, falls in love with, and marries a new mystery man, Dirk Martin. But while this man seems to shine like a knight in freshly polished armor, Justine can’t shake the feeling something isn’t quite right. Is Justine’s gut telling the truth, or is everyone else right when they say her imagination is playing with her?
Justine’s world has been turned upside down by Dirk Martin -- the man her mother still believes she can trust. With Justine’s stepfather’s heart set on her and her mother’s pregnancy threatening to take her life, Justine has two choices: fight back or give him what he wants. Will anyone be left alive by the time Dirk Martin is done?
Justine Leonard is determined to hold her head high in the wake of all Dirk Martin did. When the weight of the world is thrust onto her shoulders again, she embraces it for the love of her family. Though her scars run deep, Dad always told her the future looks forward and that’s exactly what she’s fighting to do through the good and the bad, but will her determination be her undoing?
The floodwaters may have receded, but they’ve proven what a dangerous thing the mind is when it’s left uncared for. Justine knows the future she wants and it’s within her grasp. If only she can let go of the past.That’s not as easy as it sounds when you and the rest of the world are convinced you’re unwell. Can Justine let Eric in, or will she lose him forever because she’s spent so long trying to protect everyone around her? Justine’s future is up in the air, and her past is banging at the door.
Dirk. Is. Dead. Nothing else in Justine’s world makes sense, with Eric hanging on by a thread, but that much she knows. Dirk can’t hurt her, or anyone else, ever again. In the wake of his demise new wounds are formed deeper and more painful than any she has yet dealt with. Will Justine, and friends new and old, be able to heal them and move on? Or will they be stuck in Dirk’s cage forever?
Camille Jensen grew up to be Camille Leonard, and then Camille Martin, but where did she begin? An army brat, Camille has an overwhelming love for her father who rules with an iron fist and a short temper, and a mother who raises her on a steady diet of wedding dreams and fairy tales. Moving from state to state with a constant worry about her blood sugar hanging over her head, she chooses to spend her time in the world of her dreams; until the summer she meets Caleb Arthur Leonard, a self-proclaimed bad boy and the key to the rest of her life.
Martin Douglas Earl, Dirk as he would come to be known, may have grown up to become a monster who haunted the dreams of many a young girl, but he began as a boy who dreamed of the love of a family. Abandoned as a toddler, Martin bounced from one home to the next in the foster system until landing with the Church family. Who knew a family with such a wholesome name would set him on such a dark path?