Redheaded Bookworm: Unbeautifully Loved by Emma Grayson

Today we have Unbeautifully Loved by Emma Grayson. Sounds like a great book.

On the run from her dark and painful past, Lexie Todd is finally forced by her best friend Mollie into settling into a new
place for the first time in months. Having been hurt in more ways than one in the past, the last thing Lexie is expecting or wanting is to meet someone as persistent and annoying but incredibly gorgeous as Lukas Gunn.

When an incident leaves Lexie banged up and rattled, Lukas knows there’s more to her than meets the eye as something is haunting her to the core making him nothing but determined to make her his and protect her from whatever it is that casts the dark painful shadow behind her eyes.

But when her past shows up and pulls Lexie back into the nightmare she already once escaped while leaving her closest loved ones in danger it’s up to Lukas to save her from her darkest nightmare relived.

Will Lukas be able to save Lexie? Or will Lexie succumb only having known what it’s like to be Unbeautifully Loved?

Excerpt

Meeting him changed my life. I never thought I’d meet someone who’d finally complete me like he did. Someone who finally made me feel whole and loved as much as he did. There’s always been a void in my heart, a void I thought I’d never have. I was in love, deeply in love, the kind of love that only comes around once in a life time, the kind you don’t want to live without and he didn’t even know how I felt. I’d waited too long and I didn’t know if I’d ever get to tell him.

The thought of him fizzled from my mind as my body shook from the cold under the thin sheet of a blanket that was wrapped around me. I was in shock, I could tell. I knew the signs. I winced as I moved; shooting pain licked my body in every direction. I knew a couple of my ribs along with my wrist were broken, and possibly something on my face, as pain swept over it and into my head. I raised my free arm up slowly, painfully, feeling my damp face as my hand found its way to the laceration on the side of my head, the source of only some of the pain. Unable to hold my arm up for much longer, it fell to the side throbbing and dangling off the edge of the bed. My body, it was beaten and bruised possibly more than ever before and I could feel myself slipping away, wanting nothing but to close my eyes and sleep, but it was the last thing I’d allow myself to do.

My mind was disoriented; I had no idea what day it was or how long I had been locked in this cold, dark place. Time was frozen, becoming nonexistent, and I was sure the days were just bleeding together. I thought about Finn and Mollie, hoping and praying they were safe because I didn’t know if I was going to see them again. The thought of that was unbearable. My eyes watered, nose burned and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Pull it together.

Think.

I didn’t know where I was, why I was even here or what caused him to do what he did to me. I felt like my life, my being, was being sucked right out of me. The abuse had taken its toll on my body and I had no fight left in me. All hope that I had earlier was beginning to fade away.

The door creaking open brought me back from my thoughts, my eyes snapped closed at the light that followed him in. I wanted to pull my blanket up to hide myself and hope it would make me disappear but I couldn’t and there was no point in trying.

Looking at him you wouldn’t think any kind of malicious evil would consume him, but it did. It was written all over his face, in the grin he wore and the burning in his cold, dead blue eyes. A shiver ran through me as I thought of his eyes looking back at me, blank, filled with nothing but coldness and the brightness of those eyes forever gone. I’d never seen a pair of eyes so cold, or so hollow and dark, not even the pair I looked into years before compared to what I was seeing now.

He walked over to the side of the bed, no words said. His rough cold hands roamed over my hair down the side of my face and my body stilled as I wished him away. My eyes snapped shut not knowing what was about to come.

His hand slipped under the covers, gliding over my naked arm, stopping above my elbow, lingering there a moment before moving away and then my cuffed hand was free. His hand went back, gripping my arm tightly as he pulled me to a sitting position. Pain radiated through me as I let out a whimper. He pulled me to my frozen feet, my knees shook, feeling like they were going to give out, unable to support me. I felt myself sway to the side but his grip held me upright, tightly; his fingers dug into my arm, pinching my skin.

What’s one more bruise?

He started to pull me towards the open door, my eyes squinting, trying to adjust to the light. I didn’t know where we were going and I was sure it wasn’t going to be good and for the first time I was wishing to stay in the hole. I didn’t have any strength to fight him so I let him pull me, taking me wherever he was going.

Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe it was meant to end here and meeting him, falling in love, having this emptiness I carried around finally filled, maybe it was only supposed to be... temporary.

Life had a way of playing cruel tricks on you.

This I knew.

Boy did I know.

I no longer saw the future with him as bright, happy and full of love; it was suddenly now empty, numb and full of complete and utter darkness.

Character spotlight of Mollie Evans.

The character of Mollie is a mix of me and my best friend, Teri. (Whose name I used for the character Teri) I think that’s why it was so easy to get inside Mollie and know who she was right off the bat. Some of the things she says is things my friend and I have said to one another, so when writing conversations between Mollie and Lexie it was as if I was texting my best friend.

Mollie is the friend everyone wants. She’s the type of friend, I think, everyone needs. In my eyes she’s pretty much the ultimate best friend. She’d move heaven and hell for the people she loves- and she proved that with her actions in Unbeautifully Loved.

Mollie’s strong, incredibly strong. She’s kind, loving, honest, and loyal. She’s a person who puts other before herself without thought or hesitation and she never asks for anything in return.

When things in Lexie’s life got bad for her and her son Finn, Mollie, without hesitation or questioning, got them away and by doing that she dropped everything and left her life behind in order to be with Lexie and Finn. She was her rock through it all, she didn’t like Dex and though she hated standing by and watching what was happening, she did just that in order to protect her friend – her sister until the time came to get out.

Mollie’s beautiful. Inside and out. Her long blonde hair and bright white smile along with her amazing sense of humour is just the cake of why people are drawn to her. She can be a girly girl sometimes but, like Lexie, she’s perfect with a pair of jeans and a tee with a pair of flip flops. She loves the color orange and the band Coldplay. She loves to drink white wine but hates the taste of beer. She loves sushi – spicy tuna rolls to be exact. And she’s obsessed with the show Criminal Minds and has a mad crush on Dr. Spencer Reid. She loves her chick flicks but loves a good action movie with lots of explosions. But ultimately if it came down to it, a warm bath and a good book would be her choice.

Mollie Evans, in the first draft of Unbeautifully Loved, was written out in the epilogue. I sent her back home to Kingston because she needed time away. But it didn’t sit well with me, I hated it, because let’s face it Mollie’s home is where Lexie and Finn are and I couldn’t see book 2 being right without Mollie being around.