Blog Tour & Promo with Giveaway - Running to Stand Still by Lauren Rosolino

Title: Running to Stand Still
Author: Lauren Rosolino 
Category/Genre: NA Romance

Collin was who he was: simple and easy.

Me? I was jagged and complex. I wanted everything.

And despite how he made me feel—safe—it was clear to me that we’d never work out in the end.

That divide between us would always be there.

Because I’d never ask him to give up on the things he wanted.

And, while I sometimes wished I could be that person, I wasn’t.

Just seven more months. Then Jamie Benson can leave this goodbye town behind her and start her new life in Chicago. She can leave this place of broken glass and cracked sidewalks and rusted fences. This place that holds nothing good. She can leave the ghosts and spinning rooms and shattered promises in her rearview mirror and never look back.

But all the stories she’s been telling herself are threatened when, one night, while tending bar at her father’s hole-in-the-wall dive, she meets Collin—a boy who is good and honest and sincere in a world where everything is harsh and cold and detached. A boy who makes her feel safe.  A boy worth staying for.

Will Jamie be able to untangle the truths from the lies? Or will the sins of the past swallow her whole?

Goodreads

“Is this forever?” he asked into the silence.

            It was one thing to come back and visit. It was something else entirely to come back for good.

            “I don’t know,” I said.

            His voice was quiet and strained. “So this is it?”

            I looked at my father. Physically strong and wiry and yet so broken inside. Withering away. When was the last time I’d seen him come alive? How many years had his guitar sat silent in its case, collecting dust?

            “What about Collin?” He asked.

            My mouth dropped open, caught off guard.

            “I see the way you look at him. It’s the same way I used to look at your mother—like she could save me.” His eyes flashed silver through the lens. “And the way he looks at you, like he wants to.”

            Gone for a moment were the animosity and biting remarks. What remained was nothing but a raw, fragmented honesty, and I had to blink back the blur of tears.

            “You can’t . . . People can’t save each other. Not in the way we want them to,” I said.

            “No, they can’t,” he shook his head in agreement. “But he could be really good for you, if you let him.”

            His words hit like a fist to the chest.

            “You’re going to break his heart.”         

            But it was bigger than that. Collin would break. I would break. We would fall apart in a way I wasn’t sure either one of us could return from.

            “I know,” I said, meeting his eyes. Because the least I could do was own up to the hurt I was responsible for causing. There was some honor to be found in that, wasn’t there?

            Dad held my gaze, then bowed his head. “What is it about me that makes everyone want to run away?”

            I studied him, his armor faltering for a moment, leaving him exposed. “It’s not you, Dad.” My voice softened. “Maybe everyone’s just tired of holding on to something that stopped existing a long time ago. Of pretending everything is okay when it’s not.” I stood up from the barstool.

            “And maybe it just really hurts—how you gave up on us. On yourself.” I walked toward the door. Knowing that the world as we knew it was changing.

            I stopped in the doorway and turned around, “I’m sorry this is hurting you. I’m sorry this is the way everything is working out. But this—me leaving, Nate leaving—it was set in motion a long time ago, and you never did anything to change the course.”

            Then I walked out.

Author of The Charm Necklace and Running to Stand Still. Writer of stories about finding beauty in brokenness. 

She is a storyteller. Adventuer. Partner. Coffee drinker. Magic believer. Rebel with a gypsy soul. Lover of the woods and books, the woods and walks.

Born and bred in Detroit, Lauren grew up reading Harry Potter, watching Gilmore Girls, listening (and dancing) to a lot of music, and wondering why people do what they do. She graduated from Wayne State University with a BA in Psychology. Lauren lives with her husband, dog, cat, and bunny in Charleston, South Carolina.

To find out more and read her blog, Wonderstruck, visit www.laurenrosolino.com.

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