Reader's Edyn: Guest Post: I Hate to Stand Alone (Little Fall #1) by Casey Winter + GIVEAWAY

**I Hate to Stand Alone by Casey Winter**

Good Morning, Everyone! So thrilled to see you all today! We have another new-to-me author and book! Please allow me to feature on the blog Casey Winter and her latest release, I HATE TO STAND ALONE … Plus, a GIVEAWAY!

**CASEY WINTER**

**BIO**

Hello beautiful readers!

Thank you so, so much for checking out my books. My name is Casey and I just love to write romance with depth and characters you'll be able to connect with. My current series is called Little Fall, named for the town where it's set, but each book is a complete STANDALONE ... that said, don't expect Luke, Morgan, Hannah, or Penny (and many others) to disappear anytime soon! Little Fall is a town you can get invested in, for sure.

I just want to say I'm so grateful to you for checking out my work, and I hope you enjoy reading my romances as much as I enjoyed writing them (hopefully without less stressing LOL).

I've been writing ever since I was a little kid, sitting at my dad's fireplace in cozy New England winters and penning stories in my Barbie notepad. More recently, I've switched the notepad for a laptop, but I've never fallen out of love with the craft. Now, I live in just plain ol' England with a hunky husband and a Jack Russel named Loki.

I'd really appreciate if you could follow my Amazon author page, as I'm going to be around for a LONG time.

Bye for now! Or, should I say, see you in Little Fall ...

To find out more about Ms. Winter, please visit:

**I HATE TO STAND ALONE**

Publication date: May 29^TH, 2020

Series: Little Fall #1
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, New Adult

**BLURB**

The small town I ran away from. The Navy SEAL I’m supposed to hate. If I can get through this summer without falling for the off-limits alpha, I’ll consider myself lucky.

Steamy, intense chemistry … is just one of the things I shouldn’t be feeling for Luke Nelson, soldier turned security agency operative. His brother and I were high school sweethearts, but he broke my heart. Plus, our families hate each other, à la the Hatfields and the McCoys.

I return to Little Fall, Maine, to care for my sick mom. He returns to fulfil his brother’s last wish of reopening their mother’s roller rink. I spent half my childhood at Family Roller … but never with him.

He was the older bad boy. I was the girl next door. Love was never an option. But now we can’t stop making eyes at each other.

As I reunite with old family and friends, I learn that Little Fall has just as many secrets as my heart. And even if I’m supposed to say no, my intrigue for dreamy, handsome, rugged Luke Nelson is off the charts.

It turns out I might have a second chance after all … even if it’s with my ex-boyfriend’s big brother.

This full-length romance has a happily-ever-after and can be read as a full standalone. It is free with Kindle Unlimited.

Subsequent books in the Little Fall series cover different heroes and heroines … though your favorite characters will make appearances.

**GUEST POST**

Is a Heart Ever Too Broken for Love?

By Casey Winter

Okay, so I’m going to try not to disappear into Cheesy Town as I write this guest post, but the title is one of the main themes in my upcoming small town enemies-to-lovers novel, I Hate to Stand Alone.

Both Hannah Coleman-Ortiz and Luke Nelson hold dark secrets in their pasts, a kind of heartbreak that takes different forms, but has similar effects: keeping their emotions locked up tight inside of them.

For Luke, an incredibly effective, decorated, badass Navy SEAL – now working for an elite security agency – his history in a particularly vicious tour overseas is his source of trauma. He doesn’t like to talk about this, or even acknowledge it to himself. His memories don’t let him sleep through the night, but fine, that’s just the price he’ll have to pay … so he reasons.

He doesn’t let himself get emotional.

He doesn’t believe in airing out his problems.

He’s hard, sometimes moody, but – at heart – he’s a good person with solid moral values and a strong strain of loyalty.

But when he starts to have feelings for Hannah, this presents him with a conundrum. If he lets this woman in, will he be cracking open his chest and letting out a whole Pandora’s Box of messed up feelings? It could even drive him insane, because he’s never let himself look there, not once.

And, to make matters worse, Hannah is the last person in the world he should be feeling anything for.

Their families are Hatfields-and-McCoys levels of f*cked up. Their parents hate each other. Hannah hates Luke’s brother for breaking her heart. Everybody else thinks that Hannah broke his heart. It’s a big ol’ helping of Tangled Small-Town Mess Sundae.

At the root of it, though, are these questions: Can I ever let myself feel anything? Am I too broken? Should I just lock all my feelings away and subsist on surface-level interactions, and never let myself get close to anybody, ever?

For Hannah, her trauma comes from something Noah – Luke’s brother – did to her in their teens. She never talks about or acknowledges it, either, but it’s always there, a big gnarled angry elephant lurking in the corner of her life, trumpeting for attention. She never gives it any, but that doesn’t stop it being real.

But she doesn’t go the same route as Luke.

She doesn’t become grim, and moody, and dark and intense.

Instead, she throws herself into her skating career. Becoming high-ranked in a form of skating called freestyle slalom (check this out!), she turns her childhood passion into her main source of income. But then circumstances force her back to Little Fall, her childhood town, and finally she has to confront that big gnarled elephant we talked about.

Hannah’s heart is broken in a more subtle way, not the devastating numbness caused by Luke’s violent encounter with the grisly realities of war.

But she still has her own conundrums to deal with: Can I let myself fall for this man, when his little brother did something awful to me? Even if he wasn’t a Nelson, could I let myself give my heart away, knowing how much it hurt when I let myself get intimate before? Am I willing to sacrifice my career and stay in Little Fall? Is this man worth it? Could I even stop myself from loving him if I tried?

These two have everything against them from the start. They really, really dislike each other on first sight, having zero interest in sparking up any kind of relationship.

But sometimes Cupid has ideas of his own, and as they start to spend more time together, they realize just how difficult fighting it really is.

Just like in life, love finds a way.

It always does.

Okay, so I lied about taking a detour in Cheesy Town.

But that’s just like the novel: always walking the line between the true-to-life reality of relationships and celebrating the fireworks-bright oh-my-God-this-is-amazing feelings of what a really spectacular romance feels like.

Of course, only my readers will be able to tell me if I’ve pulled it off.

**EXCERPT**

Hannah

I take a small sip of wine, letting its flavor burst on my tongue before swallowing. “You know how I hate to stand alone at parties?”

Penny rolls her eyes, a grin of reminiscence lighting up her face. “Do I remember it? Effing hell, Banana, it was one of the running themes throughout our childhoods. You couldn’t stand still, like ever. If you weren’t doing something, you were dying. That’s how it seemed to you. I remember one rare time when you convinced me to come to a party, I found you in the basement with a couple of the so-called dorks – June’s brother, right? – playing Dungeons & Dragons.”

“Oh, yeah,” I giggle, shaking my head at the memory. “I actually forgot about that.”

“I asked you what the heck you were doing, and you just looked me dead in the eye in that can’t-sit-still Hannah way and said, ‘Listen, Penny. I hate to stand alone. It’s as simple as that.’ All I did was go and use the effing toilet, girl. It wasn’t my fault Doug Helmsmore had a bad belly and I had to wait in line for the bathroom, was it?” She giggles. “But that was your little saying, whenever you threw yourself wholeheartedly into a new experience. If I ever called you brave, you’d toss your head and say, ‘It’s not brave, Lennie, I just hate to stand alone.’ But you were wrong, you know. It was brave, is brave, the way you throw yourself into stuff. I could never do it.”

“Thank you,” I say. “It’s really nice of you to say. But the point is, like, lately I’ve found myself standing alone at parties and having it feel sort of natural. Because even if I like my skating buddies, they’re not, I don’t know … they’re not home. Does that sound cheesy or what?”

Penny waves a hand. “Well, that’s great, then. If that’s really how you feel, it’s win-win. You’re happy and I get my bestie back. So what’s the problem?”

I pause, swallowing an awkward lump.

“Luke,” Penny says a moment later. “He’s the spanner in the works, right?”

I nod. “I guess so. To be honest, part of me was wondering if this would happen when I came back here for the long haul, like I sort of expected I might get involved in Little Fall stuff again. But what I definitely didn’t expect was for Luke Nelson to reopen Family Roller. I didn’t expect to find him completely, insanely irresistible. And I definitely didn’t expect to find out that our attraction went beyond just the physical.”

“Is that why you keep checking your phone?” she asks.

“What?” I flinch. “Do I?”

Penny rolls her eyes. “Hon, you’ve checked it at least once a minute.”

“That’s crazy,” I mutter. “I really didn’t even realize. But yeah, he texted me saying he wanted me to give him a day, which is sort of annoying, honestly, since I thought last night—well, I guess I thought it meant something.”

“Go to Family Roller, then,” Penny says firmly. “Go for a skate. If you feel like talking to him, march right up to him and say your piece. If not, just skate. That sounds like a win-win, too.”

“But there’s a lose in there, as well,” I mutter.

“And what’s that?”

“He breaks my heart, just like his little brother did.”

Luke

Hannah.

Back at the roller rink.

Crap.

She’s with her friend, Penny, but I don’t even glance at her. I just look at Hannah, with her skin-tight yoga pants and her light grey hoodie. She’s all curves, her body strong and tight from her skating career. Her jet-black hair is tied in a no-nonsense ponytail. Her body is smoking, there’s no mistake about it, and her face is all smiles and come-get-me eyes, and, dammit, if she wasn’t the girl who broke my little brother’s heart I might have more nice things to say to her.

There’s something magnetic about her smile, too. She looks happier than I’ve been in a long, long time.

She doesn’t show off, like I expected her to. Instead, she gives her friend some pointers, and then, when a passing family says something to her, she happily gives their young daughter some tips, too. I go upstairs to my office, realizing that I’m dangerously close to not being able to look away. Her smile isn’t the only thing that’s magnetic.

I remember how hot she looked yesterday when she was practicing for real, like something straight out of a fever dream as she danced between the cones, doing some real mind-bending tricks, stuff that didn’t even make sense to me. The sassy smile on her face, the look of concentration, the habit she had of biting her lower lip when she was about to do something high-level …

Suddenly, I’m gripping the desk so hard the veins on my forearms bulge, corded and tense. What is wrong with me? Why am I letting myself think about Hannah like this, the girl who turned my brother into a wreck, the girl he used to talk about right up until the end?

The one that got away.

But not away from me, away from my little brother.

To make matters worse, my manhood has flooded with tension just thinking about her, the subtle way her muscles twitched in those tight pants as she practiced. If today and yesterday is anything to go by, yoga pants are a signature part of her skating gear, which means I’m pretty much screwed in the hard-on department.

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