After falling
out of the sky- quite literally- with an airplane, Amber goes through
life simply surviving from week to week. Her traumatic experience
keeps on haunting her day and night, but mostly at night, and it
seems there's no way out. Nothing left to try for. If life is only a
torture, why keep on going?
The answer is simple: Adriaan.
The man has managed to get through her
defenses and keeps her hope alive. He's the reason they get out of bed
in the morning. He's the reason to push through the terror
encompassing her. He's also her therapist. A new fear surfaces past
the trauma: confessing her feelings for him.
Adriaan couldn't possibly love her
back. Not only because relationships between a therapist and their
patient are not allowed, but also because she's damaged.
Keeping her obsession secret draws
Amber closer to Huub. He's nice. He's successful. He's good in bed.
But he's not Adriaan.
Amber struggles through life, holding
onto a small spark of hope and the love she keeps on running from.
All you need to know about Angels Around Us:
- written in first
person present (have to note it since some people despise this)
-
falling for the therapist (forbidden love)
- a slow-burn romance
-
a healing journey from panic attacks and trauma
- an emotional
support dog Angel
- it is Amber's emotional journey first and
foremost and romance second. An emotional connection that grows over
time. It is not a smutty romance
- it covers several darker topics
that can be triggering.
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
This book contains darker topics of life among which is living
with trauma, anxiety, emotional abuse, self-harm, and abortion. If
you are disturbed by any of that subject matter, then this book may
not be for you.
If you find any more triggers I should mention while reading the
book, let me know.
"There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel."
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One
“What would you like to talk about today?” he asks when he looks up from his notebook. There it is: the question.
“I want to talk about the airplane,” I reply, looking away from him.
“Okay, Amber.” The easiness from his voice is gone as if he is dreading this conversation as much as I am. “You were going to the airport with your sister,” Adriaan recounts.
“Yes, I was. She dropped me off at the ‘kiss and fly’ zone. Getting through security was no trouble; my luggage was taken by the woman at check-in and sent directly to the plane. I only had a small bag with me and a neck pillow. I was early, so the waiting area close to where my flight was going out from was quite empty, but after a while … an older American woman sat across from me. They … they like to talk, Americans. She was telling me how her daughter lived in Amsterdam, and she was going … that she would visit her. How she’d never been outside of the USA before, but there was a first time for everything.
“When the boarding started, it was a lot busier. A guy in front of me in the queue had a skateboard strapped to his backpack. A woman with two young children was trying to find their passports while one of them was pulling her skirt. A couple … So many people, Adriaan. So many … so many lives.”
Two
I look over to Adriaan’s table at the same time he looks over at us. Shit. His brother is laughing at something Adriaan must’ve said, then stands up and walks straight towards us.
“Amber, is it?” he asks once he stops right in front of us, blocking our view of the two women on the stage that are actually not that bad to listen to. “I’m Lucas. Adriaan would’ve come over, too, but he’s a pussy.” He laughs, throwing his head back, and I see his Adam’s apple bobble up and down in the rhythm of his chuckles.
I stare in disbelief. “Not how I’d describe him, but okay.”
“No? How would you describe him? Ik ben benieuwd!” Lucas has the same confidence Adriaan does as he pulls a chair over from a neighbouring table and sits down on it the wrong way around, his arms on the backrest.
“Is that what you came over here for? To talk about Adriaan?”
Lucas laughs again. He’s got such an easy laugh that is almost infectious.
“He’s here to test the waters!” Natalie exclaims. “After your performance, I’d be curious too about your feelings. Although, you did leave it all on the stage, didn’t you?”
I groan and protest. “I told you,” I squeeze through tight lips as my cheeks burn up under the scrutiny of the man looking so much like his brother but acting completely opposite to what I’d imagine Adriaan being like. “He’s just my—”
“Therapist. Yes, I heard. I also heard you’re totally drooling over him.”
“Nat!” I shout exactly at the time the music stops, and my voice carries over the murmurs of the whole bar. A few people turn to stare at the outburst. I notice Adriaan being one of them.
“She really needs a drink,” Lindsay chirps in. “She’ll loosen up quite a bit once she gets tipsy.”
I roll my eyes at her and shake my head ‘no’.
“Really?” Lucas asks. “Because I did see her give away a drink. What would you like?”
“I’m driving,” I mutter.
“She likes Sex on the Beach,” Idy helps out.
“I’ve never had sex on the―Oh, right, we’re talking about the cocktail. Seriously, I’m good. I don’t need anything.”
As if on cue, the next participant in the karaoke night, decent as she is, sings out “I wanna have sex on the beach …”
I groan. “Gosh! What are the chances? I don’t understand it, though. Who’d want to have sand all over themselves, getting stuck to the crooks and nooks of their bodies? That can’t possibly be nice.”
Lucas laughs again. I have a feeling he’s one of those easy-going happy people who can find amusement in the simplest of things. It slightly reminds me of the beginnings of my therapy sessions with Adriaan, before the topics turn sour and depressing and I drown his smile with my sorrow. The laughter gets Adriaan to look over at us again, and I see him stand up from his seat to reluctantly move closer to our table.
“There you are! I wondered how long it would take for you to decide solitude doesn’t suit you when there’s four beautiful ladies to entertain. You learn such amazing things. Did you know Amber doesn’t like sex on the beach?” The look Adriaan gives Lucas could banish demons. “No, really, apparently the cocktail is fine, but the real thing is a no go.”
“Only you could start a conversation with something as personal as preferred intercourse locations,” Adriaan replies with a raised eyebrow. “Do I even want to ask how you got to the topic?”
Three
“Coffee would be lovely. It smells great, Addy—Ah-driaan.”
“I like Addy,” he murmurs against my lips before dropping a soft kiss on them. “You should keep calling me that.”
I bite my lower lip to hide a smile, but he runs his thumb over my lip, freeing it and igniting a completely different emotion. Distracting my turmoil, I focus on his second question. “I could eat. I was actually just about to…” Adriaan nibbles at my ear, and I lose my train of thoughts.
“Hmm?” he asks, his breath caresses my neck where his attention rivets to next.
“…come downstairs. Adriaan, if you keep doing that, we’ll end up back in bed and you’ll be late for work.”
“If you keep looking like that, love, I’m going to need a lot of strength to not do just that.”
Victoria Liiv is a writer, reader, nature lover and traveller at
heart. She has been travelling through magical worlds since a very
young age and wants more than anything to share the wonder with
everyone else eager to escape from all things mundane. Let it be a
magical adventure through slowly darkening Earth or a soul crushing
fight for survival and love while the world burns. Sometimes all it
takes is a little bit of romance.
She self published her debut novel Through
Hell & Highwater in 2020 when the pandemics
keeping her isolated gave her the reason to follow her dream of
becoming an author. She hasn’t looked back since.
Her second novel, Afterworld:
Road to Redemption, released September, 2022.
With many more ideas and characters keeping her awake at night
this is only the beginning of her writing career.
In her everyday life she found the magic in her partner, who gave
her courage to move out of Estonia, the country she was born in, to
an equally small but more known The Netherlands.
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