Roz Nay’s Our Little Secret is a twisted tale of love, pain, and revenge that will stay with the reader long after they turn the last page.

They say you never forget your first love. What they don’t say though, is that sometimes your first love won’t forget you…

Angela Petitjean sits in a cold, dull room. The police have been interrogating her for hours, asking about Saskia Parker. She’s the wife of Angela’s high school sweetheart, HP, and the mother of his child. She has vanished. Homicide Detective J. Novak believes Angela knows what happened to Saskia. He wants the truth, and he wants it now.

But Angela has a different story to tell. It began more than a decade ago when she and HP met in high school in Cove, Vermont. She was an awkward, shy teenager. He was a popular athlete. They became friends, fell in love, and dated senior year. Everything changed when Angela went to college. When time and distance separated them. When Saskia entered the picture.

That was eight years ago. HP foolishly married a drama queen and Angela moved on with her life. Whatever marital rift caused Saskia to leave her husband has nothing to do with Angela. Nothing at all. Detective Novak needs to stop asking questions and listen to what Angela is telling him. And once he understands everything, he’ll have the truth he so desperately wants…

Book Type:

Psychological Thriller

Excerpt: Our Little Secret

Chapter 2

I went to Lakeside High, although I’m sure you already know that. It was a flat-roofed brick building with basketball hoops out front that had long ago lost their netting. The first day in that school my palms smelled tinny and sour from gripping the iron handrails that led up to the front entrance. The locker they gave me still had stickers in it from the kid before—rainbows that were plastic and puffy and crinkled when you pressed them. I pried them all off with my thumbnail.

At every school I attended, gym teachers sighed when they saw me coming, and Lakeside High was no different. I’ve never been one for chasing a ball around, could never see the purpose of it. Perhaps I’m not much of a team player. At the end of gym on that first Monday, I went to change back into my regular clothes and there were knots in the ends of my pants, pulled so tight that two people must have put their full weight into the job. I couldn’t tease the knots apart. By the time I sat down in defeat, the locker room had emptied.

“Angela, is it?” The teacher came in with her class list clasped to her rock-hard chest. “Angela Petitjean?” She said it like this— pettit-gene—without any flow of French to it, no lyrical peh-ti-shon. Not much of a linguist. “What’s happening here?” She wore a polo shirt with all the buttons done up, and her bangs were hair-sprayed to one side. “Who did this? Holy smokers, they put some effort into it.” As she spoke, she grunted and ground her fingers into the knots, easing them loose. “Okay—here. Now, pick up the pace! You’ll be late to your next class.”

My pants had a crimped hemline for the rest of the day, like an ’80s disco look. I knew who did it; I knew right away because two girls followed me down the hallway laughing when I emerged from the gym. And they were everywhere: waiting outside the washroom, behind me in the lineup for lunch, and three lockers down, leaning against the wall while I tried to get my books organized for English class. The taller one wore dark-purple nail polish and a T-shirt that showed her belly button. Pierced. The other girl dressed identically, even down to the love-heart laces in her sneakers. What is it about teenage girls that make them impossible to tell apart? I thought it was all in the styling, the makeup, the cloning of boy-band music and favorite movies. Now I realize what bonds and homogenizes them: panic.

Haven’t you noticed, Detective Novak? Girls of fourteen move together in a band of cruelty, always searching for somebody to terrorize as long as it keeps the spotlight off them. They’ll hunt in twos or more because if you’re standing alongside the sniper, it’s unlikely you’ll be the one in the scope.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” the tall one said. “Yeah, we’re not really okay with that.” They giggled. “We like to be asked before things change.”

I didn’t say anything back, but I remember reaching as far into my locker as I could, short of climbing in there and shutting the door.

“What’s with your pants?”

Just then a voice stopped them.

“Back up there, sisters.”

I peeped around the edge of my locker and saw a tall boy a few doors down. He was about fifteen, olive-skinned, blond, with a sleeveless Metallica T-shirt that showed the early bump of deltoids. He wore sandblasted beads around his neck and a navy baseball cap with a D on the front.

“Oh, hey, HP.” Girl number one shook back her bangs.

“Oh, hey,” Girl number two echoed. “Where’d you come from?” She stretched gum from her mouth and twirled the glistening loop with a forefinger.

“Swim practice.” He slammed his locker door and walked toward me.

I think my head tried to turtle down into my shell in that moment as I stood there in my crinkly pants, wide-eyed, holding my English textbook.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you to class.”

This is where the story begins. Tenth grade, eleven years ago. Mark it on your sheet, Detective Novak. I’m telling this like it’s the beginning of a love story; I’m catering to your needs as a listener. But we both know that’s not where the narrative’s heading, right? I mean, it’s bound to get much darker—why else would I be telling it in a police interview room?

From OUR LITTLE SECRET by Roz Nay, copyright © 2018 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press. On sale April 24, 2018.