Run With Me (Fight For You Book 1)
Read Run With Me (Fight For You Book 1) Online
Authors: J.C. Evans
Tags: #Alpha Male, #dark romance, #revenge, #sexy romance, #new adult, #suspense
RUN WITH ME
Fight For You
Book One
J.C. Evans
All Rights Reserved
Copyright
Run With Me
© 2015 J.C. Evans
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This contemporary new adult romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy gritty, emotional novels. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. This book was previously published as This Sweet Escape by J. Evans. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover by Bootstrap Designs. Edited by Robin Leone Editorial.
About the Book
Run With Me
Warning: A red hot, gut-wrenching, rip-your-heart out read featuring an alpha male who knows what love really means.
When you’re going through hell…
Run.
When I met Samantha Collins, I was a juvenile delinquent on the road to being a violent piece of shit like the rest of the men in my family. But falling for Sam changed all that.
Loving Sam is what I’m good at, what I’m made for. Nothing matters the way she matters.
So when she wants to run away with me for the summer, I don’t hesitate. Who wouldn’t want to spend three months on a sexy adventure with his favorite person?
But soon it hits me—Sam isn’t running away with me. She’s running from something else, something dark and ugly that will rip our world apart.
CLIFFHANGER ALERT: Run With Me is a full-length novel of 54,000 words that ends in a cliffhanger. Fight for You, Book Two, the conclusion to Danny and Sam’s story, is available now.
Chapter One
Present Day
Samantha
“And thus the heart will break,
yet brokenly live on.”
-Lord Byron
We’re not going to make it.
We’re not going to fucking make it.
I pace back and forth across the flowered carpet in front of Gate 11B, fighting the urge to scream as the minutes tick by and the Croatia based flight crew takes their sweet time getting the doors to the Jetway open. Danny is less than fifty feet away, but he might as well be at ten thousand feet. I can’t get to him, he can’t get out, and we’re about ten minutes from missing our last chance to get out of Maui before it’s too late.
The plane to Auckland, New Zealand leaves in twenty-five minutes. They’ve almost finished boarding. Every time my pacing takes me closer to Gate 7, I can see the line of people shuffling past the flight attendant dwindling.
Twelve people…nine…seven…
I squeeze my fingers into a fist and press it hard to my lips, afraid I might actually scream in the middle of the international terminal if I don’t.
Panic dumps into my bloodstream and for a moment all I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears and the desperate
thud thud thud
of my heart thrashing in my chest. My ribs contract, my lungs seize up, and the urge to run becomes almost unbearable.
Dad and Penelope think I’m just picking up Danny at the airport, but if Alec calls while I’m gone they might start to suspect something. If they take a second to glance in my closet, they’ll know I’ve packed for an epic journey, not a forty-minute drive to Kahului. They could come looking for me, force me to go home with them tonight, and put me on a plane back to California tomorrow.
My stepbrother’s future hangs in the balance. Penny never believed he was guilty and she’ll do anything to prove it, even feed me to the wolves. Penny loves me, but not as much as she loves her son. Not even seven years of being the best and brightest blended family on the island can change that.
I glance at my watch. It’s three thirty in Los Angeles. Two hours past my one-thirty appointment time with Detective Spanuth. I’m betting Alec knows I’ve missed it by now, and I know he wasn’t kidding when he said he’d tell our parents the truth if I didn’t come clean about the subpoena and everything else.
I don’t think he’s called his mom yet, but it’s only a matter of time. He needed me to keep that meeting, and prove he isn’t responsible for what happened to Deidre Jones. If the police believe my version of events, Alec’s buddies might still go to jail, but Alec believes unveiling my secret is going to make everything all right. He thinks, once the beans are spilled, the lawyers will be able to prove this was all some big misunderstanding, and the boys are blameless.
I’m the one who started the rumor, after all. I’m the one who hurt that girl.
Innocent girl, whose only sin was looking too much like me.
I close my eyes, swallow hard against the nausea making my stomach heave, and force Deidre’s face from my mind. If I could go back in time and take it back, I’d like to believe I would. I’d like to believe I’d do the right thing, but if I look deep into my heart…
My heart….
I’m not sure I have a heart anymore. It feels like there’s nothing at the core of me except fear, pain, and hate. I hate Alec and his friends and I hate myself. And when a person is this full of hate, maybe there’s no room for anything else.
When I booked this trip late last night—hiding under the covers in my room like I was a ten year old reading after lights out—I was certain all I needed was distance to make everything all right. Just distance and Danny, and I could be the person I used to be. I could put the past five months behind me and move on.
I am rotting from the inside, hanging on to my sanity by a fraying thread, and so sad it feels like I’ll never smile a real smile again, but Danny always knows what to say to talk me back from the edge. In his arms, with his love wrapped around me, muffling the chaos of the world, I was sure I’d be able to feel good again. Or at least okay.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this time I’m too broken for anyone to put the pieces back together again.
No sooner is the thought through my head than the door to the Jetway opens. Two businessmen in rumpled suits are the first out, then a family with a little girl asleep in her father’s arms. Danny is right behind them, his familiar overstuffed North Face backpack dangling from one hand.
His long, dark blond hair is pulled back in a tangled ponytail, his green eyes look bruised from lack of sleep, and he has his patchy, golden version of five o’clock shadow, but I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than he is to me at this moment. The second our eyes meet and he smiles that crooked grin, I know it’s not too late. It’s not too late for me, and it’s not too late for Danny and me to have the fresh start I’ve been praying for since I woke up New Year’s Day.
I still love him. I love him so much that, by the time he crosses the carpet in three long steps and scoops me up in one strong arm, tears of relief are streaming down my face.
“Thank God,” I mumble against his neck. He smells so good. So safe.
“Damn, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers into my hair, hugging me so tight my feet leave the floor and my breasts flatten against his thickly muscled chest.
By the time we were seventeen, Danny had five inches on me, but it’s only in the past two years that he’s become the kind of man whose chest turns heads when we walk down the beach. If someone had told me when I was thirteen and still capable of pinning Danny to the sand when we wrestled that one day he would have fifty pounds of pure muscle on me, I would have laughed.
When we first started dating, Danny and I were both five-three and I outweighed him by ten pounds, no matter how vehemently he insisted he weighed in at one forty. He was the runt of our junior high school, even shorter and skinnier than the two genius kids who’d skipped a grade.
But he isn’t a runt anymore. Working as an extreme-sports tour guide has made him strong, strong enough to hold me in one arm and his giant backpack in the other. Hopefully, strong enough to slay the demons that have kept me awake for forty-eight hours as I ran from the nightmare my life in Los Angeles has become. If we can just get on that plane and on our way to the opposite hemisphere, everything might still be all right.
“Come on,” I say, pressing a swift kiss to his scruffy cheek before pushing on his chest. “We’ve got to hurry, or we’ll miss our flight.”
His eyebrows lift as he sets me down. “Where are we going?”
“New Zealand.” I take his hand and pull him toward the gate, feeling like my heart is going to explode with relief when I see the door to the Jetway still open. “I’ve booked rooms for our first four days,” I say over my shoulder. “After that, we’ll see where the adventure takes us.”
“I thought we had to wait until after you graduated,” Danny says, even as he picks up his pace, hurrying toward Gate 7 beside me. “Did your dad change his mind?”
“No,
I
changed my mind,” I say. “I have some savings and I decided it was past time to use it.”
“Sam, wait.” Danny slows and his hand squirms free of mine. “I can’t let you do this. The tickets must have cost thousands of dollars, and I told you, I’m cash poor until the business—”
“I don’t care,” I say, snatching his hand and holding on tight. “You can pay me back later. Or never, I don’t care. I just need to do this. Now. With you.”
“Why?” His tired eyes narrow as he searches my face. “What’s going on Sam? Why haven’t you returned my calls? I swear, I was starting to think…”
“Thinking is overrated,” I say, throat tightening as panic threatens to take over again. We have to get on that plane. Only when we’re strapped into our seats in row twenty-two will I finally be able to take a breath without feeling like it might be my last.
“I don’t know,” Danny says, hurt clear in his voice. “I knew you were okay because your dad said he’d talked to you, but I—”
“I’m so sorry.” I cut him off before he can say what I know he’s thinking. I can’t stand to hear him say he thought I was going to end it, or think about how close I came to telling him I never wanted to see him again. “I should have answered the phone, I’ve just been…really upset.”
“I thought I was the person you talked to when you were upset,” he says, the furrow between his brows deepening. “Or has something changed?”
“Nothing’s changed,” I lie, forcing a brittle smile.
I reach up, smoothing away the line between his brows the way I always do, even that simple touch reminding me that we are us. We are Sam and Danny and together we’re bigger and stronger than anything chasing me.
We have to be, or I’ve emptied my savings and flushed my future down the toilet for nothing.