Read Break Away (Away, Book 1) for Free Online

added, settling down on the recliner a few feet away from
him.
    He ran his hand through his hair, with one
of those girl-melting smiles playing on his lips, and looked at me.
“It’s part of being a passionate art slave. Paint runs through my
veins.”
    “Take it easy on the theatrics,” I scoffed,
laying down the chopsticks on the plate. “I'm passionate about Art,
too, and I don’t need to sport a freaking splotch on my skin
twenty-four-seven like some neon sign.” Maybe it wasn’t seven days
a week, but it was enough to set it as one of his trademarks.
    “Well, I like it. I think it’s cute,” Buffy
said as she straightened holding several DVDs in her hands, then
glanced at him and winked.
    I rolled my eyes.
    Ian laughed, that low and careless sound
flying into the air. “Hmm, I think your sister may like it, too,
and she doesn’t know how to handle it,” he told Buffy and turned to
look at me. “Am I right?”
    “You wish.” I arched my eyebrows and looked
down at the sushi resting on my lap, my Japanese craving suddenly
shrinking. I so disliked him. “Gran!” I called, the fury
boiling in my stomach pitching my voice to a louder note. “I need
the…”
    “It’s here. It’s here,” Gran repeated as she
stepped inside the living room—which had turned into a living
hell—with a small bowl in her slightly wrinkled hands. She handed
it to me and walked to the solid oak wood cabinet. Several pictures
crowded the cabinet’s surface, some dating the times of her youth
in dull, faded colors, and some displaying flamboyantly the outcome
of her past—us.
    Mom and Dad’s pictures were hiding in her
bedroom. She’d decided to veil them from our sight for our own
good. Every time we saw them smiling at us through the glossy
paper, the air in the house became a cold pressure, weighing our
heads and chests with a terrible pain. Whenever the need to watch
those happy glimpses of time clutched our hearts, Gran’s door
always welcomed our hands. Though it’d been only once for me, I
knew Buffy’s fingers had enclosed that brass handle a few times
more.
    “You have a letter, Dafne.” Gran said,
pointing to the metallic slinky I’d convinced her to use as a mail
holder. It filled the empty spot where Mom and Dad’s pictures had
been.
    “Oh, yeah, I was waiting for it.” I bent
forward and stretched myself to reach the coffee table to place the
plate and the soy sauce on it. While I stood up and peeled off the
blazer, Gran turned and left the room. Buffy seemed to remember
something and followed her into the foyer to speak with her,
leaving me alone in the living hell with the prick of Ian.
    I threw the blazer over the back of the
recliner and turned to grab my mail, which wasn’t in the slinky
anymore. Ian was holding it.
    “If you don’t want to suffer a slow and
painful death, you better give me that envelope, right now .”
I pushed my hand to him, palm up, waiting.
    He tsked, waving the white envelope in the
air. “If you ask nicely, I may consider it.”
    “Consider it?” I snapped, blushing in
red-hot anger. “There’s nothing to consider. Did you hear me?
Nothing.” I closed the distance between us threateningly, feeling
like a black panther measuring its prey’s weaknesses. “What you’re
holding in your hands is mine . And if you don’t give it
back, I’ll kick your ass out of this house no matter what Buffy
thinks. Understood?” I narrowed my eyes to a feline glare.
    “You would love to do that, wouldn’t you?”
he said with that wicked crooked smile pulling up one corner of his
mouth.
    I ignored his innuendo and rose on my
tiptoes to snatch the envelope, but he waved it back in a flash,
letting me fall flat on my feet with my hands empty. And the fact
that he was about a full head taller than me didn’t help either. I
wasn’t small, he was just too tall. “Give it back,” I said through
clenched teeth.
    “Just be a good girl,” he said in a singsong
voice, lowering