Read Run With Me (Fight For You Book 1) for Free Online

married into than anything I’ve accomplished in my twenty years of life, but I love him, too. I even love Penny. She’s tried to do the right thing by my little brother and me, stepping in to play Mom when my own mother couldn’t be bothered, and always making sure Erick and I had the best of everything.
    I love all three of my parents, but our relationships have become too complicated, and I have no idea what they’ll think when they find out the truth.
    Maybe they’ll hate me, maybe they’ll pity me—either way they’ll want me to do the right thing. My parents and stepparent are all very much into Doing the Right Thing, in facing the consequences of your actions and fessing up to your failings. They would want me to stop running, but I can’t and I won’t.
    It’s best to end things now, with a clean break, without even turning on my phone to listen to the messages that I have no doubt are waiting in my voicemail box.
    I take a deep cleansing breath and let grief wash through me and wash back out again, like a wave lapping against the shore before being absorbed back into the ocean.
    The thought of losing touch with Erick hits harder than anyone else, but eventually I loosen my grip on that regret and send it out to sea with the rest. Erick and I aren’t super close, but we have fun together and I’ve always felt obligated to look out for him. To keep him from starving to death when my mom was mired in misery, and pull him aside for a long talk about not doing dumb shit when I caught him dropping acid on the beach with his friends. But he’s graduating from high school this year and going to college next fall. He’s starting his own life and doesn’t need me the way he used to.
    Besides, there might come a day when it will be okay to reach out to my little brother. He’s so wrapped up in his own life that he’s never been terribly interested in mine. There was a time when that hurt, but now I’m grateful he’s self-absorbed.
    I’m grateful for all the people who don’t care enough to stick their nose into my business, who are so busy with their own personal dramas they haven’t noticed that I’m falling apart.
    “Not anymore,” I whisper, shifting my gaze from the trash can to my reflection in the mirror above the sink.
    I’ve been avoiding my reflection the past few months, but now I force myself to take a good, long look.
    I’ve lost weight, and have faint hollows below my cheekbones for the first time in my life, but I don’t look gaunt or sickly. The new leanness gives my face structure it didn’t have before. The strong angles of my jaw are visible instead of blending into my chin, and my eyes look even larger than they used to. I’ve always thought my eyes were my best feature, but they’re also my greatest weakness. I’ve never been good at hiding what I’m thinking or feeling. It all shows in my eyes.
    Or it used to.
    Now, holding my own gaze, I can’t see a hint of the giddiness I felt when I entered the bathroom, the sadness I was feeling a moment ago, or the anxiety pricking at my nerve endings doing its best to convince me that crushing a couple of SIM cards won’t be enough to keep my secret safe. I look tired, which is to be expected after a flight to the other side of the world, but not troubled. My eyes are…empty, and only seem to grow emptier the longer I stand staring at myself.
    Even when I start to feel disturbed by the lack of emotion in my expression, nothing flickers in my eyes. The electrical lines connecting my feelings to my face have been severed, leaving my soul adrift in my physical body, contained, but not connected.
    “Sam? Are you okay in there?” Danny’s voice echoes through the empty bathroom.
    “Yes, just brushing my teeth,” I call back, breaking eye contact with my reflection with a sharp shake of my head. “Be out in a minute.”
    I fish my toiletry bag out of my purse and give my teeth a quick brush. I mop my face with a cleansing cloth,