I Need You Read Online Free Page B

And look where that had got us .
    I pulled away, looking at the house. Mom must be at the window. This wasn’t her fault.
    “What about Saturday, two weeks’ time?” Billy’s voice came out husky. “I’ll cancel my client appointments. You get everything agreed with the hospital and your Mom and Dad, and we’ll just get out of here for a bit, so you can escape all this shit?”
    “Thank you, Billy. You’re a good guy, you know that?”
    He gave me an apologetic smile. “We both know that’s not true. But I will be now. I swear, Lind, just friends…”
    “I better go back in.” I wiped my face on my sleeve, trying to wipe off the tracks of tears so Mom wouldn’t see them, but it wiped my foundation off too. I hoped my mascara hadn’t run. “Text me.”
    “I’ll let you know what time I’ll pick you up.”
    “Okay.” I tried to smile, then turned away, opened the door and slipped out of his SUV. I didn’t look back as I crossed the road and ran up to the house.
    When I let myself in, Mom stood by the window. I knew she’d been watching.

    “You okay?” she asked.
    I nodded, “Yeah.” But I didn’t stay in the living room. I walked on to my room, threw myself face-down on the bed and sobbed some more.
    I was so messed-up and selfish.
    Billy didn’t need the burden of a broken girl, I shouldn’t have said yes. He’d been ready to move on.
    The forest fire of guilt flared and consumed everything else.
    Billy
    I slipped the SUV into drive and pulled away, my heart a boulder in my chest.
    What that girl did to me! If Jason knew half the things I’d imagined over the last five years he wouldn’t have called me to meet up and wet his kid’s head.
    Fuck.
    Jason and I had messed her up.
    This was a pile of shit.
    When I walked in the door back home a lot later than I’d usually come in, my kid sister, Eva, called, “Hey, Billy!”
    “Hey, Eva.” I lifted a hand.
    “Where have you been?” Mom asked as I walked through the living room.
    “At the gym.”
    “You work out all day. You can’t have spent that long at the gym. You’re hiding something! I bet you’ve got a girl!” Eva’s passion in life was teasing me. But underneath it she loved having a much older brother to flaunt before her friends, and catch rides off of. She always gloated when I drove her to her friends’ parties. But she wasn’t a kid anymore, she was fifteen. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally given up on winning Lindy?”
    I made a face at her. My family knew my trouble. In a bad moment I’d said something to Dad a couple of years ago and from then on my whole family had been a part of my secret Lindy addiction. “Nope, I saw her today.”

    “Billy! I thought you’d stopped that.”
    “I’m taking her away for a couple of weeks.”
    “OMG!” Eva screamed.
    “Is that a good thing?” Mom stood up.
    “When you and that girl get together, it always ends badly, Billy.” Dad threw in his cent without moving from his armchair.
    “Thanks for the enthusiasm.” I shrugged and turned away, but Eva grabbed my arm and then hugged me.
    “I hope things work out. I’ll be glad for you if they do.” I gave her a squeeze then let her slip away.
    “As will I,” Mom said, smiling at me.
    My gaze shifted around them all. “Except this isn’t like that. It’s just as friends…”
    Eva rolled her eyes. “Lindy is so blind.”
    Mom kept smiling.
    I turned away and headed for my room.
    I scanned through my calendar and called clients to tell them something personal had come up; the stretched and worn leather band on my wrist sliding up and down.
    I always wondered what the hell I’d do if it broke. It was my talisman.
    The fingers of my other hand span it around my wrist a couple of times as I waited while a call rang.
    I knew where I was gonna take her. To the place I’d run to every summer for years. It had started the summer we’d left high school.
    There was no answer. I ended the call, but then my cell