Run With Me (Fight For You Book 1)

by J. C. Evans

  They’ve called the woman I love a slut and a whore and before that night, the only man she’d ever been with was me.

  It’s so wrong, I can’t fathom how any rational person could go along with the defense’s accusations, but as the days tick by it becomes more and more obvious that the assholes might get away with it. They might walk free, return to their frat house, and live to do it again to another girl next New Year’s Eve.

  But Caitlin is still so weak she can only hold the baby when she has pillows propped under her arms and Gabe hasn’t fully returned to the land of the living, either, spending all of his time hovering near Caitlin’s bed or taking the baby out for long walks while she sleeps. Meanwhile, Emmie’s seeing a shrink for anxiety, Sean stumbled home drunk two nights ago, and Ray isn’t equipped to handle it all. He’d snap under the pressure if I left. I can’t go to Sam yet, I still haven’t found a way to reach her, and I’ve never felt so helpless or filled with impotent rage in my life.

  Still, I think I’m hiding it well enough until Caitlin reaches out and takes my hand one evening when we’re sitting out on the porch, watching the fishing boats chug back to the harbor.

  “I know you have to leave soon, Danny,” she says in that huskier voice she’s had since she spent so many days with a tube down her throat. “I would have told you to head out a week ago, but I’m scared to let you go.”

  I fold my fingers around hers. “Don’t be scared. You’re getting better every day and Juliet is going to be a porker before you know it. You guys are out of the woods, I know it.”

  “I’m not scared for me or Juliet.” Her intense look is even more piercing with her eyes so large in her painfully thin face. “I’m scared for you.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, slipping my hand from hers as I turn to look out at the boats. “It’s Sam you should be worried about.”

  “I am. I’m worried she’s going to end up trying to recover from all this alone because the man she loves is serving a life sentence in prison.”

  I press my lips together for a long moment, but don’t look at Caitlin and don’t answer.

  “You will be the very first person they go looking for if one of those monsters has an unfortunate accident, let alone all five of them,” Caitlin continues in a calm voice, proving she can still read my damned mind. “You and Sam’s dad. And you’re way too upset to plan a perfect crime right now.”

  “I’m fine,” I snap.

  “You broke your hand hitting a wall, Danny,” Caitlin says. “You would end up making a mistake and you and Sam would end up losing everything that matters.”

  I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. “But I don’t hear you telling me it’s wrong.”

  “You know me better than that,” she says softly, sounding tired after only a few minutes of conversation. “But you can’t take the law into your hands right now. You would get caught. All the cards are stacked against you. And I love you and Sam too much to let you leave here without speaking my mind. Whether you listen or not is up to you.”

  I swallow hard, fighting the tears that simmer as close to the surface these days as my rage. “Then what do I do? I can’t let them get away with it. They can’t do that to her and walk free. It will kill me, just…eat me alive. Just thinking about it is enough to make me fucking crazy, Caitlin.”

  “So you wait until you’re not crazy anymore,” Caitlin says, leaning in close and dropping her voice to a whisper. “You go to Sam, and while you’re healing and loving your way out of the hell you’ve both been through, you plan every single detail in advance. Take at least a year, longer if you can. Give them time to stop looking over their shoulders and make sure you have an airtight alibi. Then, if you still need this…”

  I hold her eyes. “You’re serious?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

  “As long as you can do it without exchanging one thing that will eat you alive for another.” She takes my hand again, making me aware of how cold her skin is. “And don’t let it change you. You’re a good man, Danny. I wouldn’t want you to lose that, or stop believing that you deserve happiness.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I deserve,” I whisper. “We don’t get what we deserve.”

  “And thank goodness sometimes for that.” Caitlin smiles sadly. “I’m so sorry for all of this Danny, but I believe in you and Sam. You will get through this together, I really believe you will.”

  They say time heals all wounds and it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.

  But when I finally fly into L.A.—getting to the courthouse hours after the not guilty verdict has been announced, thanks to a delay in Chicago—I know I will never be healed. I will never stop wanting vengeance for the girl I love.

  I search for Sam at her apartment and at the extended stay hotel where her roommate says Sam and her parents were staying during the trial. But the Collinses checked out this morning and Sam is nowhere to be found.

  I call Mr. Collins, but all he’ll tell me is that Sam drove off while he and his ex-wife were checking out of the hotel and hasn’t been answering her phone. The terse tone in his voice infers that somehow that’s my fault. He hangs up before I can tell him how sorry I am that things ended up the way they did and refuses to answer my calls for the next few days.

  I stay in Los Angeles for almost two weeks, haunting the campus, her apartment, the test prep place where she used to tutor kids after school, looking for any sign of her, but she’s vanished into thin air. I put an ad on Los Angeles Craig’s List asking Sam to call me, then cross-post it to every major city on the west coast. The next night I expand the search to the heartland and the east coast. I keep the ads rotating every forty-eight hours until my inbox is full of weird messages from creepy guys and a few desperate-sounding women and I finally realize it’s pointless.

  I’m not going to be able to find Sam unless she wants to be found.

  Finally, after two weeks of crashing at a hostel in Hollywood, sleeping in a weird pod bed that makes me feel like I’m waking up in a coffin every morning, Pete calls saying Tevia is quitting at the end of the week and he can’t get another guide trained on such short notice. If I don’t come back to step in, he’s going to have to cancel fifteen tours and the chances of staying in the black this month will be slim to none.

  I don’t want to go back or give up on Sam, but deep down I know I’m not accomplishing anything here except driving myself crazy.

  I fly home. I go back to work.

  I crash at Caitlin and Gabe’s and spend the summer teaching Emmie how to surf and doing my research on Todd, Jeremy, J.D. and Scott. In the fall, Ray and Sean go back to the American school in the city, Emmie starts home school with Caitlin, and Gabe returns to work doing whatever rich guy thing he does with properties and investments. I spend the mornings with Juliet strapped onto my chest in her sling, walking the picturesque ancient roman streets of Porec while Caitlin and Emmie study, plotting how I’ll make the monsters who hurt Sam pay. In the afternoons, I lead rock climbing expeditions up the face of the cliffs outside town, and at night, I continue my research alone in my room.

  Caitlin doesn’t talk to me about hurting people again, but she doesn’t try to draw me into family dinners or evening sails on Gabe’s boat more than once or twice a week. She gives me my space and lets me obsess, almost as if she knows planning how I’m going to get my revenge is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

  Without Sam, without being able to love her, without even knowing if she’s okay, it’s like the best part of me has gone missing. Hate helps numb the pain of losing her, keeping me moving around and functioning instead of walking into the ocean across the street and letting the water carry me away.

  The holidays come and go and Juliet starts to crawl all over the house, but Sam’s dad still refuses to answer my calls. Spring rains flood the streets of Porec, and Caitlin and Gabe start talking about getting on a list to adopt another baby when Juliet is two. />
  And then, it’s almost summer again and Ray is graduating from high school and planning a European tour with his crazy girlfriend, Sean is convincing me to hire him as a guide even though he won’t be seventeen for a few more weeks, and the summer trip I’ve been preparing for all year long is suddenly only a few days away.

  They say revenge is a dish best served cold, and of all the platitudes I’ve heard in the year since I lost the girl I love, it’s the only one that makes sense.

  I board the plane for Costa Rica in board shorts and a weathered blue tee shirt, looking like I don’t have a care in the world. I’m a laid back surfer on my way to catch some waves, not a cold son of a bitch with a block of ice and hate where my heart used to be.

  I haven’t decided whether to kill Todd, Jeremy, J.D., and Scott while they’re living it up in Costa Rica for their senior trip, or just make them wish they were dead, but I know one thing—whatever I decide, no one is going to suspect I’m the one responsible.

  Even though I have every detail memorized, I go through the plan again during the flight. It’s become a ritual more comforting than any rosary I was forced to say back when my mom still got around to dragging my ass to church.

  Soon, this will be over, and I’m not sure what I’ll cling to for comfort then, but I suppose it won’t really matter. I will have done what was right by Sam. Maybe I’ll be able to move on with my life after, maybe not, but I hope I’ll at least have put some of the regrets that haunt me to rest.

  I get off the plane at six o’clock in the morning Costa Rica time, after a red-eye flight during which I slept less than twenty minutes total. All I’m thinking about is getting to a cab and getting a full day’s sleep before I start building my alibi. I’m not thinking about love or loss or beautiful girls with big blue eyes, but the moment I see the efficient sway of the woman’s hips, I know it’s Sam walking through the airport in front of me.

  Her hair is bleached a dark shade of gold and hangs in a single braid down her back. She’s heavier than she was last summer, with powerful muscles evident beneath her black tank top and more strong, toned flesh emerging from her khaki shorts, but I know it’s her.

  I know it like I know my own name and the constellations of freckles on her tanned arms.

  They say great minds think alike, and as I tail Sam through customs, paying my cab driver extra to stay at the curb until her cab pulls out, and then to follow the other car through the busy streets, I wonder if it might be true.

  Maybe Sam has come here for the same reason I have.

  And maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance we’ll be heading into hell—and back out again—together.

  To be continued…

  FIGHT FOR YOU

  the conclusion to Danny and Sam’s story

  is available now.

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  release date updates and other special offers: http://eepurl.com/bwj8TT

  A Letter From the Author

  Tell J. C. your favorite part…

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoyed RUN WITH ME. Danny and Sam’s story is dear to my heart and one of the hardest, sweetest stories I’ve ever told.

  If you enjoyed the read and can take a moment to leave a review—just a sentence or two letting other readers know what you liked best about the story—I would be deeply grateful. Reviews can make all the difference to other readers looking for a new-to-them-author to enjoy and your voice matters.

  Thank you for your time and the chance to tell you stories.

  Xo

  J.C.

  About the Author

  J.C. Evans writes dark, emotional love stories featuring smart, sexy women and the hot alpha males who love them. Her heroes rage against the machine and her heroines color outside the lines and her readers know to expect the unexpected. J.C. likes big questions, underdog-comes-out-on-top stories, wine, cheese, and hot yoga and has found her own happily ever after on an island in the Pacific with her retired Air Force husband and two sons.

  J.C. Evans is the wild child alter ego of Jessie Caroline Evans, who writes sexy contemporary and small town romance under another pen name.

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  release date updates and other special offers: http://eepurl.com/bwj8TT

  Sneak peek of FIGHT FOR YOU

  About the Book

  Warning: A dark, sexy, boundary-pushing read featuring an alpha male who will do whatever it takes to avenge his girl.

  They destroyed the woman I love. Now I’m going to make them wish they had never been born.

  The frat boys who hurt Sam will pay the price for what they did. And the price is everything. I will have their pain, their suffering, and then their lives.

  They drove Sam away from me. I am a man without a heart, a man who with nothing left to lose.

  And then I see her, walking through the airport in Costa Rica.

  Sam. She’s alive and here for the same reason I am—to take vengeance.

  It doesn’t take long to figure out we’re as perfect together as we’ve always been. Now we just have to decide—carry through with our dark plans, or get out before it’s too late.

  READER ALERT: This is the second half of Danny and Sam’s story and should be read after Run With Me. This book contains adult themes, violence, murder, and possible triggers for sexual assault victims.

  Excerpt

  CHAPTER ONE

  Samantha

  “We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;

  our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”

  -Goethe

  The past never leaves us.

  The past is a part of who we are, as much as our skin and bone and the lies we’ve told that we can never take back.

  The choices we’ve made and the things we’ve suffered take every step with us, always present though not always seen.

  My dad is a geologist by profession, but an all-around science nerd for the love of a good mystery. When I was little, our family would spend our weekends exploring hidden island beaches, hiking up mist-shrouded mountains, or pawing through the volcanic soil atop Maui’s dormant volcano.

  On every trip, Dad’s voice was the soundtrack for adventure. Before the divorce, Mom used to joke that she felt like she was living in a nature documentary. I could tell Dad’s constant chatter annoyed her sometimes, but to me the stories he told were reason for wonder. It made me realize the world was full of mystery. Every plant or animal we passed on a trail had a secret story to tell, an entire hidden world waiting to unfold to those who took the time to stop, observe, and ask the right questions.

  It was Dad who taught me that palm trees aren’t really trees at all. They’re more closely related to the grass family and don’t generate new cells the way trees do. Cut through an oak’s bark and you’ll see growth rings that tell the story of each year of the tree’s life. Cut into a palm’s trunk and you’ll just leave a gash in the thick, spongy material of the plant.

  And unlike the oak, whose yearly ring growth will eventually heal over the cut, protecting the plant from disease, the palm tree will bear an open wound for the rest of its life. Every insect and dangerous bacteria that floats by on an island breeze will be able to burrow straight into the heart of the palm and start devouring the plant from the inside out.

  As I grew up, I started to think that people were a lot like both plants.

  Sometimes, we’re like an oak, growing past an old hurt, burying it under layers of new growth, moving forward and getting stronger despite the scar buried beneath the healthy outer shell. But sometimes, our wounds refuse to heal. Sometimes, they stay open and ugly, reminding us every time we look in the mirror that we will never be the same.

  The hurt was too big, the cut too deep.

  We will never move past it. From this day, until our last day, the wound will make us an easy target, a weakened animal falling behind the rest of the herd, waitin
g for another predator to step in and finish the job the first one started.

  As I stumble down the courthouse steps, clinging to my dad’s arm with my head tucked to my chin, ignoring the questions the reporters shout from either side of me as we press through the crowd, I wonder what the cameras see.

  Do they see the hardened, selfish, sexually deviant monster the defense attorney made me out to be? Or do they see the stinging, screaming gash four boys cut through the middle of my heart?

  Not guilty.

  They were all found not guilty.

  At the end of the day, the jury believed that I invited four boys to take turns with me, not that I fought and bled and cried. They believed that I spread rumors about Deidre to keep news of my sexual adventures from my boyfriend, not because I was traumatized after being raped. As far as the law and the world at large are now concerned, Todd, Jeremy, J.D., and Scott are innocent and the rape never happened.

  But it did.

  It did and now I don’t know what to do. How do I move on when I’ve been told the reason for my grief doesn’t exist, and that my voice, my truth, means less than nothing?

  Someone shouts my name. I flinch and look up before I remember that I’m supposed to keep my gaze down until I get to the car waiting by the curb.