by T L Swan
Find Me Alastar
T L Swan
Contents
T L Swan
Books by T L Swan
Acknowledgments
Title
Because of Us
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, event, or locales are purely coincidental.
* * *
© Copyright 2016 by T L Swan
* * *
All rights reserved.
For Ailsa
T L Swan
Lover of her husband, children, words, chocolate and margaritas.
When she is not writing her next novel, you will find her in a café drinking coffee with friends.
Writing is her passion.
Books by T L Swan
Stanton Adore
Stanton Unconditional
Stanton Completely
Stanton Bliss
Find Me Alastar
Find her at
www.tlswanauthor.com
Acknowledgments
Find Me Alastar has been by far the hardest book I have ever written. I knew the story, I loved the story. But the delivery was unclear to me.
How could I possibly do justice to a story that I loved so dearly?
I struggled and I cried tears of pure frustration.
How could a book that I love so much be so damn hard to execute?
I would like to sincerely thank my four dear friends, Vicki, Amanda, Rachel and Lisa who refused to let me release a book that was not completely right.
Thank you for making me write this book three times, bitches. I love you all……even though you have undoubtedly tried to kill me with this one.
To my gorgeous friend and editor Victoria, thank you for everything. You make me better.
To my beta readers, thank you so much, you are the best.
To my proof readers, your attention to detail fries my brain, also awesome.
Linda from Sassy Savvy and Fabulous, you rock!
To the bloggers who support and read my work, thank you so, so much.
To my gang in the Swan Squad, thank you for being in my life. You all make me laugh everyday.
To the loves of my life, my husband and our three children. Thank you for putting up with me through this. I love you all.
And last but not least, to you, the readers… thank you for supporting and reading my work.
I hope you all love this book as much as I do.
It has been worth every single tear.
* * *
Tee xx
How can I possibly ever reach my potential
if I am too scared to find it?
At what point do I listen to the whispers of my psyche
Above all sensibility?
Too scared to jump.
Too stifled to stay.
When I fall, will you catch me?
Because of us.
Prologue
My breathing is shallow.
I’m too terrified to make the slightest sound.
He’s coming. I can hear him upstairs. This time he will kill me.
I curl into a ball underneath the table in a desperate bid to hide in this cellar—my prison. Having been locked down here for over a week, I’m certain my days are numbered.
I’m not sure how much more I can take, but I know it won’t be long now.
My eyes stay fixed on the door at the top of the stairs while my heart hammers furiously in my chest. My chances of survival are probably better if I take the lighting out, that way he can’t find me when he returns. But the thought of being down here in the darkness petrifies me beyond anything.
It’s my wildest nightmare.
I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Either way, death feels so near.
My only hope is if my saviour comes looking for me, but I desperately hope he doesn’t. I know for certain that if he does, he will be killed right beside me.
The darkness will double.
Tears pool in my eyes as I continue to softly pant through shallow breathes. How did my life come to this?
If I couldn’t trust him, who can I ever trust again? I can’t believe he is capable of such atrocities
I loved him; with all of my heart I loved him.
My beloved protector has become my captor and now I feel nothing.
The door opens with a slow creak and I squeeze my eyes shut as I feel the adrenaline surge through my bloodstream.
Oh no, please, no.
Not again.
Please don’t hurt me.
“Where are you?” He growls as he descends down the creaky steps.
I scrunch up my face as tears of fear begin to roll down my cheeks.
“Don’t hide from me!” he screams. His footing is heavy and I know he’s been drinking. “It will only make it worse for you when I find you.”
I hold my breath as he jumps from the bottom step, his footsteps now getting closer.
My eyes stay shut in the dark of the basement, and it isn’t long before I feel his hand take hold of my hair and the pain surge through my scalp as he drags me from under the table.
He kicks me, knocking the wind from my lungs instantly, and I curl into a tight ball to try and protect myself.
His boot connects with my abdomen next, the taste of blood filling my mouth as a deep internal pain permeates throughout my body.
Death would be easier than enduring this.
I surrender.
I can’t go on.
Kill me.
Please kill me. I beg somebody to kill me.
Stop this torture.
Set me free.
Chapter 1
Midlife crisis? Is there really such a thing?
I always imagined it happening around the age of fifty and it entailing a sports car, Botox, and perhaps a mild fetish for gay porn. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would go down like this at the tender age of twenty-five.
I had it all. Life as I knew it was perfect. I had my high school sweetheart Liam, a dream job at the auctioneers, and a deposit saved for our very first home together.
It’s funny, you know. They always say that you don’t know what you have got until its gone. With me it was the exact opposite. I knew what I was missing. I knew my heart yearned for a man that I had never met.
I wanted him.
To melt when he looked at me.
To catch on fire when he touched me.
I could see it so clearly in my mind and I could feel the heat when I was alone in my bed.
I wanted the fairy tale.
How can you want someone so desperately, when according to everyone else you are already living the dream?
I had a perfect man—a perfect, reliable man—but my life was empty.
My soul was dying day by day.
Like a lost sheep, I would cry myself to sleep at night, knowing what I was missing—knowing that he was waiting for me—yet hating myself for feeling this way.
&nb
sp; I didn’t know who I was searching for, I only knew he was in London. He had to be in London because he wasn’t anywhere I had been before and London had been at the forefront of my mind for the longest time.
* * *
Then, on one fateful day, it began… and my life changed.
The day when I met him.
I didn’t exactly meet him, but I talked to him. I wrote to him, to be exact. When working at the auctioneers, my company had acquired art. We sent it over to London to be auctioned off, knowing that there were collectors over there that were interested in this particular artist. We would fetch a much higher price than here in Australia. My job description was to liaise with the art department from the auction house to ensure that the transfer ran smoothly.
He—also known as Mark White—was head of marketing for Chesters in London. We spoke by email every day for three weeks. At first our conversation was work related, slowly moving onto the weather and polite chitchat. But then one Monday, a day that I will never forget because it is burned into my damn brain, everything changed.
I had returned back to work after a particularly boring weekend with Liam; one where we didn’t go out because we were saving. Liam didn’t like to waste money so we never did much. We had fallen into routine, and whether it was laziness, complacency, or just damn stupidity on both of our parts, the cracks in our relationship had begun to show without us realizing it.
We were both responsible for the other’s boredom but we didn’t know how to pull each other out of the funk.
That was our life.
That was what we did—our routine.
How do you change something when it’s the only thing you know?
And, fuck, if I couldn’t make it work with Liam who I knew was a good man, what chance did I have with a complete stranger?
Anyway… back to the story.
That morning my email pinged and it was Mark, I smile as I remember it like yesterday.
Good Morning, Emerson.
My eyes darted guiltily around the office to see if anyone knew what I was doing, and I smiled mischievously while I typed back.
Good Morning, Mark.
An email immediately bounced back.
How was your weekend?
I replied.
Extremely dull. How was yours?
He typed back.
I nearly emailed you on the weekend to say hi.
I wish.
You should have. It would have brightened my day.
And he replied.
What are you wearing?
Four words, four stupid words, and my whole life changed. What are you wearing? I instantly became uncomfortable and nervously found a way to get offline. I knew it was wrong. I had a perfect boyfriend for Christ’s sake, even if I did find myself constantly thinking about Mark. His life was fun, vibrant, unpredictable, and here I was living the life of a sixty-year-old. A deep, sinister sadness fell over me and I realized I missed hearing about his life, his dates, and the fun he was having when I wasn’t speaking to him. Then, after two days of radio silence, I did the unthinkable. I messaged him back and told him exactly what I was wearing. The lines quickly became blurred. We started messaging each other at all hours of the day, talking about everything but art related topics. I would even hide in the bathroom at work to converse with him.
My relationship with Liam suffered as I begged him to take me out, for us to travel overseas, to do something, anything exciting.
I tried to save us, I really did.
But Liam constantly refused to break routine and barely six months later, my world crumbled before completely falling apart.
I would research London for hours, dreaming of a life that I knew existed somewhere out there in the universe.
I desperately felt I was missing out on someone very special—that my destiny was with another and not the man I was planning a future with.
But why and who?
Who was the man who was calling me and why did I have this obsession with London?
One day I found myself sitting on my lounge crying, holding my phone waiting for the only excitement in my life, Mark, to email me while Liam was in the shower. Somewhere along the way in between the online laughs and chats, I had changed.
I wanted more.
What had happened to my happy life with my beautiful, dependable man? What had I done? How do you reverse something like that when I had already set the wheels of change in motion? The stable life I had wanted had become the boring life I despised. I fell out of love with my life and Liam, and fallen in love with the idea of being carefree and desired. I wanted to live while I was still young enough to live.
And here I am, just twelve months later, on a plane to London.
This could very well be the stupidest thing I have ever done and I’m using all my savings on a hunch. A hunch that I hope I don’t live to regret. I have an internship with Chesters, the same company Mark works for. I’m going to work alongside him, and although we have never openly said that anything will happen between us, I know we are both secretly hoping it will.
Brielle, my travelling partner, is a different kettle of fish. She’s totally in love with an adultering prick who she recently caught out again with a girl we both know. In my heart of hearts, I know that if we stay in the same old town she is going to go back to him and I am going to go back to Liam for no other reason than him being a comfortable habit.
When Liam and I finally broke up, I think he was as relieved as I was.
He knew things hadn’t been right between us. We had become best friends. The fire had gone out between us a long time ago. It was him who encouraged me to apply for the position in London, actually, and when I finally mustered up the courage, I made Brielle apply for a nanny position in the same city. My lifelong best friend and I would lie on the beach dreaming of what we were going to do in London and all the fun we were going to have. It was the distant comfort of that dream that got us through the doom and gloom and forced us to face the hard decisions that had to be made.
Fate stepped in and we were both successful with the jobs we applied for. It was as if the universe was approving of our escape plan.
Now we are on flight bound for London.
Both of us tired, nervous, excited, and absolutely terrified.
Brielle is going to a live in nanny position with a female Supreme Court Judge who is a widow with two small children. I am working in an art gallery with a man I have been secretly lusting over for twelve months. This could be heaven or it could be hell, and right now, I would love to run home with my tail between my legs.
I have no idea what we are doing.
* * *
I drift somewhere between sleep and consciousness as the sound of the airplane engine drowns out all of my thoughts. It’s comforting really. I haven’t been sleeping well. To be completely honest I haven’t been doing anything well. My judgment seems clouded and I have been forgetting everything. I feel foggy but I think that’s just nerves.
Brielle is in conversation with two guys across the aisle from us.
“This is Emerson,” she introduces me.
I pull my hands through my hair self consciously. I must look like hell having literally just woke up. “H-hello,” I stammer.
The two guys smile broadly and lean over to shake my hand. “I’m Jonah and this is Rick.” The blonde guy smiles. Rick is blonde and nice looking, and Jonah is a stunner. With dark skin and black hair, he looks more like a model than a backpacker. Brielle’s mischievous eyes meet mine and I smirk. She just silently called shotgun on Jonah. Hmm. I raise a brow in question and shake my head subtly.
“Where are you guys going?” I ask.
“We start a Contiki tour around Europe in ten days.”
“Oh.” I smile. “That’s exciting.”
They both nod and smile broadly. “We are staying in London for the next week or so.”
“Oh, we are, too.” Brielle smiles.
The boy’s eyes light
up in excitement. “We should go out at the weekend,” Jonah suggests.
“Yes,” Brielle replies. “We should.”
The stewardess walks up the aisle with the lunch tray and interrupts our conversation.
I shuffle around, searching in my bag before I retrieve my book and put my head onto my headrest, Brielle grabs my hand. “I’m excited.”
“I wish I was more excited. I’m nervous than anything.” I sigh.
Her face drops. “Why?” She frowns.
I shrug. “If I was staying with you I would be happier. I’m living with two strangers, I have no idea what the apartment is going to look like, and I am starting a new high pressure job with a guy I have been crushing on for over a year.” I widen my eyes. “Kind of overwhelmed at the moment.”
She smirks. “When you put it like that...”
I open my book just to stop thinking about everything. I feel my anxiety rise.
“Once you have met everyone…” She tries to reassure me.
I nod. “I know.” I smile. “It will be fine. Once I get my head around everything, it will be good.”
“And what about Mark?” she asks with a raised brow.
I bite my bottom lip to stifle my nervous smile. “He’s picking me up from the airport.”
She takes my hand in hers. “Just take it slow with him, yeah? You are coming over here to escape boredom and reality. Don’t go falling in love or anything stupid.”
I frown. “As if. That’s not happening.”
Her eyes hold mine in question.
“I’m here to have fun, I promise you. No man will ever determine the quality of my life again. I’m done with being serious. I’m so done with boring.”
She laughs out loud in excitement. “I love that you’re done with boring. Let the fun begin.”