Hold On To Me

by Taylor Holloway

  Hold On To Me

  Taylor Holloway

  Contents

  Also by Taylor Holloway

  About This Book

  Prologue

  1. Rosie

  2. Ryan

  3. Rosie

  4. Ryan

  5. Rosie

  6. Rosie

  7. Ryan

  8. Rosie

  9. Ryan

  10. Rosie

  11. Ryan

  12. Rosie

  13. Rosie

  14. Ryan

  15. Rosie

  16. Ryan

  17. Rosie

  18. Ryan

  19. Rosie

  20. Ryan

  21. Ryan

  22. Rosie

  23. Ryan

  24. Rosie

  25. Ryan

  26. Rosie

  27. Ryan

  28. Rosie

  29. Ryan

  30. Rosie

  31. Ryan

  32. Rosie

  33. Ryan

  34. Rosie

  35. Ryan

  36. Rosie

  37. Ryan

  38. Rosie

  39. Ryan

  40. Rosie

  41. Ryan

  42. Rosie

  43. Ryan

  44. Rosie

  45. Ryan

  46. Rosie

  47. Rosie

  48. Ryan

  49. Rosie

  50. Ryan

  51. Rosie

  52. Ryan

  53. Ryan

  54. Rosie

  55. Ryan

  56. Rosie

  57. Ryan

  58. Rosie

  59. Ryan

  60. Rosie

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon - A Bad Case of You

  Special Teaser - A Bad Case of You

  Special Teaser - Admit You Want Me

  Also by Taylor Holloway

  Also by Taylor Holloway

  Lone Star Lovers

  Admit You Want Me - Ward

  Kiss Me Like You Missed Me - Cole

  Lie with Me - Lucas

  Run Away with Me - Jason

  Hold On To Me - Ryan

  For fans of exciting, romantic mysteries full of twists and turns, check out my Scions of Sin series!

  Bleeding Heart - Alexander

  Kiss and Tell - Nathan

  Down and Dirty - Nicholas

  Lost and Found - David

  Rosie's the most talented, interesting, and beautiful woman I've ever met.

  She's also my boss's nineteen-year-old daughter.

  Rosie's father wants me to sabotage her dream of music stardom.

  After six years as a talent agent, I understand why he would want to spare his daughter from this cutthroat industry.

  But once I meet her, I realize Rosie’s not some ordinary, spoiled little rich girl, but a savvy, sexy, wise beyond her years, once-in-a-generation talent.

  Even though I’m ten years too-old for her and possibly committing career suicide, Rosie’s passion is irresistible.

  Holding on to Rosie will cost me everything. But can I live with myself if I don't fight for her dream, and her heart?

  Hold On To Me is a full-length, standalone, forbidden romance featuring a bold alpha hero and his sweet and sexy heroine.

  Prologue

  Ryan

  “Here you go!” Jen told me, pressing the icy cold bottle into my palm. She sidled up next to me and smiled that sweet smile that made my heart race. Her dark eyes flashed with mischief and intoxication. She’d brought me another beer that I hadn’t asked for. “I think we should take off in about fifteen minutes,” she added, “I want to go check out Laurie’s party after this.”

  I looked at the bottle in dismay and set it down on the nearest table. I was very drunk. Too drunk to drink any more, too drunk to even think clearly. I was almost too drunk to stand up.

  My thoughts were coming slowly, but although they were taking their sweet time, they eventually arrived. Walking a mile in the icy weather to Laurie’s place was the last thing I wanted to do.

  I didn’t just dislike Laurie; I hated her. She was unrelentingly mean to Jen. Jen didn’t like her either. They were basically frenemies without ever being friends. I swore they only hung out with one another out of some bizarre competitiveness borne of both being attractive, talented women. It was weird.

  I hated watching Laurie attempt to take chunks out of my girlfriend’s self-esteem with all her catty bullshit. By this point in the evening, the idea of enduring Laurie—particularly drunk Laurie—sounded worse than a root canal. All I really wanted was to go home and sleep this night off. My head felt like it was made of lead.

  “It’s two a.m., Jen.” She was always so good at being social. She was a natural extrovert. Jen was the life of any party. Me, not so much. I was basically the wet blanket of any party. “I’m really tired. Are you sure we can’t just call it a night?”

  I was trying though, I had been trying all evening. I felt like I’d earned my rest. For the past six hours, I’d been to drunken house party after drunken house party. I’d smiled at the strangers Jen introduced, I’d chatted with them politely, and I’d tried to keep up with my beautiful, vibrant social butterfly of a girlfriend. After all, there was a good reason we were out tonight.

  “He’s being lame again,” Jen stage-whispered to my brother behind her hands. She was pretty drunk, too, and quickly dissolved into giggles. “Help me.”

  My older brother, Ian, took me by the shoulders. He hadn’t been properly sober for hours at this point, but he usually weathered it far better than me. Tonight though, he was staggering around worse than I was. None of us had any business hitting up another party. Hell, Jen and I didn’t even have any business drinking. We were both still underage.

  My brother never cared about silly things like rules. “Ryan, you promised that you’d make an effort not to be so… you, tonight. Axial Tilt just got our first real breakthrough, remember? We’re celebrating.”

  Of course, I remembered. I wasn’t that drunk. Jen and Ian were in a band together, and it was starting to take off in a big way. They had an actual, real record deal. They were, objectively, much cooler than me by definition. My biggest achievement to-date was a four-point GPA, which was pretty much the opposite of cool where Jen and Ian’s friends were concerned. I winced out of my brother’s grasp, feeling like the square third-wheel that I was.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I wanted to say that I felt sick, and tired, and that I wanted to find somewhere that wasn’t spinning and spend some quality time there. But that would disappoint Jen, and I hated disappointing her, so I said nothing.

  A moment later she slipped back under my arm and leaned up to kiss me. God, she was so beautiful. I really didn’t deserve to have a girlfriend as hot as her. “I know you hate this, baby. I’ll make it up to you later.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me and bumped her hip against mine suggestively. “Just one more party.”

  There was no arguing with Jen and Ian when they wanted to party (which was most of the time). I’d be going along for the ride whether I wanted to or not. I found some water and somewhere to sit down, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to clear my head.

  I woke up in the dark. At first, I thought I was in a dream. Unfamiliar machines beeped and flashed at me from every direction I looked. It was a long time before I was able to comprehend what I was seeing.

  There, to my left, was a heart rate monitor connected to a clamp on my fingertip. The little green line on the monitor leapt in time with my pulse. Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep. The noise and lights were hypnotic.

  Above, an IV dripped something that might be contributing to my fuzzy mind and lethargic body into a long tube
that ended in catheter attached to the back of my hand. My other arm was encased in a heavy plaster cast. So was one of my feet. The skin that I could see exposed around the edge of the cast was bruised purple-black and scratched. I couldn’t move my head around very well, and from the pressure against my collar bones, I suspected that I was in some sort of a neck brace.

  I was also thirstier than I’d ever been in my entire life. I tried to speak and call for help, but my mouth was full of…something. Panic rose. There were tubes in my throat? I couldn’t tell exactly. I couldn’t seem to muster the anxiety I knew that I should be feeling about having a breathing tube down my trachea.

  Drugs. I must be on sedatives.

  I was basically helpless though: unable to move, unable to speak.

  What the hell had happened? Where was Ian? Where was Jen?

  Oh god.

  Oh no.

  All at once, the memory returned. Like it was waiting for me to regain consciousness and look for it, the memory played out like a movie in my mind’s eye. The fragmented moments flickered into a confusing, dull narrative.

  I remembered Ian and Jen arguing over what to do with me. I’d been half-passed out, and unable to walk or speak. I definitely couldn’t walk to Laurie’s. I couldn’t even walk home. They ended up deciding to load me in the back of Ian’s car and drive all three of us to Laurie’s, hoping I’d sober up a bit on the way.

  Next, I remembered a noise. A huge, horrible, screaming, inhuman noise of brakes and twisting metal. I felt cold. Then heat. Chaotic lights, men with tools, and sirens all followed.

  Finally, I remembered being talked to by someone, but not being able to reply. I remembered a voice saying something about there being only two survivors. Another voice said something about seat belts, and how people who didn’t wear them might as well just travel with a shovel and a power washer in the trunk. The first voice laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. Then nothing; I must have passed out.

  The heartrate monitor leapt along with my renewed panic. Against the best efforts of the morphine drip, the relatively sedate beep-beeps became urgent beep-beeps. I looked around and saw a big red button labelled ‘push for nurse’. It felt like a herculean effort, but I managed to swat it with my cast-covered right hand. A moment later, I heard the characteristic sound of my mom’s voice rising excitedly. It sounded like she was running down the hallway.

  If I was one of the two survivors, and there were three of us in the car, did that mean that one of them… I couldn’t even think it. It was too horrible.

  1

  Rosie

  About nine years later…

  “Well that can’t be good.” My roommate, Trina, had a real gift for understatement. We were both staring at the steady trickle of water coming out of our ceiling fan. It wasn’t dripping, either. It was flowing around the lit lightbulb. “That definitely can’t be good,” she repeated, pushing her glasses up her nose and squinting like maybe it was just a trick of the light. “What do we do?”

  She’s asking me? I shrugged at her. We were both broke nineteen-year-old college students. This was not exactly a situation either of us were well equipped to deal with. Especially me.

  Worst. Birthday. Present. Ever.

  I doubted I could even hang a picture without a YouTube video and a lot of encouragement. The last time I’d tried to change a lightbulb, I fell off a ladder and broke my wrist. I told people I broke it in a climbing accident—which was technically not a lie. The point is that I’m basically the polar opposite of handy. Unless I could fix this situation by singing at it (and something told me that wouldn’t do the trick), we needed help. Professional help. Water plus electricity wasn’t safe. Even I knew that.

  “Well, um, I already called the landlord,” I replied haltingly when she stared. She looked even more helpless than I felt. I shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, looking at the pans I had set to catch the water. They were almost full again. It had only been a few minutes. At this rate, we’d have to change them every five minutes. “The lady said it might be a couple of days before they get to our apartment. Apparently, the guy upstairs went on a vacation—”

  “Sasquatch?” Trina asked. Her voice was dripping with disdain. I nodded in annoyance. We didn’t know Sasquatch’s real name or even what he looked like. We just knew that he liked stomping around like he was playing Dance Dance Revolution in the middle of the night and listening to EDM at deafening volumes. We’d left a few polite but increasingly passive-aggressive notes on his door, and they’d done nothing but make things worse. And now, he’d done this.

  “Yeah. The one. The only. Our Sasquatch. He left some incense burning and it ignited something? That’s what the property manager said when he opened up his apartment. The smoke triggered the automatic sprinklers, which have now been running continuously for two days. I guess his whole living room is full of water, and it’s worked its way down. His apartment is trashed. Ours is just collateral damage.”

  A few feet away, one of the can lights in our ceiling shorted out and began to leak. A moment later, another followed suit. Then the kitchen light sputtered out. We were now down to a single dry, working ceiling light.

  “Fucking Sasquatch and his fucking incense,” Trina grumbled. “Well, I mean, we can’t stay here, right?”

  “Right.” There was just no way. I mean, it was raining in our home. I was distantly proud that I didn’t sound too whiny. “We need to get out of here pronto. I don’t think it’s even safe for us to be in here.” Nothing I owned, except maybe my guitar, was worth getting electrocuted over.

  “Well… I’m gonna go to Chris’ place,” Trina replied after a moment. She and her boyfriend Chris practically lived together as it was. More and more, this apartment was mostly just where Trina’s shoes, leftovers, and homework lived. As much as I liked Chris, I knew I couldn’t stay with them. There was just no way. Chris lived in a five hundred square foot studio apartment, and even in this apartment where we had separate bedrooms, listening to the two of them have their super-loud sex had been a source of conflict and sleeplessness for a while until they started staying at his place. “Did you call your dad?” Trina asked carefully.

  I nodded and looked down, feeling defeated. My plan to cut that particular cord—the one that bound me financially to a father who’d been mostly absent during my childhood and only really reemerged after I reached age eighteen—had lasted less than four months. So much for my precious independence.

  My dad was controlling with a capital “C”, which was why my mom left him in the first place, despite his wealth, charm, and wild success as a lawyer in LA. Their romance had run hot and cold—mostly the latter. And when it finally came to a frosty, angry end, she packed up baby me and moved us both across the country. She even turned down alimony and child support if it meant freedom from him. Better poor than under his thumb, she’d told me.

  I hadn’t understood at the time. I was an infant. All I knew was that by the time I was old enough to ask questions, my dad, whom I adored, was gone except for summer visits. Naturally, I’d blamed my mom.

  Trina was still waiting for an answer. I took a deep breath before confessing my sin. “I called him,” I choked out. “He said he’s sending someone ASAP. I know he’ll take care of it.” I was pouting. My ceiling was raining and now my controlling father had yet another way to dig his hooks into me.

  “Are you ok?” Trina’s tone was gentle. She knew how difficult my relationship with my father was. She’d been my roommate freshman year, and present for some of our more explosive phone calls.

  I felt my eyes fill up with frustrated tears, and Trina threw her arms around my neck wordlessly. She knew what making that little phone call had cost my pride.

  My dad’s offer to fund my education had come with a lot of strings, which was why my sophomore year was being entirely funded by student loans rather than by him. My mom had warned me about him, of course, but I thought it would be different now. I was his one and o
nly child. I’d been so excited about reconnecting with him, and he’d seemed the same. And in his way, he was. He doted on and spoiled me rotten. He loved me. Unfortunately, he seemed fixated on controlling every single aspect of my life, too. I should have known.

  A loud, decisive knock on the door made us both jump out of our hug. We looked at one another sheepishly and then giggled.

  “I’ll get it,” I told her, knowing it was probably for me.

  Dad’s help was nothing if not prompt. It was bound to be one of his lackeys, and he probably had a car waiting to take me to a lovely, safe, dry hotel room. A cage. A gilded cage for a little songbird.

  Trina nodded, reading the tension on my face and looking both frustrated on my behalf and relieved on hers. “I’ll go pack bags for both of us,” she said. She gave me another quick embrace and headed toward the bedrooms.