AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
Blake
“Doyou think about life after this place, Blake? About what will happen?” Penny gazed over at me as if I were her world, causing my stomach to knot tightly.
I wanted to be—her world.
I wanted to give her the moon and the stars and everything in between. She deserved it and so much more. She deserved a good life, one better than the shit we put up with living with Derek and Marie.
“All the time. Come here.” I looped my arm around her neck, not caring if anyone spotted us, and drew her in tighter as we lay beyond the yard staring up at the night sky.
Hundreds of stars sparkled like diamonds on a smooth black canvas. It was beautiful. A little slice of heaven in our own fucked-up version of hell. “Eighteen more months, Penny, and then we’re free, and it’ll be just you and me.”
She sighed beside me. Soft and full of hope. I felt it in the way her hand lightly squeezed mine and how her body relaxed beside me as another soft sigh left her lungs.
We both wanted more. More than the shit hand we had been dealt. We had dreams and hopes for the future, just like any other sixteen-year-old kid. Except we weren’t like most other kids. We had already lost so much…livedso much.
It was what brought us together in the first place, but now… now, things were different. Sometime in the last two years, my best friend had become my reason for breathing.
My everything.
“Eighteen months. We can make that, right?” Her voice was unsure, and I hated them for taking away the last shred of fight she’d had when she arrived at the Freeman group home with nothing more than a small bag of her things and a shitload of nightmares.
I rolled slightly to face Penny, taking in her delicate features. Chocolate brown eyes contrasted her pale skin, a ton of cute as fuck freckles dusting her perfectly shaped nose. A dark blanket of glossy hair framed her face, falling over her slim shoulders like a waterfall.
Fuck, she was beautiful.
Too beautiful and innocent for this life.
Trying to push down all my anger for the things she’d faced in this place, I choked out, “You’re my lucky Penny.” I leaned in, kissing her forehead. “With you by my side, we can survive anything.
“It’s you and me, Penny. You and me, forever.”
CHAPTERONE
Penny
“It’s not you,Pen. It’s me.”
I winced at Cal’s words, but not for the same reasons I was supposed to.
Most people experienced being dumped in their lifetime, usually more than once.
It was a rite of passage.
Relationships began and they ended. Friends turned to lovers and fizzled back into the friend zone again. Personalities clashed and partners decided the grass was greener. Or sometimes, the spark that once burned so brightly simply flickered out in the darkness.
Sure, they all lived to tell the tale, but that was usually after weeks of drowning their sorrows in a bottle of whatever liquor burned away the hurt or a pint of ice cream so sweet it chased away the heartache.
Anything to forget.
Just for a little while.
But I didn’t wince because Cal had finally decided to cut me loose. My eyes didn’t burn with tears for the loss of our love.
No.
It wasn’t that his words didn’t cut deep.
