Aced (The Driven #5) by K. Bromberg Read Free Book Online Page A

have a connection with the other boys.
    And of course, Auggie’s part of the reason I’m so stressed about the lack of time before the baby is due. I desperately want to see him connect with someone here as much as he has with me before I go on maternity leave. If he doesn’t, then I worry he’ll feel as confined as he was in his parents’ self-imposed prison at home.
    The baby moves beneath my hand, my constant reminder of how lucky my child is going to be to never have to even remotely experience any of these horrors.
    “Hey Auggie? Do you want a snack before I leave for the night?” He looks over to me, a ghost of a smile on his sweet lips as he nods ever so slightly. The sight of a smile, regardless of how faint, gives me an inch of hope in this marathon we’re running together. “Oreos and milk?”
    His smile becomes more surefooted at the same time Scooter pipes up, “Dude, I’m all over that!” Perfect . Just what I wanted to happen. A table of boys eating cookies and milk together. All different walks of life, making their own path together.
    “Dude,” I mimic him with a grin on my face, “put your backpacks away and it’ll be waiting for you.”
    “Rad,” one of them says as my phone alerts a text. As I reach into the pantry, I glance over to my cell sitting on the counter and see it’s from Colton. I’m not sure what he needs but my shift ends in fifteen minutes and this opportunity with all the boys together is way too important to break up the moment.
    “Okay,” I say, as I pull out two packages of Oreos and cups. “Snacks get doled out in the order of who tells me something good about their day.”
    “Pit and the peak!” Ricky says with exasperation. He likes to pretend he’s too old for this tradition we started a few years ago, but I secretly know he enjoys it.
    “Yep.” I start filling the plastic cups as Kyle passes out napkins.
    “Auggie goes first,” Zander says, surprising me. I think both Auggie and I startle at the comment but for completely different reasons. Zander slides me a glance that says he knows exactly what he’s doing. It may be almost six years since he was in similar shoes, but he remembers the anxiety like it was yesterday and is trying to help Auggie in the only way he knows how.
    My heart swells with pride at the kind heart he has, and I’m reminded of how very far he’s come. And the knowledge that Zander could overcome and thrive encourages my hopes that Auggie will be able to have the same success.
    “Z’s right. Auggie gets to go first,” I say.
    And the best part about it is that in a house constantly full of bickering, they just showed it to be one weighted more heavily with love and compassion.

    “Hello?” I answer the phone as I crawl along the highway, traffic moving at a snail’s pace in the last few miles to the house. I’m so exhausted. Presuming it’s Colton calling me back, I answer on the Bluetooth’s first ring, not waiting for caller ID to pop up on the Range Rover’s GPS screen. My calls have been going straight to his voicemail since I’ve left work so when I answer, I fully expect to hear the lecture right off the bat about how I need to take my maternity leave now. And I’m lucky because as vocal as he is on it, he understands the reasons behind why I haven’t. I have a feeling the compassion is waning the more out of breath I am and the more swollen my feet become.
    That’s exactly why I’ve been telling him I’m perfectly fine to go to my checkups without him so he doesn’t hear Dr. Steele tell me I need to start taking it easier. And maybe that’s why I answer right away, so he thinks everything is okay instead of the actual throbbing in my rapidly swelling toes and ankles.
    “Rylee Donavan?”
    “Yes. Who’s this?” I try to place the female voice on the other end of the line but come up empty.
    “This is Casey at TMZ and—”
    “How’d you get my number?” I ask, cutting off the tabloid reporter, my