Billionaire Ransom by Lexy Timms Read Free Book Online Page A

proverbial boot from the system. All she ever thought about was what would happen after she found her family.”
    “Really? Even when she hit her teens?” Katie figured Lisa would have figured it out by then, especially with Morgan to look up to.
    “She wasn’t prepared for it never happening. She never learned how to accept that she had to make her own family if she really wanted one. When she got out, Craig went and picked her up in the car he’d been saving for years to get, and took her to the apartment we shared back then, and even then I knew… I knew she was still looking for that family, and Craig wasn’t what she wanted.”
    “She couldn’t love him,” Katie said softly. “How could she? He reminded her of what she’d wanted so badly and never got. Every time she looked at you, or him.”
    Morgan’s eyes met hers. “Yes, and yet he couldn’t let her go. He fell in love with her, with the idea that they were destined to be together because of similar circumstance.” He snorted. “He fell in love with what he saw when he looked at her – the one thing that made foster life bearable. And what she saw when she looked at him was someone who knew she’d never be wanted.”
    Overcome with pity, all Katie could do was lie there in the shelter of his arms and be grateful that they had both made it out of their childhoods and into an adulthood that would still allow them to trust and love each other.
    Morgan sighed, long and drawn-out. He too must have shared a lifetime of stuff he had shoved deep down. “It is what it is, Katie. Don’t feel too sorry for any of us. Lisa should have realized that she was doing the same thing as an adult that she’d done as a kid at those fairs. She ran to anybody she thought might want her and she did whatever it took to make sure someone picked her. She broke her own heart. And Craig broke his own heart, too.
    “Sometimes life breaks us so hard, we don’t know how to stand up again.” Katie wondered about her mother. “Or it changes us so much that we become a shell of the person we’re meant to be.”
    “And we need others to help us up when we can’t stand on our own?” The sarcasm in his remark hurt her, but Katie understood it wasn’t meant for her. “I do feel guilty. I feel guilty because I watched that toxic thing between them spiraling out of control and I never stepped in. I should have, years ago, and I didn’t. So that’s my bad. I should have made Craig see what was really happening before… before…” He shook his head. “But I didn’t because I couldn’t hurt him. I knew it would tear him apart and he’d blame me.”
    “You’re his best friend, his brother. Of course you couldn’t.”
    He sighed and rested a hand on her hip. He yawned, a huge and long yawn, and then he sighed again. “It just sucks sometimes,” he mumbled.”
    They were talked out, their souls laid bare to each other. Katie lay beside him, feeling the rhythm of his breathing change as he drifted off to sleep.
    As she started to slide into her own dreams, she had one fleeting thought: they were made for each other. They both knew loneliness and lack of love, and they both knew what it was like to want to be the best person they could be, for someone who would never be able to understand them.
    She could love him.
    Love him harder than any pain she’d ever felt.
     

CHAPTER 6
     
    The next morning over a leisurely breakfast of cheese and egg omelets and wheat toast, Katie said, “I think today would be a good day to go house-hunting.”
    Morgan set his cup down. “If you want to move, but I really don’t think you should.”
    Katie hadn’t expected Morgan to be so against her moving into her own place. She crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Why are you being so hostile over this?”
    He lifted an eyebrow. “Hostile? How am I being hostile?”
    She sighed, “Maybe that was the wrong word. Maybe I meant adamant. I mean, why does my wanting my own place