Found (Lost and Found #2, New Adult Romance) (Lost & Found) by Nadia Simonenko Read Free Book Online

enough cause for me to worry. What happened to him? He didn’t wash down a double dose of cough syrup with a beer just to catch up on lost sleep. I know him better than that.
    “What’s wrong?”
    The clock ticks loudly in the kitchen, marking second after agonizing second until he finally answers me.
    “Tomorrow,” he whispers.
    “You’ll tell me tomorrow?” I ask, and he nods almost imperceptibly in response.
    I open my mouth to argue, but my words catch in my throat. I’ve had bad days—days when I can’t bear the idea of talking to anyone, days when even going outside is a struggle—so who am I to say that he can’t have his own bad days? I love him, though, and I can’t just leave him like this.
    “ Give him a little room ,” nags Tina’s voice inside my head.
    I can do that. I can give him until tomorrow.
    “Okay honey,” I whisper, leaning down and kissing him softly on the cheek. “Need anything before I go?”
    He turns and looks up at me over his shoulder before answering. His eyes are glistening with tears and it almost breaks my heart to see him so sad.
    “Please don’t go,” he pleads. “I don’t want to be alone.”
    “I’ll stay all night if you want me to.”
    I smile softly, lean down and kiss him gently on the cheek, and then I curl up next to him on the couch. His skin is burning hot and I start sweating within minutes, but I’m not letting go of him. His breathing is quick and shallow and I can feel his pulse racing as I press against him.
    “I’m here for you,” I whisper in his ear as I hold him close. “I always will be.”
    My cell phone’s alarm will wake me in the morning if I fall asleep. I can’t leave him alone like this. Craig can take care of him in the morning when I head out to my job interview. Hour after hour passes in silence until Owen’s pulse finally slackens and his breathing slows.
    What happened to him? Did his father find some new and horrible way to torment him? I wish I could take him away from his terrible family forever so that nobody could ever hurt him again.
    “I won’t let him hurt you, sweetie,” I whisper to him in his sleep. “Never again.”
    I lay by his side late into the night, worrying about him until sleep finally claims me as well.
    ––––––––
    M y knees shake and my heart pounds in my chest as I stagger into the kitchen, my arms loaded down with heavy grocery bags. I close the front door as quietly as I can and hope that Mom doesn’t hear me. If she is in the living room, I’m in trouble. There’s no way she wouldn’t have heard me come in.
    Good, she’s upstairs. I have time to get my bag out before she sees it. She sent me out to pick up groceries and I secretly stopped by the pharmacy on my way back. She can’t find out about my side-trip. If she does, I’ll have to tell her what Darren did to me.
    I remember her laughing at that poor woman on the news, the woman whose boyfriend raped her, and my chest tightens painfully. The one thing I desperately need to talk to her about just has to be something she’ll never accept or understand, doesn’t it? I can never tell her about what happened.
    I start unpacking the groceries. Milk in the fridge door, eggs on the little shelf in the back...
    “Hi sweetie,” she calls to me, and I panic as she starts down the stairs. She comes around the corner just as I slip the pharmacy bag into my inside coat pocket. She stares at me for a moment, and just as I’m certain she saw me, she grabs the peanut butter and jelly and heads to the cupboard.
    “Thanks for running out to the store for me,” she tells me. “I’ve been working all afternoon and didn’t have time to get anything ready for dinner.”
    “No problem,” I answer cheerfully. “They were out of Dad’s coffee, but I got everything else.”
    “You remembered the Italian sausages, right?”
    “In the freezer,” I answer with a nod as I put the raisin bran away.
    “No, let’s put the sausages in