I Need You (Starting Out #3)by Jane Lark
Release date: October 23rd 2014
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
Guilt can eat away at you, but love can cut like a knife…
Wanting after his best friend’s girlfriend is a cliché Billy knows well – it’s the tightrope he’s walked for years.
But now Jason and Lindy have broken up and Billy can’t help but be there for the girl he’s loved from afar for so long. She’s hurting.
Fighting to find a road to the future, Lindy’s heart hurts. She’s trying to escape the truth, but Billy keeps making her face it – and it’s ugly. How can she keep living when everything is made of glass and it keeps shattering?
Her one constant is Billy. Only, rebound isn’t his style and when Lindy starts to see him in a different light, he just can’t trust her. He’s no one’s second best.
I Need You
by Jane Lark
Billy leaned over and his arms came around me. I rested my head on his
shoulder, my arms about his neck. I needed someone to hug.
Billy’s arms and shoulders were really muscular. His body mass was
double the size of Jason’s. He’d played football at school and college, and he’d
studied sports and become a personal trainer. All that strength and solidity
was reassuring.
But that’s what had got me into all the bullshit I’d fallen into back in
the fall.
But I didn’t want to think of that. I just let him hold me while I
reveled in the comfort and security.
Billy gave good hugs.
This was worth so much more than any conversation on a psychiatrist’s
couch, or medication. Relief bloomed inside me, aching.
I’d needed to be held by someone outside my family.
His fingers combed through my hair. “Did you mean to end it, or were you
crying out for help?”
I didn’t lift my head and didn’t answer. The ache of comfort was gone
and instead the forest fire of guilt flared. I wouldn’t admit the truth; the
truth was too awful. I didn’t have a good reason to give in.
The psychiatrist had told me, “Everyone has burdens to carry, and you
shouldn’t feel guilty.” She’d said, “It’s stopped being about choice, the
chemicals in your body are all muddled up so you can’t think straight.” I was
on happy pills, and counseling now, and she’d promised me I’d feel better and
I’d get out the other side.
I didn’t want to.
“Why did you go to Jason’s store…?” Billy’s fingers ran through my hair.
I felt like a kid being comforted. It took me back years; to the years I’d been
happy.
Why? I didn’t answer.
He probably thought it was for revenge. It wasn’t. My life had been there, I’d
worked there for years, been Jason’s second half for years.
Who was I now? What was there to do?
“I’m sorry, Lindy. If you let me help, I’ll make everything up to you.”
He had nothing to make up, not really, everything that had gone wrong
between him and me was my fault.
“Do you want to get away for a while? Just for a couple of weeks even? I
swear to God, there’ll be nothing in it. No expectation on my part at all.”
I needed help. I needed to escape. Just until I could get back on track.
“Yeah.”
His hands gripped my shoulders and moved me back. He looked like he
didn’t believe what I’d said. “Yeah?” His voice questioned.
“Yeah.” I nodded, my vision clouding with tears. I needed to go
somewhere and pretend my life wasn’t what it was––for a short vacation. “I’ll
have to speak to the psychiatrist, though. When do you want to go?”
He smiled. Billy was so nice, his heart shone right out of his eyes
along with his smile. He hurt for me. We’d been close, before everything went
wrong. This was him trying to put it right again. But nothing could ever be
right.
Tears rolled onto my cheeks as the flames of guilt flickered.
Mom…
Jane is qualified to the equivalent of a Masters Degree in People Management and is fascinated by the things that craft people’s personalities, so she has great fun exploring these through characters. She lives in the United Kingdom near the Regency City of Bath and has just bought her 400 year old dream home. History has always tempted her imagination and she loves researching and also exploring ruins and houses to get ideas. She equally loves a love story. Jane has always aspired to writing a historical novel so when she was thirty she put it on her ‘to do before I am forty’ list. She completed her first novel ten years ago, never sent it anywhere then started the next. She’s not stopped writing since, and escaping into a mental world of fiction is a great painkiller to help fight off her Ankylosing Spondylitis.
A signed copy of I Found You, the first book in the series and a backpack (INT)
