I Need You by Jane Lark
(Starting Out #3)
Published by: Harper Impulse
Publication 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.
EXCERPT:
“I can’t believe you still wear that thing.” She leaned over and flicked
the leather bracelet as my hand gripped the wheel.
How the hell did she not know?
I glanced at her, giving her a twisted, guilty smile, as something hard
grabbed my heart. “Yeah.”
“I made you that years ago.”
“I’m just lazy, I can’t be bothered to cut it off.” I let a fake sound
of amusement slip from my throat, acting as if it was nothing––like I had every
other time she’d mentioned it.
She’d made it at high school. It had been the thing all the girls were
doing at the time, braiding these silly leather bracelets and threading beads
into them. It was before she’d been seeing Jason. We’d been fifteen.
Yeah, I had been wearing it that long. Pining over a girl that wasn’t
mine.
But shit I can still remember the feel of her gentle fingers touching me
as she’d tied it off, and it had done stuff to my cock. I’d liked her before,
but that was the day she’d got me. It was like her fingers had touched my heart
too. I’d had this burning need for her ever since.
I should cut the thing off.
I glanced over at her. Her hands were in her lap and she stared ahead. I
didn’t know what to say to her. I was too anxious to hold a meaningless conversation
and I didn’t want to quiz her, ‘cause I was taking her away to forget all the
stuff that made her feel bad.
I said a few things and she answered, but then I couldn’t think of
anything to add. She said some things and I nodded, not knowing what to say
back.
In the end we were quiet most of the drive.
I was relieved when I finally pulled up in the apartments’ parking lot
on the coast.
“Wow, this is nice.”
The ocean rolled up onto the miles of beach before the parking lot. This
place just calmed me. I’d come here the summer we’d left high school and it had
been the best therapy. This beach and the ocean was my psychiatrist. I’d come
back every summer since.
I hoped it was gonna work for her too.
I freed the door and as it opened the sound of the ocean swept into the
SUV.
I looked at Lindy.
She was wide-eyed, watching the beach.
“Let’s go get our keys. I’ll get our stuff later.”
She looked at me, uncertainty creeping into her eyes, but she nodded.
I wanted to grip her hand as we walked across the parking lot. There was
a whole minefield of protective energy bubbling around inside me. But it had
blown up in my face before. I was steering clear of too much touching.
The thing with Lindy was she was so tiny it made me want to just put my
arms around her and wrap her up. She was like a precious, breakable doll, five-two,
to my six-one.
I glanced over at her. The ocean breeze flicked her wavy blonde hair
against the curve of her cheek.
Her fingers tucked her hair behind her ear.
I’d wanted to do that for her. There was a hard need to touch her in my
belly. But I’d spent years ignoring that instinct. That was nothing new.
She didn’t look at me. She looked ahead at the apartment block.
She’d won beauty pageants as a kid. Her Mom had been into all that shit,
driving her to loads of contests and Lindy did have the look for that sort of
thing, perfect symmetry.
At high school she’d been full of confidence. At college that had died
for some reason.
She glanced at me, her blue eyes seeming bluer under the clear sky.
“I’ve ordered adjacent places, is that okay? I can ask them to change
them if you want?”
“No, that’s okay.” She nodded.
The apartments were stacked and set out in rows spread along the edge of
the beach. The guy at the desk said ours were on the top floor. The place was
something between a hotel, a motel and cabins, and the rooms ‘slash’ apartments
were accessed via a long hallway, with stairs at either end of the block.
When we got up there, I slid the card key through the lock, then stepped
back and shoved the door open for her to go in. “You can have this one.”
It had a small kitchen and a sofa that turned into a bed. But most
importantly, at the end of the room was a big window that looked out on the
ocean. It had a balcony too.
“I’ll go get your stuff.” I left her in her room. But before I went back
down to the SUV, I went into mine.
Shit. I combed a hand through my hair, then realized I’d fucked it up,
and rubbed it so it spiked again.
It was going to be a hell of a couple of weeks.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Jane is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional Historical and New Adult romance and author of a No.1 bestselling Historical Novel,'The Illicit Love of a Courtesan, as well as a Kindle overall Top 25, bestselling author.
She began her first historical novel at sixteen, but a life full of adversity derailed her as she lives with the restrictions of Ankylosing Spondylitis.
When she finally completed a novel it was because she was determined not to reach forty still saying, I want to write.
Now Jane is writing a Regency series as well as contemporary, new adult, stories and she is thrilled to be giving her characters life in others' imaginations at last.
You might think that Jane was inspired to write by Jane Austen, especially as she lives near Bath in the United Kingdom, but you would be wrong. Jane's favourite author is Anya Seton, and the book which drew her into the bliss of falling into historical imagination was 'Katherine' a story crafted from reality.
Jane has drawn on this inspiration to discover other real-life love stories, reading memoirs and letters to capture elements of the past, and she uses these to create more realistic plots.
'Basically I love history and I am sucker for a love story. I love the feeling of falling in love; it's wonderful being able to do it time and time again in fiction.'
Jane is also a Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development in the United Kingdom, and uses this specialist understanding of people to bring her characters to life.
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