Because You Loved Me Read Online Free PDF

more. Maybe she wants a bottle of wine?
    Once again, no answer. But Chris wasn’t alarmed by Jeanne’s sudden absence from the house. “I truly thought that she was just busy. Drew was always going somewhere, doing something. It occurred to me that Jeannie was perhaps dropping him off at a friend’s, or taking him out somewhere in town.”
    She could also be across the street or at a neighbor’s house next door talking. Maybe she took off to the store.
    The road to Jeanne’s was an autopilot drive for Chris—one he had traveled so many times throughout the past three years he couldn’t count. His car, he jokingly said, drove him there; he didn’t have to think about where he was going.
    Closer to the house, Chris stopped at a 7-Eleven convenience store located directly in back of Jeanne’s house. He picked up a bottle of soda. It took him approximately four minutes to walk into the store and get back to his car. More out of habit than any other reason, he picked up his cell phone one more time to check if Jeanne had called.
    She hadn’t.
    Chris looked out across the street from the 7-Eleven. Huh? From the parking lot, he could see Jeanne’s car parked in her driveway.
    She was definitely home.

C HAPTER 7
     
    Nicole and Billy didn’t stay too long at Leda Lanes playing pool. Nor had they hung out at Bruster’s Ice Cream shop down the street for more than a few minutes. At intervals between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M ., they sat in the parking lot of 7-Eleven directly behind Nicole’s house, wondering how they were going to convince Jeanne that Billy wasn’t leaving New Hampshire alone.
    Two kids desperate to be together. Beneath the adolescent image of their relationship, there were perhaps frames of good intentions, yet they just couldn’t get around their own selfishness. They focused on the negative, regularly asking themselves why nobody understood the love they shared wasn’t some sort of fleeting high-school romance that could end with a simple good-bye peck on the cheek? Nicole wasn’t about to stand there like a “good girl” at the end of her driveway and wave to Billy as he left for Connecticut, not knowing when or if she’d ever see him again. Jeanne had to understand. Why was she being so darn stubborn about it all? How many kids could say they found true love? Billy had spent the past five days at the house. Besides a few arguments Nicole and Jeanne had had, Billy’s stay had been pleasant. Jeanne had even mentioned to Chris how uncomplicated the week had been. He wasn’t John-Boy Walton, but he wasn’t a bully or punk, either. Billy Sullivan seemed “OK.”
    Jeanne adored Nicole and wanted only what was best for her. It was never about Billy’s attitude, behavior or goals in life. It hadn’t mattered that he was set to graduate from high school next year with honors and continue a career at McDonald’s as a line-cook manager. What mattered more than anything to Jeanne was that Nicole had two years of high school left herself—and she was going to damn-well finish them without complication or meddling from some kid living one hundred miles away in Connecticut. It was that simple.
    Throughout the early part of that evening, while biding Billy’s time, Nicole was entirely confused and torn about what to do. She wanted to approach her mother one last time. Confront her and plead with her. Ask her why she was being so bullheaded. This last night together with Billy was perhaps reminiscent of the first time Nicole met Billy in person, after speaking to him online and over the phone for two months. It was August 2002. Nicole had somehow managed to convince Jeanne to drive her to Willimantic. Jeanne agreed, giving into pleas of “Please, Mom…I need to see him,” but demanded she chaperone the eight-hour visit. When they left Connecticut later that day, Nicole knew then what she had always believed: Billy was the one. There was no doubt. She was hopeless when they pulled out of Billy’s