Fight or Flight Read Online Free PDF

needed help.
    The phone rang and she snatched it up. Alan was here, so it had to be Kelsey.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey, Mom! Guess what!” Her voice was breathless and high-pitched. Regan’s heart slammed against her chest. There was only one thing that would make her daughter—any teenage girl—that excited.
    “What?”
    “I totally aced my English lit midterm!”
    Regan slumped against the counter. Thank God. As soon as Kelsey let a man into her life, her mother’s influence would decrease by half. The longer it took to happen, the longer she could hold on to the illusion she could keep Kelsey safe.
    “That’s wonderful, hon!” As Kelsey went on about British poets and bullshit essays, Regan opened the refrigerator and grimaced. There wasn’t much to make for dinner, even with the groceries she’d picked up. Not really caring, she pulled out a carton of eggs. Egg salad sandwiches sounded good enough to her.
    “And Mom, I swear, you’re going to kill me for saying this, but I think I’m in love with him.”
    “What?” Regan realized she’d stopped listening for a crucial moment. “I’m sorry, I got distracted. Please tell me I didn’t hear what I think I heard. Who is this guy?”
    “The football player. Come on, Mom, we’ve talked about him. The guy I crashed into a few weeks ago?”
    Regan remembered. She’d quizzed Kelsey for fifteen minutes about why he’d hit her, what he’d said, who else had been around, until her daughter had practically hung up on her in disgust. She’d made a few mentions in her emails about a guy she’d gone out with a few times, but Regan hadn’t clued in that it was that far along.
    “What’s his name again?”
    “It’s Tom Johnson.” She went on about his being a linebacker and holding school records and hoping to get drafted into the NFL, but Regan hardly heard her. She had a flash memory of Scott’s face, as clear as the last day she’d seen him, and old grief throbbed. She wanted to believe this was a passing thing, Kelsey’s first independent fling. But she remembered too well how it felt to fall in love, real love, and she knew Kelsey was there. Knew it was far too late for her to interfere. She just wished she knew if it was a good thing or a bad thing.
    She pulled a pan out and filled it with water, set it on the stove, and started setting eggs in it, all the while listening to Kelsey rave about how sweet this kid was, even though she’d flattened him.
    “I mean, he did flatten me first, but not many people could knock him down even on the football field, never mind off it.”
    Regan noticed the latch on the screen door was undone, and she crossed the kitchen to slip the hook into the eye. Alan re-entered the room in time to see her do it. He looked displeased, but she didn’t care. She was who she was, and if he couldn’t accept that, too bad.
    As she listened to her daughter babble on about all the great changes in her life, though, she wondered who it was too bad for. Regan had coworkers and staff, a bantering friendliness with her next-door neighbor, and a daughter starting her own life a hundred miles away. That was all, and why? Because of something that happened a long time ago and, despite her readiness, had never happened again.
    They could have found her if they wanted to. She had been afraid to do anything illegal, so her name change had occurred in the courts in Illinois, her first stop after leaving California. She’d moved several times while Kelsey was very young, but once she hit school age Regan was less willing to disrupt her life unless she had to. They’d settled here, in this small town in Ohio, where she worked a legitimate job and paid her taxes and utilities and rent. Constantly alert, she’d been prepared to run at the first sign someone had found them, even after Kelsey’s second freak-out. They never had.
    “I’m happy for you, sweetheart,” she said softly when her daughter paused for a breath.
    “You are?”
    “Of