Forgetting August (Lost & Found) Read Online Free PDF

know, but perhaps you need to hear him say the words as well. See his face as he says them,” she suggested.
    The idea of seeing him again made the air seem to dissipate around me. What would he look like? What would he say? And how would I react?
    My hands shook just thinking about it. It scared the living hell of out me.
    And yet, a small part of me still wanted to go. To get in the last word maybe, or to see him weak and fragile in a hospital gown…or maybe just to see him after all this time.
    That was what scared me most of all. That after everything, there was still a fraction of me somewhere deep down that missed him as much as the rest of me hated him.
    *  *  *
    I’d finished up my session with Tabitha and had been staring at my cold cup of coffee for hours when Ryan walked in after a long day at the office.
    Cold coffee…such a waste.
    “Did the coffee do something to piss you off?” he asked, loosening his tie as he set his keys and wallet into the glass dish on the counter.
    “I’m thinking about going to the hospital,” I blurted out, unable to look up at him. I took the coward’s way out and instead chose to continue reading the words on my mug over and over again.
    Just call me Sassenach . I loved this mug. It usually made me smile and giggle like a giddy school girl. Ryan would just groan and roll his eyes at my obsessive fascination with a certain Scottish book series.
    The door to our bedroom slammed, telling me exactly how he felt about my remark.
    Obviously that wasn’t happening today.
    Moments later, he reappeared, ready to fight. Sleeves pushed up, with his eyes set straight ahead, he was ready for business. Ryan never walked away when it came to me. I’d pushed him away more times than I could count, fleeing arguments and needing air more times than I could count, and yet he still came back.
    He’d always fought for me.
    “Why, Everly, why? After everything we’ve been through together, can you at least do me the courtesy of giving me an answer?”
    “I need to see him.”
    The look of devastation on his face was like a blow to my gut, making me feel like the worst kind of human on the planet. If there was an award for that type of thing, I was pretty sure I’d be in a three-way tie with whoever invented the selfie stick and those pants that look like jeans but really are pajamas. That’s just all kinds of wrong.
    “I need him to hear it from my own lips that it’s over between us—that I’ve moved on, that I survived after everything he put me through. I don’t want him interfering in our lives, Ryan.”
    “He doesn’t deserve it,” he said through gritted teeth.
    “No, he doesn’t. But I do,” I pressed, my emotions taking over as I gazed up at him.
    He ran his hands through his wavy blond locks and finally nodded. “Okay.”
    I went into his arms, letting him believe he’d just won an argument and granted me some sort of blessing over the situation.
    “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” Tabitha had once told me when I’d come to her complaining about the way Ryan left the seat up and never washed the dishes. I guess this fell in that category.
    I would have gone to the hospital regardless of his opinion on the matter. I needed this for me. Having his agreement obviously made the situation easier, but by no means swayed my decision.
    I would never be owned again.

Chapter Four
    August
    I n the few days since my miraculous awakening, I’d managed to make several leaps and bounds toward my eventual recovery and release.
    Release. This was what Dr. Lawrence had called it.
    Soon I would be released back into the world. Like a fish, or a wild animal set free into the wild again.
    “What will I do?” I’d asked, like a puppy looking to its mother for guidance.
    “Whatever you want,” he’d suggested.
    Whatever I wanted… The thought lingered in my mind like a loose thread in the wind. What did I want? How would I even know?
    What I’d learned over the last