I Run to You Read Online Free PDF Page A

told himself weeks ago, when he had known
Brook was likely coming home to stay, that the past was the past.
But it never really left him. Time was meaningless since she left.
Emotions were just too damn fresh, and too present, sometimes.
    “Coffee’s done!”
    Shit. Pull it together, dude.
    Coy opened his eyes, smiled at his son’s
grinning face, and followed him into the kitchen.
    The two-bedroom log home had an airy great
room, which was where Levi had been watching TV, and an open
kitchen divided by a bar. He went there, got a mug off a peg, and
poured some of the strong coffee he needed to function.
    Levi jumped up on a stool, on the other side,
his cereal now bowl empty. He always got his own breakfast and was
up at the crack of dawn.
    He was half watching Coy, who leaned against
the counter, and half the time looking back at his cartoons as he
announced, “I don’t think it’s right.”
    “What’s not right?” Coy lowered the cup.
    “That we’re not going to Uncle Mitch’s when
the whole family will be there. I don’t know why we can’t meet Aunt
Madeline’s daughter—and Jett and Remy get to go.”
    “I thought me and you were going to fish.”
Coy had come up with that as a way of subverting this conversation.
Since the Coburns were close, and they always went to each other’s
houses, and when everyone got together for eating, music, and fun,
they were normally a part of it—there was not an easy way to opt
out of Brook’s welcome home for himself and Levi.
    “I like to fish, Dad. But, everyone will be
there. We always go. I don’t mind fishing…. But they’ll be funner
things for both of us going on there.”
    Coy took another sip, straining to think
fast. He did not need to be asked not to show up for Brook’s
reuniting with the clan. He did not need to be told that she was
Madeline’s daughter; so of course, she would be at Uncle Mitch’s
often.
    He figured his presence would create an
uncomfortable situation for her. But he didn’t know about Levi. He
loved Levi like his own soul, and wasn’t sorry for having him. That
did not mean he wasn’t regretful of the circumstances that made
him. Karla had been Brook’s best friend—and though Levi had never
really asked many questions about his mother, thankfully— likely
due to the fact he had so many stand ins with the Coburn women.
Including Ruby, Coy’s step mother, who had kept him a lot while Coy
was with the team, and who still came and got him often, loved
him—Levi would be a very tangible reminder of a very painful
betrayal—his betrayal.
    Levi had Coy’s husky build, was tall for his
age, and a Coburn obviously. But with Karla’s turquoise eyes, and
her curls. He looked at the kid and his heart just swelled.
Nevertheless, because of the hell Karla put himself and the family
through, Coy could not respect her.
    She’d told him, outside the courtroom, that
she’d gotten pregnant by him to more or less sell the kid to
them—knowing they’d pay her to let him raise and keep it when she
threatened to go off and do something drastic. She’d told him that
her Mom screwing up with Tony Singleton was just the push she
needed, but that she’d planned it carefully, been waiting for him
to come outside at the prom. She had wanted to leave town and was
broke, stuck, and if she had to carry a kid nine months to get that
escape, she would.
    Coy drew himself back to the present, saying,
“We can go another time. I figured after we fished, maybe we’d go
into town, catch a movie?”
    Propping his jaw on his fist, Levi gave him
one of those under- the-lashes looks. A slight frown on his cute
face. It was a mumble this time of, “We can do that too, any old
time.”
    Coy opened his mouth, but a tap on the French
doors drew his eyes from Levi to the figure standing there. His son
had already whirled around and jumped off the stool saying, “It’s
Max.”
    His hips still rested against the counter,
Coy watched Brook’s half-brother