Learning to Breathe Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

everything? God, she should have never come
here. She should have taken Maddie up on the offer to hide in the
mountains, where she’d have been alone.
    Other than her ex, Maddie
was the one person who Bayleigh had trusted enough to tell about
the panic attacks and nightmares. And he didn’t care. He blamed her
for the whole mess. Maddie had tried to get her to talk to someone
in the hospital, but Bayleigh just wanted to get her knee taken
care of and escape. She had hoped getting away from there would allow her to just bury it and forget. But
even halfway around the world, the fears chased her.
    As a tear slid down her cheek, she turned on
her side and curled into a fetal position and tucked her hand under
her cheek. She’d call Maddie later. Maybe she could still join her
in Kentucky, with her family. Once her knee recovered from this
little set-back and she’d seen her brother, she could leave and
keep running.

 

     
    AS SOON AS JACK LEFT BAYLEIGH’S room, he went
to his home office and started searching the Internet for
information about her. Her reactions whenever he got too close to
her and the way she was hyper-aware of every single movement he
made, he would bet his monthly disability check he got from the
Army on her having been a victim of some kind of abuse. The
question he wanted answered right now was by whom and for how long.
His fingers tapped against the keyboard as he typed in her name and
waited for the information to appear.
    He was amazed at the amount of information
that popped up on his screen, just from her name alone. It seemed
as if the majority of the band’s success wasn’t given to the band
itself, but the strength of the music they played. And she wrote
the majority of their music, according to most of the articles he
read. She was quite the talented songbird, it seemed.
    He finally stumbled across the information he
was looking for. He could feel the anger simmering under the
surface as he skimmed the article, before going back and reading it
in more detail. He wondered if Jason knew. And then remembering the
slight hesitation in Jason’s answer when he’d asked about why she
was skittish. He figured Jason had done his own Google
searches.
    She’d been stalked by some crazy bastard.
He’d broken into her apartment. She’d managed to get out of the
apartment with a few bruises from being ‘slapped around,’ according
to the article. Her neighbors had heard her and called the police.
And to top it all off, it had been the owner of the bar where
they’d been performing since going to England.
    No wonder Bayleigh looked like she hadn’t
slept in a month. He was guessing she hadn’t slept in a year. It
also explained the trust issues.
    He exited the page he’d
found the article on and went back to Google, typing in stalking victims this
time. Domestic abuse and stalking weren’t his forte when it came to
the law. Hell, those types of cases didn’t come up too often in
Waketon. And if they did, people tended to use the ‘good-ole-boy’
system to take care of it. But it did happen every once in a blue
moon, and he always referred the cases to attorneys out of Austin
or San Antonio. Bigger cities would have better resources to help
those victims. Plus he didn’t want to screw up in court and cause
more damage.
    Shit. Now what the hell do I
do? I can’t just tell her I looked her up on the Internet and
invaded her privacy. He pushed back from
the desk and with a heavy sigh, shutting down the computer. His
stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t had anything for dinner
yet.
    Glancing at the clock, he saw that his
houseguest had been asleep for over an hour. Deciding now was a
good time to bring her bags inside, he headed outside to grab her
luggage and took it back to her bedroom. He opened her bedroom door
just enough to set everything just inside of it; she didn’t even
flinch as he set everything down. After that, he headed back out to
the kitchen, trying to remember what he