Make Me Forever Read Online Free PDF

into a panic. “You didn’t cost me my life. You
gave
it to me. Don’t you get that? Defying Emmitt and fighting him was the defining moment of my life. I would have never had the courage to do it, if I didn’t have you to do it
for
.” He hesitated. “You know he’s dead, right?”
    He could tell by her blank expression she didn’t.
    “He died in prison two years ago from a heart attack.”
    She hugged him again, and for a strained moment, neither of them spoke. He clutched her tight to him, feeling the indescribably sweet beat of her heart against his.
    “I can’t believe this is happening,” she gasped after a moment. “You look so different. You
are
so different . . . and yet, you’re
not
. I felt so close to you from the beginning, even though I couldn’t figure out why. I’ve been thinking more about Jake—about you—than I have since I was a teenager. I kept dreaming about being with him . . . you. I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me—”
    He pulled her tighter against him when she shook with emotion. For a wild moment, they were those two ragged kids all over again, so desperate to touch each other, so needy to affirm their bond and to know that they weren’t alone in a vast, scary world. He just held her while she cried, trying his best to absorb her grief, her disbelief . . . and yes, her joy. He sensed her stunned happiness in the way she continued to touch him frantically, as though she were trying to reassure herself of the reality of him. It was her anxious touch that tore at him more than anything.
    “I don’t understand . . . and I want to so badly,” she said wetly. “There was never any car accident?”
    “Car accident?” he asked, leaning back and peering at her face, puzzled.
    “They told me that you’d been killed while you were in a car accident with a friend of your grandma Rose’s. That’s what they said. They told me when we went back to Georgetown, after Emmitt’s sentencing.”
    He stared at her, stunned. “I was never in a car accident. I was transferred to a temporary foster home in Charleston after Grandma Rose died that October. But I was never in an accident.”
    He’d seen her glaze-eyed expression before. She was in shock. Maybe he was, too, come to think of it.
    “Your parents must have told you I was dead because they were worried about you. It was after you went back with them to Georgetown that you started having those panic attacks, right? Maybe your dad thought that if you got letters from me, or if we insisted on seeing each other, it would remind you of your kidnapping. Maybe he thought you wouldn’t be able to heal if I was in your life.”
    “No,” she whispered, shaking her head adamantly. Another tear bounced down her cheek, and he dried it with his thumb. “I didn’t start having those panic attacks until after they told me you were dead. I was inconsolable, Jake.
Jacob
.
That’s
why I turned into such a mess.”
    She squeezed him tight again. He hugged her back, struggling to wrap his head around the fact that Harper McFadden not only had never forgotten him, but that she’d mourned his loss even more than he’d suffered hers.

Chapter Four
    She couldn’t believe her parents had done it. They’d witnessed firsthand how attached she’d grown to Jake Tharp. They knew how she owed him her life, and how close they’d become on their escape from Emmitt. The contrast of her love for them, her grief over their sudden deaths, and her disbelief that they’d intentionally lied to her about Jake left her feeling ripped wide-open.
    And increasingly, angry. Not just at her parents. At Jacob.
    He must have noticed her inconsolable state, because he abruptly stood and announced that he was going to have Lisa bring them something to eat.
    “You’re pale. I think we need some fuel if we’re going to continue this conversation,” he said grimly, picking up the house phone.
    “I don’t want anything to eat,” Harper