REIGN: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

lasagna but we can also do take-out. Love you,
have a good rest of the day!

 
    And with that, I shut my phone off. Remembering something I’d seen
once on Law and Order, I struggled with the case while trying to keep my car
straight on the road. Finally, violently, the back of my phone popped off and I
took the battery out, tossing all the parts of the phone back onto the
passenger seat. Now, I was totally screwed if I needed to find out where the
hell I was, but at least I didn’t have to worry about being tracked.

 
    Unless he could track the car.

 
    Fuck.

 
    Just get to Utah, for now, Gabby, I thought, surprising myself once more by
referring to myself by my childhood nickname. Jeremy didn’t like that name, and
I’d stopped going by it after we started dating. It’s a wonder what a car full
of cash can do for you. What sorts of changes impulsivity can breed. How one
little decision – regardless of whether or not you were even thinking when you
made it – can change every single thing about you, about your life, your
future.

 
    And then, on the flipside, how easy it can be to barrel sideways into
someone’s life when you’re riding high on that decision. How someone will let
you in, only to find out later that you’re bringing a heap of trouble with you.
And how amazing it can be when you find out they don’t care, that they think
you just might be worth it.

 
    But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

 
    The farther and farther I got from the mountains that had been my home
(and, now that I look back on it, my prison) for three years, I started to feel
more and more wild and invincible. Each mile I put between me and Jeremy seemed
to take away an hour that I’d spent under his spell. The bruise above my eye
throbbed. I looked at it in the rearview , and started
to forget why, exactly, I had let him do it to me. Why I’d covered it up.

 
    Well, I’d known why I’d covered it up. I couldn’t exactly go to the
cops. He was the cops. The whole force was friends with him, and I knew that
going to the police would just get me in deeper trouble than ever.

 
    But how could I have stayed through all those nights of crying, all
those empty bottles of concealer, all those warning signs that it wasn’t going
to get better?

 
    Because, really, I’d believed for a long time that things “were going
to get better”. Either I’d figure out just what it was Jeremy wanted from me,
who he wanted me to be, and be able to do it and become that person and we’d
both be happy, or he’d realize I wasn’t ever going to be who he wanted me to be
and give me a break. For three years I’d really, truly believed that, even
though everything was screaming at me that it wasn’t the case.

 
    Love is stupid. Love is stupid, stupid, stupid.

 
    I’m not saying that I went from Rihanna to Beyonce in a matter of an hour and a half, but there was definitely a shift inside me.
I wasn’t the same beat-up little girl that had left the house that morning. I
was one part mad, one part panicked, one part elated, and one part numb.

 
    And, if things went perfectly, I’d be 100% rich and living free in
Argentina – or wherever – by the end of the week.

 
    I just had to get to Utah first.

~ 4 ~

 
    Once the sun started setting, a lot of my confidence and the anger
that had driven me so far began to wane. It was hotter down here, though the
night air still had a bite to it. The Rockies loomed behind me, the desert
stretching out in front. I’d passed Moab, home of Arches national park, and
started heading south. All I knew was that if I kept heading south, I’d hit the
border eventually, and have some semblance of safety.

 
    It was around 9pm; if Jeremy had thought I’d been running late, he probably
knew something was up by now. I hoped, prayed, that his first instinct was that
something had happened to me, not that I’d run off. I hoped that he still
thought I was too stupid and