Run Away With Me Read online

  Run Away with Me

  Taylor Holloway

  Copyright © 2018 by Taylor Holloway

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Also by Taylor Holloway

  Lone Star Lovers

  Admit You Want Me - Ward

  Kiss Me Like You Missed Me - Cole

  Lie with Me - Lucas

  Run Away with Me - Jason

  For fans of exciting, romantic mysteries full of twists and turns, check out my Scions of Sin series!

  Bleeding Heart - Alexander

  Kiss and Tell - Nathan

  Down and Dirty - Nicholas

  Lost and Found - David

  Contents

  About This Book

  Prologue

  1. Wendy

  2. Wendy

  3. Jason

  4. Wendy

  5. Wendy

  6. Jason

  7. Wendy

  8. Jason

  9. Wendy

  10. Jason

  11. Wendy

  12. Jason

  13. Wendy

  14. Jason

  15. Wendy

  16. Jason

  17. Wendy

  18. Jason

  19. Wendy

  20. Jason

  21. Wendy

  22. Wendy

  23. Wendy

  24. Jason

  25. Jason

  26. Wendy

  27. Jason

  28. Jason

  29. Wendy

  30. Jason

  31. Wendy

  32. Wendy

  33. Jason

  34. Jason

  35. Jason

  36. Wendy

  37. Jason

  38. Jason

  39. Wendy

  40. Jason

  41. Jason

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon:

  Special Teaser

  Also by Taylor Holloway

  Our small town wasn't enough for Jason, so he left to conquer the music world. Now he’s back to conquer me.

  Jason and I both dreamed of escaping our tiny town, and those dreams brought us together.

  I was the wholesome cheerleader and Jason was the hot, older bad boy I couldn't resist.

  Everyone but me thought Jason would never leave the junkyard where he'd been born.

  Everyone was wrong.

  Now I’m a waitress trying to avoid marrying the guy my conservative parents picked out for me and he’s a real-life rock star.

  There may be no place in Jason’s life for the girl my parents want me to be. But he's always had an exceptional talent for convincing me to break the rules...

  Run Away With Me is a standalone second chance, rock star romance featuring a bold alpha hero his sweet and sexy heroine.

  Prologue

  Jason

  “What did I do wrong?” I asked Ms. May. My eyes felt hot and they were stinging, but I wouldn’t cry in front of her.

  You didn’t do anything wrong Jason. You aren’t in trouble.” She shook her head at me and continued to walk me down the hall.

  It sure felt like I was in trouble. I wished I could be better. I tried really hard in class, but it was never enough.

  “I don’t wanna’ to go back to Mrs. Thompson’s class. I wanna’ be a third grader. How long do I have to stay there?”

  “I’m not sure Jason. Everybody learns at their own pace,” Ms. May told me as we walked through the hallway to Mrs. Thompson’s room. She was smiling and walking quickly like she was excited. I tried to keep up. “We just want to see if this is going to be a better fit for you until you get all your letters straight and your phonics down.” Ms. May wasn’t always so nice to me. I knew she was only being nice because she was happy that I wasn’t going to be in her class anymore. “Don’t worry,” she added as we got to the door, “you can still play with all your friends at recess.”

  What friends? All the kids say I’m stupid and my family is trash. I kept the thought to myself, even though it was true. Grownups always got angry when you pointed out when they were making things up. Especially teachers, and they made up more things than all the other grownups combined.

  “Here’s your new student,” Ms. May said to Mrs. Thompson. Ms. May was happy; Mrs. Thompson was not. She was frowning so big that her bushy eyebrows made one long, dark line across her forehead. It looked like one of those furry caterpillars. My mom said those kinds of caterpillars were poisonous. Maybe Mrs. Thompson was poisonous. I bet she was. Ms. May took one look at Mrs. Thompson, patted me on the arm, spun, and disappeared out the door.

  “Welcome back to second grade, Jason,” Mrs. Thompson said to me. “What are we going to do with you?”

  I knew that she didn’t really want me to answer her, so I just stood there and shrugged. Mrs. Thompson hated me, and I hated her back even more. All summer long I’d been excited to have a different teacher. I thought maybe it would be different this year. But it wasn’t. Even though I tried really hard, Ms. May thought I was so dumb she put me back with Mrs. Thompson.

  I wondered if I’d be in second grade forever. Mrs. Thompson looked like she wondered that too.

  “Let’s put you in with the giraffe group reading circle,” Mrs. Thompson told me, drawing me over to a familiar corner of the room. “You remember the giraffe group from last year, don’t you?” She was using the fake-nice voice that adults used all the time on me. They thought I was too dumb to know the difference between real nice and fake nice.

  I didn’t roll my eyes at her, but I wanted to. “Yes ma’am.”

  The giraffe group was the stupid group. Mrs. Thompson used animal names, but it wasn’t hard to figure out her plan. She’d divided up the class into four groups. The lions were the smartest, the elephants were the second best, then the zebras, and last, the giraffes.

  I didn’t know any of the kids in the classroom. They all looked smaller than me, though. That made sense. They were all seven and I was almost ten. At least that was good. Maybe they would leave me alone.

  “Bobby, Wendy, Brett, Samantha, this is Jason. He’s going to join your group, ok?”

  “Is he in our class now?” one of the girls asked.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Thompson. She still sounded angry. The girl didn’t ask any other questions.

  “Does that mean one of us gets to be a zebra instead?” a boy asked hopefully.

  Mrs. Thompson blinked. “Oh yes. You have too many now, don’t you? Ok Brett, you can go join the zebras.”

  Brett looked happy. The other giraffe kids watched him go. They looked jealous. Once he was gone they stared at me, but I didn’t look at them. I just sat down on the carpet. The giraffe kids had been taking turns reading a book that I already knew from memory, but I didn’t join in when it was my turn to read. I didn’t even look up. I just stared down at the ground in front of me. After a second, the other giraffes started reading again, ignoring me.

  Good.

  I was learning that it was better if other kids were afraid of me or ignored me. I would be lonely, but at least they wouldn’t tease me. A tap on my shoulder almost started me. I shifted my gaze from my dirty sneakers to a pair of clean, pink shoes with lacey bobby socks. One of the giraffe girls didn’t get the message. The others kept reading, ignoring us both.

  “Hi, I’m Wendy Paxton,” she said. “Your name is Jason?” She said her ‘s’ like it was a ‘th’. It sounded really funny and made my name sound like ‘Jathon’. I looked up at her in surprise.

&nb
sp; My grandma had a Christmas decoration that she’d bought from the Hallmark store in downtown Lubbock. It was her favorite. She said it was really expensive and I wasn’t ever allowed to touch it. It was this little blonde angel with curly yellow hair and giant blue eyes, putting the star on a Christmas tree. Wendy Paxton looked just like that Christmas angel doll. She was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Except that she was missing both of her two front teeth.

  I nodded at her. My mouth wasn’t working. My heart had started to beat really loud and hard. Wendy smiled at me with her toothless smile and that just made it worse. I felt dizzy like that one time I held my breath too long. All girls were supposed to be gross. Even I knew girls had cooties.

  Maybe this is what cooties feel like. It was kind of a weird feeling, but it wasn’t exactly painful. I liked it. I felt light like a balloon and I wanted to laugh and smile. I wondered why everybody said cooties were so bad. I was pretty sure that I liked having cooties. A lot.

  “It’s ok if you don’t like this story,” she said. “We can read a different one. But we have to read or else we’ll be giraffes forever. Giraffes are the stupid group, just so you know. But don’t let Mrs. Thompson know that you know. It makes her mad.” Wendy frowned.

  I knew I shouldn’t talk to her. That she would only figure out I was dumb and poor and then not like me, but I couldn’t stop my mouth. I also couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “It’s not that. The story is ok.” I wanted to keep from telling her the truth, but I couldn’t. “All the letters look the same to me.”

  She blinked. Her eyes were a real bright blue. I’d only seen that eye color one time before when I found a pregnant Siamese cat under a car. My mom made us take her to the pound because she said we didn’t need more cats, but not before I named her. I named her Sky because of her eyes. I wished I could have kept her. She was a nice cat.

  “I can teach you,” Wendy told me. She smiled big again. The gap between her teeth was funny looking, but one of her grown-up teeth was coming in on the right. It was a little, white stub. She would be even prettier when she had all her teeth. “If you want.”

  “You won’t be able to help me,” I said. My voice was sad. I wished I could be quiet, but I couldn’t. It was like she was using her cootie magic on me to make me talk.

  “I can try. But only if you want.” She looked down at her book. “Maybe I’ll be a teacher one day. My dad says I should be.”

  “You’re too pretty and nice. You shouldn’t be a teacher.” My mouth was out of control. I felt my cheeks turning red. It was true though. There were no pretty or nice teachers at our school. They were all mean, grumpy, and old.

  Her cheeks turned pink. “That’s a nice thing to say.” She looked around to check that the teacher was on the other side of the classroom. “I don’t really want to be a teacher, you know. I wanna’ be a princess.”

  I nodded. That made way more sense. She looked much more like a princess than a teacher. I wasn’t sure how someone got a job as a princess, but I bet Wendy could do it. She was so pretty. Just like the Christmas doll.

  “Do you really not want my help with the letters?” Wendy asked, looking back at her book. Her smile was gone. “It took me a real long time to learn, too. That’s why I’m a giraffe and not a lion. Maybe if I help you learn, Mrs. Thompson will like us, and we can both at least be zebras.”

  I worried that she would think I didn’t like her if I said no, even though I didn’t think I could learn. I’d never be a zebra. I knew I was gonna’ be a giraffe all year, for the second time. “You don’t have to help me,” I told her. “But you can if you want.”

  She smiled like she’d won a prize. I felt like I’d won something too.

  Ten years later…

  The good thing about living in a junkyard is that when you need a part for your car, you don’t have to drive to the junkyard. You can just walk out the door into your regular yard. Which happens to be full of junk.

  Woof! Woof! Woof!

  The other good thing about living in a junkyard is the company. Most of it walks on four legs and not two. Butch—possibly the world’s most terrifying-looking-but-ultimately-harmless pit bull—gazed up at me adoringly from his one intact eye. Butch was followed by his cowardly brother, Spike, and ancient mother, Snoopy, along with Mario and Luigi, a pair of grizzled tortoise shell cats. The cats had somehow convinced themselves they were also junkyard pit bulls and were living their best life protecting it. I’d arranged for a friend to take care of my little pack, but I’d miss them dearly. They were all the family I had left.

  “Hey guys, wanna’ help me find a new solenoid? It’s the last thing I need. Y’all wanna’ go on one last adventure with me?”

  The dogs drooled and wagged their tails excitedly. The cats slow blinked, purred, and twined around my ankles. I interpreted all that as an enthusiastic yes.

  “Great! Come on then.” I started off toward a recently wrecked SUV.

  “Can I tag along too? Or do you not even want to say goodbye?” The voice behind me was soft and feminine. It was also full of pain.

  Shit.

  Wendy was wearing her red and white cheerleading outfit. She was the head cheerleader this year and ought to be at practice. Apparently, my plan to slink off before she knew about it hadn’t worked. I’d always been so transparent to her.

  “Wendy, I—”

  “You were really going to sneak off without saying anything else to me, weren’t you?” Her big, blue eyes started to fill up with tears. One escaped down her pale cheek. It physically hurt me to see her cry. I’d been in many much less painful fistfights.

  I didn’t know what to say. Before I could even come up with something, I was reaching for her helplessly. She melted against me, her soft curves and skimpy clothing setting my heart racing. I loved that goddamn cheerleading uniform. I especially loved putting her on all fours, peeling that tiny skirt up and then…

  “Wendy, I’ve got to go,” I whispered into her soft, sweet smelling hair. Her hairspray had glitter in it. It was going to be all over my face and chest, but I didn’t care.

  “Don’t leave me. Please Jason. Don’t go.” She held onto my shoulders like her heart was breaking. I’d never hated myself more than I did at that moment. Which was really saying something because I had self-loathing to spare.

  We’d been around and around on this in the past few months. The truth was that this was the best thing for us both. I was twenty years old and already a failure of a human being. Wendy was seventeen and full of hope and potential.

  My life was going nowhere. I couldn’t find a job in this godforsaken town. I was a borderline illiterate high school dropout with no skills and a questionable work ethic. I spent an enormous amount of time smoking pot and playing the guitar, which was resulting in me getting pretty good at the guitar, but also a reputation for being a useless drug addicted freak. Even the McDonald’s and the Walmart told me fuck off. Unless I wanted to live the rest of my life here in the junkyard, I had to go.

  Wendy needed me gone, too. She had a future that looked a lot better when I wasn’t in it. Wendy was a Paxton, part of the richest and most respected family in town. If our town had royalty, it would be the Paxton family. Her family wanted her to go to college and make something of herself. They hated me with a fiery passion, but they had grudgingly tolerated me while Wendy was in high school. Now that she was going to graduate, they’d begun to make their disapproval more apparent. I knew they were right to hate me. Wendy deserved so much more than me.

  “We can go together,” Wendy pleaded. “I’ll go with you tonight. We can run away forever if that’s what you want.”

  I’d never understood what she saw in me. From the moment we met, Wendy had acted like I was worthy of her attention and affection. It wasn’t just me that was baffled by it, either. The whole town expressed disbelief and confusion (politely to her and rudely to me, naturally). Wendy was popular, beautiful, kind, and lovely. I was stupid, poor, a
nd lazy. I wasn’t even athletic in the traditional sense. The only reason I had any muscles at all was because I did a lot of lifting of heavy shit in the junkyard and a lot of running away from the local cops.

  “You have to stay here,” I told her. “You have to graduate from high school, go to college, and have a good, normal life. A real life. You know I can’t give you what you deserve.”

  “I don’t want what I deserve,” Wendy insisted. “I want better than that. I want you.”

  She didn’t know how ridiculous that statement even was. In the movies, the guy from the wrong side of the tracks and the rich girl from the nice family can get together and live happily ever after. But this wasn’t a feel-good movie. This was my shitty life. I had to leave Wendy behind for her own good before I rubbed off on her any more than I already had.

  I’d already thoroughly corrupted her. I’d had my hand up her skirt since she was fourteen, sixty-nine’d with her at fifteen, fucked her pussy at sixteen, fucked her ass at seventeen, and gotten her drunk and high about a thousand times. We’d fucked every way I could come up with (and I was surprisingly creative and tremendously depraved). But the final straw, the thing that made me finally wake up, was that I’d nearly gotten her pregnant.