Runaway Love - Jodi Flanagan (best finance books of all time txt) 📗

only to find that Ethan was looming over me. I looked at him, his eyes were distant. “Ethan?” He shook his head, and sat down next to me. He didn’t speak to me, he just looked at me. “Ethan?” I tried to get him to snap out of what he was thinking about, and to focus on me. I reached out and gently touched his face. He blinked repeatedly, and looked at me.
“Taya? I think that it’s time that you go to Michael’s room. “ I nodded, and kissed his cheek. I really didn’t want to go to Michael’s room, I didn’t want to deal with him, but Ethan was creeping me out. I was still mad at Michael for ignoring me earlier, but I can’t stay mad at him forever. Ethan walked me over to Michael’s room and stood in front of me, making sure that Michael only saw him. I heard his footsteps approaching the door, and then Michael unlocking the door.
He was still as gorgeous as ever. He answered the door, basically naked. He was bare-chested, and had a towel wrapped around his lower half. I gasped, and couldn’t take my eyes off of his stomach. I noticed his lips twitching; he wanted to smile at me gawking at him. Michael nodded at Ethan and I and opened up the door further, letting us by.
It was a hotel room, similar to Ethan’s, except Michael’s was a little messier. I giggled when I watched Michael try to clean up a bit, and his towel fell. Ethan blocked his eyes with his arm, and tried to block my view of Michael’s butt. I leaned away from his hand, and checked out his ass some more. Michael caught the towel before he turned, and saw my smile. He walked to the bathroom, and shut the door.
“So, why are you two here in my hotel room?” He asked through the bathroom door. I looked at Ethan, and sighed. “I missed you.” I said. Michael opened up the door an inch or two and looked at me. “What was that?” He asked looking deep into my eyes. I sighed again and got closer to him. “I said, I missed you so, I bugged Ethan to bring me back.” He looked at Ethan and Ethan just shrugged, “She hasn’t stopped talking about you since we got into the hotel room.” Shock swept over his face, and his gaze settled on mine. “Really?’ I got even closer to the door, and kissed him eagerly on the lips. I forgot about poor Ethan who was standing behind me, and kissed him. He kissed back, but his mind was trying to keep the door from opening any farther; his towel was gone.
I broke off the kiss, and stepped away from the door. “So, can I stay here for tonight?” He chuckled, “Of course you can. Ethan you can go.” Michael shut the door, which left Ethan and I alone, but in Michael’s hearing range. “Are you going to fine here?” Ethan asked. I nodded, and walked him to the door.
Something unexpected happened right then; blue and red lights were shining through the windows, and we could hear the sirens. Michael must have heard then as well because he came out of the bathroom in just his boxers. He went to the window, and cursed. A big spot light was aimed at the hotel; the cops were here for Michael and the guys, for me.
Chapter 12
My heart was racing as I made the connection. I must have done this, brought this onto Michael, because of that one phone call to Damien. If he ever found out he would surely hate me. I looked at Michael, “They found us.” Michael nodded and he griped the bridge of his nose. “My only question is how they found us? We changed hotels every night and, no one used the hotel phones.” I grimaced on the inside, and he continued. “We didn’t harm anyone. We left your foster family without a hair out of place. Why are they coming after us?” An officer grabbed a loud speaker, “Come out Mr. Santiago, we know you are in there. Come out with your hands up. You should have known we were going to find you, leaving a stream of dead bodies the whole way here.” I looked at Michael shocked. “You killed people?”Michael shook his head, “I would never, and you know that.” He paused a moment; assessing our situation. “Maybe, by a slim chance, they are talking about my father, and not me.” My eyes immediately sought his face, “Your father? Why would he be here?” He just looked at me, and got his pants on. “He wants you, more than anything. He wants you dead, because you are the only living proof of all of the murders he committed.
I gasped, “he wants me dead, after all of these years he still wants me dead.” Michael nodded, “he wants to tie up some loose ends. You were the only one that ever got away from him out of the twenty killings that he has done and only you survived.” I shook my head, “there haven’t been twenty murders. There was only my family, along with three other ones. Not twenty.” Michael put on a shirt, and sat down on the bed to get his shoes on. “He killed twenty people, including the four that you know of. The other ones were people you were close to over the years. The most recent one-“ He looked at me, “you should sit down for this Yaya. I looked from him to Ethan and back again, and shook my head. “Who, who else has he taken from me?” Michael looked at me, sadness covering his face. “He killed Anna.” Hearing those three words felt like a bullet puncturing my skin. No, it couldn’t have been Anna. Not sweet, gentle, caring Anna, I thought to myself. I shook my head, “there has to be some mistake.” Michael was shaking his head before I even finished my sentence. I saw her dead body myself. The sick bastard took pictures of her and sent them to my phone. It was her, Taya.” I fell onto the bed in silence.
At that moment, I vowed to myself that I would never get close to anyone again. I let Anna in when I was only eleven years old. She stood by me when I needed her the most. She helped me weasel out of suspension and expulsion at my schools, she got me into really nice homes in great towns where she believed that I would better myself and get over the deaths of so many people that I let into my heart. I knew that I couldn’t take anymore heart aches. I knew at that moment that I could never fall in love with anyone because they would all get taken from me until Michael’s father was long dead and gone. With a new broken heart I realized that I couldn’t love Damien or even Michael until then. My heart was shattering into a million pieces as, I made these realizations.
Michael and Ethan reached for me at the exact same time, and Ethan pulled back as Michael gave him a death glare. He touched me lightly on the shoulder and said how sorry he was, and I just laughed. I laughed and cried, surprising both of them. I stood up and faced them head on. “You two are so pathetic.” I shouted, not caring if the cops below heard my blow up. “Trying to move in on a young girl that is going through so much, the death of her parents, innocents, and above it all, the only person other than her little sister that she truly ever loved. How dare you, stand in front of me saying you’re sorry! You have no right! You don’t have a clue as to what I went through over the years, the amount of blood and gore that I had to witness because of your father.” I said pointing at Michael. They took a step back away from me, but I wasn’t even close to being done.
“And you,” I said pointing at Ethan, “making moves on a nineteen year old girl, who has two boyfriends, while she is sleeping. How low can you get?” Ethan sent a frightened glance at Michael who turned his head so slowly at Ethan as his mind processed what I had just said. “You made moves onto my girlfriend?” Ethan without missing a beat, held up his hands as Michael got ready to hit Ethan hard in the face. “She obviously didn’t care that much about you or me. If you heard her correctly she did just say that she has two boyfriends, not just one.” Michael lowered his fist and turned towards me. “Two boyfriends?” I nodded, “what you didn’t honestly think that you weren’t the only guy that I had been screwing? You stole me away from my first boyfriend and I needed to get laid and you were here willing enough.” He looked like I just smacked him, I smiled. “To be honest, my actual boyfriend does it better than you.” I said while inspecting my nails. Michael’s face was red from anger, I laughed. “Look at you, getting all upset. You held me prisoner for almost two or three weeks! Do you think that I would fall in love with you just because you screwed me?” Michael opened up his mouth to speak, but silenced himself when he heard approaching footsteps.
I heard three rhythmic beats that were similar to the ones Sam and Damien did to warn each other of their approaching. I smiled, and went to the door. I repeated the beats, and looked through the eyehole. There was Damien, standing in front of multiple cops. I sighed, then I felt rough hands grab my waist and pull me back. I got tense when I saw a knife. “If I cant have you, Yaya no one can. I hope he knows how you feel about him, because you are not going to get the chance to say goodbye to him.” He brought the knife closer to my neck, ready to pull it across my throat and send me back into the arms of my deceased family.
He held the knife so the blade was barely digging into my neck. “Any last words, slut?” I smiled grimly, “Thank you.” He hesitated a moment, then moved the knife from my throat only to stab it in my shoulder. I screamed in pain, I saw the sparkly lights behind my eyelids. In the distance of my now ringing ears, I heard the cops try to break down the door. Michael signaled to Ethan to get the guns. To my surprise he did, he just followed Michael’s orders. I shook my head gently, trying to clear my vision, it only made my headache hurt so much worse. I felt myself drifting away blackness was taking over my vision, then nothing.
Chapter 13
I woke up with a jump, I had a dream that Michael stabbed me. My shoulder was killing me, it hurt so bad, I tried to twist my head around to look at it. Big mistake. My shoulder was covered in my blood, all dried now, and there was a diagonal slit going into my shoulder. It wasn’t a dream, Michael had stabbed me. I smiled; I didn’t think that he had the guts to hurt me, let alone anyone else. I looked around the room, and found that we were in a van, not in the hotel room, or surrounded by cops. When my vision cleared and things weren’t so blurry I took another look around. I saw Michael. He was still wearing his short sleeved blue