New Hope, Old Grudges Read Online Anne Malcom

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary Tags Authors: Anne Malcom Advertisement1

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Fear barreled through me as cold crept in from the windows, the doors, the spores in the air. Sure, I’d been in a pretty miserable and depressed place these past few weeks, but I never actually wanted to die.

“You have a family. But that’s never been enough for you. You’ve never seen that.”

My brother’s words echoed against the icy interior of the car. I thought of him. My mother. That squishy little baby. People who loved me. And despite my brother’s anger, he did love me. That I knew.

I’d been so determined to leave New Hope behind, I didn’t realize I was abandoning the people who would be in my corner no matter what.

And if I didn’t get out of this, I’d be hurting them more.

Regret stung like a snake bite.

I had to survive.

That’s all there was to it.

Except that I was pretty sure that me surviving this situation required a miracle. And didn’t those only happen in cheesy Christmas movies?

I must’ve drifted off because the last thing I remembered was being very cold and very mad at myself for actually dying in the place I’d vowed to leave forever.

At least the cemetery wasn’t far. They could just haul me up and throw me in a hole. But the ground was too hard to dig holes. So I’d have to spend time in the chilling drawer of the morgue. Did we even have a morgue?

It wouldn’t matter too much to me anyway. I’d be dead, and I didn’t believe in any kind of afterlife.

Though I was momentarily questioning that belief when I’d gone from freezing cold, exhausted and thinking of my inevitable demise to being in motion and nestled up against something warm and pleasant smelling. It smelled like snow, cedar and leather. And something else. Something woodsy and comforting.

Hair was brushed from my face. “Willow? Can you wake up, baby?”

Baby?

I must’ve been in some kind of afterlife because I was no one’s baby.

BRODY

I’d been in a lot of pretty fucking intense and scary situations. Situations where I was sure I was going to die. Situations where I’d feared my friends would die. I’d watched one of my best buddies take his last breath.

Fear was an old friend, one I thought I’d gotten familiar with.

But nothing prepared me for what I’d felt when I saw the dim headlights of the car in the snowdrift, the vision of Willow’s unconscious body after I’d dug through the snow to open her door.

Her skin was icy to the touch, her limbs like lead as I carried her to my truck, turned the heat up as high as it could go then covered her with the emergency blankets I kept on hand for situations such as this.

I ran my knuckles down Willow’s porcelain cheek. Her lips were tinged blue, her breathing shallow but there. She was breathing.

“Willow?” I murmured, wrapping her tightly with the blankets. “Can you wake up, baby?” I knew I had to get her somewhere warmer than the interior of the truck. She needed to change out of those clothes, get a hot drink. That’s if she wasn’t as far gone as I feared. Then she’d need serious medical attention. I pushed that thought out of my mind. For now.

I needed to get her awake and alert, get her body heat and heart rate up.

Her eyelids fluttered at my words, and my own heart pounded against my chest.

I kept rubbing her body on top of the blankets as she struggled to open her eyes. Once, twice, three times she blinked.

She was groggy, confused, and then, very quickly, she was pissed.

“You,” she croaked. “You are so not the knight in shining armor, so don’t even think about it.”

I wanted to smile. Fuck, this woman. Battling what I really fucking hoped wasn’t serious hypothermia, there was still enough fire in her body to spit at me.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I replied, hand on her face. “You keep being pissed about that, it’ll keep you warm.”

“Don’t you worry, I’m not going to stop being pissed at you.”

“Good.” Without thinking, I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Let’s get you home, then.”

I had made a promise to her mother that I’d get her home.

I just hadn’t said whose.

Though I might’ve been a better man than I was a boy, I still wasn’t the good guy.

WILLOW

I went in and out of consciousness for what felt like hours. It could’ve been minutes, who knew? It was like when you laid down for a twenty-minute power nap in the afternoon then woke in the dark with no idea what day it was.

I remembered the blast of warm air in the truck, blankets, the vibration of the engine.

I remembered being very pissed off to see it was Brody Adams looking down at me, eyes smoldering with concern as he called me baby. What was that about?


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