Freed
Authors: Lynetta Halat
FREED
(Unlovable, #2)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trade- mark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trade- marks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Copyright ©2014 by Lynetta Halat
Edited by Tracey Buckalew
Cover design by © Sommer Stein of Perfect Pear Creative Covers
Photography by © Toski Covey of Toski Covey Photography-Custom Design
All rights reserved. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above copyright owner of this book.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition: January 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
www.lynettahalat.com
Halat, Lynetta.
Used / Lynetta Halat. – 1
st
edition
ISBN-13:
ISBN-10:
1. Freed—Fiction. 2. Fiction—Romance 3. Fiction—Contemporary Romance
A PERSONAL PLEA: PLEASE DON’T PIRATE OR SHARE MY VERY HARD WORK. UPLOADING A FILE TO A SITE OR EVEN FORWARDING A FILE TO A FRIEND IS THEFT.
Table of Contents
Freed
Playlist
A Preview of
Very Bad Things
by Ilsa Madden-Mills
Dedication
For My Saving Grace.
Freed
Playlist
If you’re anything like me, you love music with your books. I hope you enjoy these beautiful songs that embody so much of this book. You can listen to the playlist on
Freed on Spotify
for free.
human – Christina Perri
F**kin’ Perfect – P!nk
The Freshmen – The Verve Pipe
Love Bites -Live – Def Leppard
Hate Me – Blue October
Trouble – Ray LaMontagne
Don’t Close Your Eyes – Keith Whitley
Try A Little Tenderness – Otis Redding
jar of hearts – Christina Perri
What You Wanted – OneRepublic
She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5
Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers
Do I Move You? – Nina Simone
It’s Your Love – Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
I Hold On – Dierks Bentley
Stay – Flordia Georgia Line
Halo – Beyonce
Never Stop – SafetySuit
I Lived – OneRepublic
Kings and Queens – Thirty Seconds to Mars
Chapter One
Denver
“
T
ELL ME WHAT
you feel,” he demands.
My mouth’s gone completely dry, so I have to swallow hard and wet my lips before I can speak. Even then, I don’t know how I manage, “I feel … good.”
“Good?” The smile in his voice burns so bright I can see it through my blindfold. “You can do better than … good.”
I search my feeble mind, grasping at words that will please him. I am nothing if I can’t please him. He’s made damn sure of it. “Your voice scratches across my skin like charcoal, and I am only what you sketch me to be. Your scent wraps around me like a winter’s night, making me long for the blanket of your skin, yet my body blazes from your withheld touch.”
“Very good,” he praises.
I imagine him standing over me, gazing down on me like he owns me …
because he does
. He’s shirtless, in only his faded, button-fly Wranglers. Sun-kissed skin that glistens from the sweat of exertion. Eyes that dance with excitement like the rays of the sun on the sea. Full lips that beckon me to kiss him. Just imagining him has me squirming. Well, as much as I able in my current position. “I wish I could see you.”
“All in good time, little fighter,” he soothes. “You’re doing so well.”
Suddenly, his lips hover over mine, but I know better than to close the distance. “Kiss me,” he commands.
Hmm … my pleasure
…
“That must be one helluva dream,” Ransom says. Only it doesn’t sound like Ransom. More like … Maggie?
Groaning at the ill-timed interruption, I crack my eyes open to find my roommate lying on her side, staring at me with a Cheshire-cat grin.
“Ohhh … Ransom,” she mimics right before my pillow slaps her in the face. Chuckling, she tosses it back at me. “Damn, Denver. If that man can make you dream like that, what the hell are you doing holed up in this dorm room with me? It’s been three days.”
Shoving the pillow under my head, I regard her grin for a moment before trying to put it into words. “I just needed time to think it all over.”
“What is there to think over? You’re crazy about him. He’s crazy about you. Go for it, girl.”
I so want to go for it. I want to drain my head of all the bad, all the fucked up, all the ugly. Wanting and doing … two entirely different things. My biggest hang up? Feeling Greer’s loss like a wide chasm that threatens to swallow me whole.
“Maggie, something’s holding me back. It feels like unfinished business with Greer. I know we’re done, but it still feels … well,
unfinished
. How can I ever move on and have something healthy while that’s eating at me?” One decision I had made over the last few days? I deserve better than an unhealthy, toxic relationship, and so does Ransom. I understand that fear prompted him to make the offer of an arrangement with me. And if his words hold true, I think he’s up for more than an “arrangement,” anyway. If that’s the case, then we owe it to ourselves to be more mature about it.
He didn’t just find me at the bottom of the stairs the night my entire life changed. He’d found me at rock bottom. That week, I’d had moment after moment of trying to get up and dust myself off, only to be constantly stumbling from the residual debris that kept coming at me. And just before Ransom sat me down and had his “talk” with me, I had been buried under a pile of boulders. You know what they say—the only way to go from here is up. I’m digging myself out, getting my ass up, and doing something about my issues once and for all.
Maggie’s fidgeting brings me back to my room. She chews on her lip before sitting up, her bright, green eyes clouding over as she blinks rapidly. “Denver, I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to think I betrayed you, but you wouldn’t talk to me, and I—”
Slinging my legs from the bed, I sit up quickly, my foggy state of arousal quickly chased away by a mounting panic. Fear pounds in my veins and rushes so swiftly to my head that I feel lightheaded. “What did you do?” I rasp. Paranoia sweeps over me.
My God, can I trust anyone?
Ransom. You can trust Ransom, a voice whispers. And Austin. You can trust Austin. And Maggie, I thought, yet here we are.
She puts a hand up, indicating for me to slow down my raging thoughts. “I didn’t do anything. I spoke to someone though. Someone who loves you and adores you and misses you so much that I felt his pain like it was my own,” she confesses, rubbing her hand over her heart like the pain is present even now.
“You spoke to Greer,” I choke out.
“Yes, I did. I know you didn’t want to talk to me about what happened. But after that night you tried to self-sabotage, I couldn’t stand by and be helpless any longer. I tried to talk to Ransom, but he wouldn’t give me anything to work with.” She breathes in deeply and holds my gaze. “Greer told me what he did.”
Oh, God. Oh, God. I’m going to be sick. “Wh—what did he tell you?” I stammer.
She abandons her bed, coming over to sit beside me. “He told me how you used each other. How you hurt you each other. How he’s the only person you’ve been with.” She pauses, grabbing my hand in hers. “How he started those rumors about you. I’ve never seen a person so sorry. You need to talk to Greer. It’s time for you two to stop hurting each other, and the only way that’s going to stop is for you start healing. There’s too much unsaid, too much unresolved, for you to move forward without talking it out. You two hold the power to do that for each other.”
If he told her that he’d raped me, wouldn’t she say so? Was that act still too raw for him to address? Is his betrayal less painful in his eyes? Because his betrayal is what has me in knots—lying about me, ruining my reputation, turning the whole school against me. Ultimately, he manipulated an already fucked-up situation so that he could play the hero, and I had trusted him more than anyone, beyond anything. In actuality, he’d become the only person I thought I
could
trust. To know that I’d been that wrong about him, about us, even though I wasn’t an innocent by any stretch of the imagination, makes me question everything.
The date rape? I’ve already forgiven him for that, even if it still hurts. I’ve replayed that night over and over in my head. Both drunk. Both hurt. Both wanting something so badly. Something we can never have. All that, coupled with the way in which we usually went about our hooking up—resulted in a fiery concoction. That didn’t make it right, I know that, because he should have stopped no matter how far we’d already gone. He never should have kept going while I was that devastated and, quite literally, hating him. But knowing the mindfuck I’d subjected him to made it all less … black and white. Now, a shroud of gray rests over our entire relationship.
