Read Online Any Way You Want Me by Yuwanda Black - Free Book Online

Love hurt. It was cruel. It wasn't kind. It wasn't loyal, or it was loyal
to the wrong people.
     
               
Sitting on a bench in Central Park on this sunny, spring day, a butterfly
landed close to him, providing a much-needed break from reflecting on his
tortured past.
     
               
It flapped its colorful wings slowly back and forth, as if it was content to
just enjoy the warmth of the sunshine. Gatlin stared at it. He'd never observed
a butterfly before. Ever … just like he'd never seen and felt real love before
… ever.
     
               
Until Kylie.
     
               
I can't lose her ,
he thought. I just can't.
     
                The
butterfly took flight as he stood to leave.

Chapter
12: To Believe in Love
     
               
" I believe in love — and I won't let anybody take that dream away from
me." Kylie's words reverberated over and over again in Gatlin's head
as he lay in bed that night.
     
               
Could he start to believe in love too? Had he already started to? He loved
Kylie; he knew that for sure. But he'd never connected it to believing in the
concept of this thing called love, which had only caused so much grief in his
life.
     
               
Why hadn't his mother left? If she had, she might still be alive and he
wouldn't have been shuffled from foster home to foster home as he grew up. He
might have a relationship with his father, who was still serving time in prison
for her murder.
     
               
This thing called love had figuratively killed everything a person was supposed
to hold sacred in life, especially a child. It had destroyed his sense of
security. It had skewed his knowledge of what was right and wrong. It had
ripped away his ability to love. It had literally killed his family.
     
               
And then Kylie had come along …
     
               
Hope and love were fluttering inside him, like the wings of a butterfly
flapping in the sunshine.
     
               
Could he make the leap into full-blown belief? Could he trust enough to share
all of himself?

Chapter
13: Breaking the Cycle
     
                The
last two weeks had been the hardest of Kylie's life. She'd told her editor that
she would be working from home for a couple of weeks because she had some
personal issues she was dealing with.
     
               
He hadn't given her a problem about it, simply saying, "Meet your
deadlines, no problem." It's one of the things that had kept her at The
City News . Larry, the managing editor could be a hard-ass sometimes, but he
was also very fair. Pretty much as long as you made the mandatory monthly
meeting and met your deadlines — turning in killer stories, of course — he
didn't hover.
     
               
Of course, the real reason Kylie wanted to avoid the office was so she didn't
have to see Gatlin. Her emotions were still so raw, she needed time to at least
let a scab start to grow over the scar on her heart before having to face him
on a regular basis.
     
               
What she didn't know is that she needn't have worried. Gatlin had done pretty
much the same thing; although he took the unofficial route by staying out of
the office as much as possible. As a crime reporter, it wasn't hard to do. Even
when he wasn’t working on a particular story, he could do ride alongs with
detectives, or interview various different sources to come up with a story.
    .
. .
     
               
"The official cause of the death of Ms. Bocelli is a drug overdose,"
the coroner was saying.
     
               
Gatlin and Kylie were at the press conference for the release of the official
coroner's report forAnna Maria Bocelli, the young celebrity who'd died
almost four months ago.
     
               
Squeezed in with what seemed like 200 other reports, Kylie was just to Gatlin's
right. He never knew it was possible to