Read Online Taken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Third Season by Renna Peak - Free Book Online Page A

as though they couldn’t have done a title search in the area—if the roles had been reversed—if I had been looking for Ryan, it was exactly what I would have done. It was smart—smarter than I usually gave him credit for. But he had apparently learned a lot from me, too—just as much as I had learned from him over the years.
    “It doesn’t matter, Jen. I can’t believe you’ve been hiding from me for all these months because of that. Because you thought that whole thing was your fault. Because it wasn’t.”
    Even if she had pinged some GPS tracking software, I knew damned well that they would have found me eventually. I had just been hoping it wouldn’t be until spring—until things had died down a little.
    “I’m so sorry, Brandon. I mean … I just…”
    I shook my head and looked back over at her. I could see the tears starting to swim in her eyes and felt a pang in my gut. “Don’t cry, Jen. None of this had anything to do with you. This isn’t how I imagined this—how I imagined it would be when I found you. I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted you to see me and come running into my arms. I imagined lifting you into the air and kissing you so hard you would remember why we fell in love.”
    She swung her legs over to the other side of the bed so that she could face me. “We can’t have a fairy tale, Brandon. That isn’t how our story plays out. We both know that.”
    I shook my head again. “I imagined how I would kiss you, then I’d kiss that spot on your neck that makes you melt. I’d take you to bed and make love to you as many times as it took to make you remember. It is our story, Jen. It can be the way it plays out. It can be that way, if you let it.”
    “You think the only reason I live here is because I’ve been hiding from you? You think I live here because I was afraid of how you’d react when you found out it was my fault that Ryan found you?”
    “I don’t know what to think. You could have called. You could have texted. Hell, you could have sent an email or a letter. You should have. You should have told me you were alive.”
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “You think I didn’t want to? I know you, Brandon. I know you would have traced anything I sent and been here within about five seconds flat. I only came here for one reason—to keep you alive. I hid from you because I want you to live. I want you to be happy. I want you to have the joy and light and happiness in your life that you deserve—but you have to let me go to find it. You can’t keep chasing me—you have to let me … let us go. We can’t have both—happiness and life. We can have one or we can have the other. But we can’t have both. There are too many people out there who will make sure of that.”
    I unbuttoned the top of my shirt and pulled it over my head as I stood up and walked over to her. She leaned back—as far away from me as she could without scooting back on the bed, her body weight resting on her elbows.
    I stood in front of her and traced my finger across the large scar that ran almost the length of the right side of my belly. “Do you remember this? Do you remember how I got this?”
    She nodded, trying to crawl backwards on her elbows. I had no idea why she was so afraid of me, but I needed her to hear what I had to tell her. I needed her to understand once and for all how I felt. It was the only reason I had been searching for her for so long. “I almost died because of this. Remember that, Jen?”
    She set her jaw, nodding again. Her attempts to crawl away stopped, and she met my gaze with her blue eyes blazing.
    “I only lived because of you. You were the person I thought of when I was sure I was going to die. You were the only thing I thought about through all of it. You . Not anyone else. Not any thing else. Just you. You are the light in my life. You are my joy. You are the only thing that has ever brought me any measure of happiness. So don’t tell me that I deserve those