Let You Go
Table of Contents
Prologue
Epilogue
Foreword
Stay social with Jaxson
Let You Go
PRESENT DAY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
WEEKS LATER
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
LET YOU GO
a novel by:
Jaxson Kidman
Contents
Foreword
Stay social with Jaxson
Let You Go
Prologue
PRESENT DAY
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
PRESENT DAY
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PRESENT DAY
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
PRESENT DAY
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
WEEKS LATER
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Hey Rose…
Hey darlin’
About the authors:
Foreword
From the mind of worldwide bestselling author Jaxson Kidman comes a full length stand alone novel about finding love, losing time, and realizing that fate is always by your side.
Hey Rose… I don’t ever have to miss you again.
Written by Jaxson Kidman
Stay social with Jaxson
Newsletter (part of the Outlaw Romance Obsession team): http://eepurl.com/b9BDKb
Jaxson Kidman Facebook fan page: www.facebook.com/jaxsonkidman
Outlaw Romance Obsession Facebook book page: www.facebook.com/caseyandkidman
St. Skin Facebook fan page: www.facebook.com/stskinseries
Let You Go
After our first kiss, he moved away.
After our first time together, he confessed it wasn't his first time.
After buying me my first drink, he said he was with someone else... but still loved me.
Now I'm staring at two pink lines on a pregnancy test... and the number he gave me to call?
It's been disconnected. Great.
Prologue
The Question…
Rose
“Do you love me?”
It was a risky question to ask, considering he had gotten what every guy wanted from a woman, or at least that’s what I always assumed. After all, what guy wouldn’t say they loved a woman when she was wrapped up in his arms, listening to the sound of rain smashing against the trees, the roof, and hitting the air conditioner? He wasn’t going to be stupid and start a fight right now about it. Then what? I’d kick him out and he’d walk away in the storm, stupidly trying to light a cigarette, too stubborn to realize that the flame could never beat the rain?
God, I hate him sometimes. So much.
I swallowed hard and watched the way his eyes just stared. I could pinpoint every little thing about his eyes; that’s how long I had spent staring at them. My father joked and said that if I spent the same amount of time studying when I was in school, I could have gotten into a good college. I could have been a doctor.
Yeah, right.
My days of being a doctor ended when I tried to cut open my stuffed animals and switch their insides, only to realize that I never learned how to sew. I got in trouble because I cut up my sister’s stuffed animals too. Damn.
His eyes were dark, like a really dark brown color. I always envisioned falling in love with a blue eyed boy. Maybe I had fallen in love with a couple of blue eyed boys in the past. But it was the dark eyed, wild staring jerk that managed to not only take my heart, but kept his foot hovering over it as though he were a second away from stomping on it. But he never did. He always kept me hanging, making me want him to do it so that it would finally end.
But it never did end, did it?
He just couldn’t let me go.
I couldn’t let him go either.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, what?” he asked.
I sighed.
I wanted to look away, but didn’t. Did you know that people could have spots in their eyes? Not on the white part, but on the colored part. Wasn’t that the iris? I wasn’t sure… I never got into med school, remember? But he had these spots in his eyes. Three light brown spots on his left eye. They were perfect circles and would make a perfect triangle if a line was drawn between them. In his right eye, he had one spot. An almost reddish spot.
It was my favorite thing about him, because it was something only I got to see, because you had to be really close to see them. And nobody got as close as…
I swallowed again.
I inched away.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
“You won’t answer.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth. Answer my question.”
“Do you love me?”
“You don’t get to twist this,” I said. “If I say I love you, then you have to say you love me. If I say I don’t love you, then you have an easy out.”
“Easy out? You think I want an easy out?”
“I never said that.”
“You just did,” he said.
“No I didn’t. I said… if you sa… if I say…”
“Shhh,” he said. “Listen to the rain, Rose. Just listen to the rain. Washing everything away. Keeps people away. Keeps everything calm.”
He started to hum. The vibration in his chest making me shiver.
He started to whisper sing, his voice raspy, calm, and sexy.
I rolled my eyes.
Every time he did this, I said it wouldn’t work on me.
But it never failed to wo
rk on me.
My eyes started to shut, soothed by the rain and his voice.
Whispering sweet nothings (literally) into my ear about how beautiful I was. About how perfect I was. About how he couldn’t live without me. The cliché stuff about me being the sun, my eyes the stars, my body the storm… I waited as long as I could to hear the words I love you…
… but they never came.
PRESENT DAY
1
How About Ratt?
Foster
“What happened to your lip?”
“Nothing.”
I watched Everett struggle to move his fingers from one chord to another. He was a lot better on guitar than the day I gave him his first lesson, but he still had a long way to go. I’d love to ride his ass about not practicing enough, but he was a street kid and I knew that that life gave you nothing but time and nothing to do with it.
“Can I show you a trick?” I asked.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said.
His bangs hung over his eyes. He snapped his head to the side and threw his hair back, but it fell forward a second later. He was still boyish and young with bright blue eyes. Probably a young girl’s parents’worst nightmare. I told him straight up that when he practiced enough, playing guitar for girls when he was older would definitely pay off.
I held my guitar and leaned back against my metal chair in the small room in the musty smelling basement of an old church turned coffeehouse. I was lucky enough to know the owner - a guy we called Cheeky because he only smiled when he was in pain. He bought the building for his daughter Stephanie and helped her get it fixed up and running.
“Watch my fingers, Everett,” I said. “I’m playing my G chord, right? Now watch the transition to the D. Leave your ring finger, lift your pinky, and move your pointer and middle finger down to the second fret…”
I strummed the chord. A perfect, clean sound.
Everett bit his tongue as he copied me, making the transition. His chord was a little choppy, meaning he needed to practice holding his fingers steady, pressing harder against the unforgiving strings, and mastering the positioning on the frets to get the best sound.
“That’s good,” I said.
“It fucking sucks,” he said.
I laughed.
We made a pact when I first met him. I could smoke in the basement and he wouldn’t rat me out, and he could curse as much as he wanted without me busting him on it.
“What’s wrong, kid?” I asked. I moved the guitar off my lap.
“I suck at this shit,” he said.
“No you don’t. Just keep practicing.”
“I don’t want to. I want to quit.”
“So then quit,” I said. “Put your guitar in the case. I’ll give you a hundred bucks for it.”
“You would?”
“No,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
From the moment I realized Everett was a kid living on the streets, learning life the hard way, I took to him. I knew I couldn't save him, and I didn’t want to save him, but if I could point out a different path here and there, then I could say at least I tried.
I reached and grabbed the neck of Everett’s guitar and ripped it away from him. On the back of the cheap wood body, I saw a girl’s name. Amber. It had an X over it though, and under that, another name was carved into the guitar. Sarah xoxo.
“Girl problems?” I asked.
“No. Sarah thinks I like her. I don’t.”
“She carved her name into your guitar. That sounds serious.”
“Please. I’m sure that’s happened to you before.”
“Hell no, kid. Nobody touches my guitar but me.”
Everett’s cheeks burned red.
I grinned. I slid my foot toward him and kicked his well-worn, scuffed up shoe. “What is it? Don’t piss me off. Not today. I’ve got a gig tonight and I’m working through some new lyrics.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I hate my name.”
“What?”
“Everett. What kind of name is that?”
“Proud?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“See? That right there. Even a guy like you doesn’t like it. You have a cool name. Foster. That’s really cool.”
I spun Everett’s guitar around in my hand and leaned it against a workbench that I found in the basement and used to work on guitars. I was sort of a jack of all trades when it came to surviving. Giving guitar lessons. Fixing guitars. Playing gigs that rarely paid in cash, mostly in booze.
“You do know my name isn’t really Foster, right?”
“It’s not?”
“No,” I said. “That’s what I got nicknamed when I was younger.”
“Why Foster?”
“Because of how many times I bounced around,” I said. “House to house. Family to family. I just started telling people to call me Foster. You know, for foster kid.”
“Wow,” Everett said. “Maybe that’s what I need to do.”
“There you go.”
“I’m going to be… Viper.”
“Viper?” I laughed. “Come on, kid. Be real.”
“How about Throat Punch?”
“Why not Rhett?”
“Huh?”
“Rhett,” I said again. “Short for Everett. So you don’t sound like an old mountain man eating sardines out of a can over an open fire.”
“See? Fuck. You hate my name.”
I laughed again. “Rhett is cool. It’s bad ass.”
“How about Ratt?”
“Rat?”
“Ratt with two t’s. Bad ass.”
“No,” I said. “You call yourself Ratt and I’m going to give you cheese to eat.”
Everett sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Rhett. How do I get people to call me that?”
“Respect.”
“Huh?”
“Get respect and show that you’re tough.”
“Pick a fight with someone and win?”
Yeah, that’s a good idea, kid. Live like I did. But if you want to be really tough, get a gun. Wave that fucking thing around. Almost get put away for years and years…
“No,” I said. “Learn guitar. Your name is Rhett, and you play guitar.”
Rhett picked up his guitar and practiced his chords again. This time, he transitioned with ease. Perfectly from a G to a D, back to G and then down to a haunting E minor.
I smiled and nodded. “There it is. Now we just need to wo-”
Rhett’s phone beeped in his pocket. He scrambled with a sense of fear to check it as quickly as possible.
“Shit. My ride is here.”
“You still have ten minutes, kid,” I said.
“I have to go. Right now.”
Rhett hurried to pack up his guitar and notebook.
At one point, he was damn well shaking. I grabbed his wrist. “Hey. Is everything okay at home?”
“You know that answer, Foster,” he whispered.
I nodded.
I looked at his lip again.
“That happen at home?”
“No.”
Probably a lie.
Rhett stood and took money out of his back pocket.
I jumped up and put my hand over his. “Not today. This one’s on me.”
“You can’t keep giving me free lessons, Foster.”
“I’ll do what the fuck I want, kid. Take that cash and hide it in your guitar case. Then get yourself something good to eat. Forget about Amber and think about Carrie.”
“What? Girls…?”
“Hey, you never know when the right one will pop up and scratch her name on your guitar.”
“I thought you said nobody ever touches your guitar?” Rhett asked.
I grinned. I looked up. My heart warmed over in a way that I hated. “Well, there’s only one girl that carved her name into my guitar…”
2
The Drop Off, the Pick Up
Rose
I sat at my desk and stared at two pictures. The first was of a woman
at a desk with her laptop a little off to the left. Her right hand held a steaming coffee mug as she looked out the window. There was a fuzzy, busy street and her reflection was clear.
Did that make me want to drink coffee?
The second picture was of a woman sitting on a wide window sill. The frame of the window was old with white chipped paint. The window was slightly open. Her hands cupped a smaller mug and she held it near her nose, eyes shut, smiling as she inhaled the yummy smell of a fresh cup of coffee.
Did that make me want to drink coffee?
My eyes scanned left to right.
I personally called bullshit on both pictures, but it was my job to figure out which one would sell more coffee.
That was my job.
I was working as a waitress when an old friend from high school came in and told me she was starting a business and wanted my help. When she said it was a coffee business, I curled my lip. Ironically, I was holding a pot of coffee when she proposed the idea. She wanted me to help her get the business up and running. I had about fifty bucks in my pocket, and there were about three dollars in gratuity on the counter from the regulars as I took off my apron and figured why not?
We worked together, lived in her small apartment, and managed to actually start a business. Of all the things in my life I thought about doing, I ended up as this. The marketing person for a small coffee company. But it worked. I lived. I was happy. My boss was my friend, which sometimes made life easier, but it was still like having a boss.
My father dreamed of me going to med school and becoming a rich doctor, but he always said it with a smile. Of course he dreamed big for me, but at the end of the day he just wanted me to be happy.
And that word - happy - was something that came and went like the weather.
Or marketing campaigns.