Page 1 of Come Back to Me

PROLOGUE

ANNIE

I’ve been up since four forty-five a.m. All thanks to my cheating ex-fiancé. I broke up with the man months ago and he’s still weaseling his way into my brain and interrupting my life. Only now, he can only do it in my dreams. Well, they’re actually more like nightmares.

It happens the same every time. I’m sleeping peacefully, minding my own business, when suddenly I’m standing in a doorway, shocked still and stunned speechless.

Jason’s mouth is moving, but I hear nothing he says. He looks panicked. And her…?

She’s actually smirking. She’s not saying anything, just trying to cover herself up, grabbing for his arm to pull him back to her as he reaches for me.

That’s usually when I wake up in a sweat, frenetic energy racing through my veins from reliving the moment I caught my ex with another woman. The moment my perfectly crafted world exploded.

Sometimes I know I’m stuck in the nightmare that blew up my life—my job, and my goals. My wedding.

Despite my efforts to fall back to sleep, I’m still awake and it’s now five-thirty. I groan and drag myself upright to sit on the side of the bed and I look around my childhood bedroom.

I’ve been staying with Mom for these last few nights before my move, and though being home should be comforting, it’s not. I think I need to get out of the house for a bit, even if I’m up before the sun.

When I stand, a dramatic yawn escapes the bed hog I’ve been sharing the twin bed with for the last several nights. I glance over my shoulder to look at Bean, my two-year-old chocolate lab and the only loyal male in my life for some time. He stretches out and rolls onto his back. As if I’m going to give him belly rubs after I slept smashed into the wall all night because of him.

I walk over to my suitcase, grab a pair of sweats, and put them on. When I reach for my running shoes and slip them on, Bean flips himself back over and jumps off the bed, his tail wagging enthusiastically. He knows what it means when I wear these shoes.

We make our way outside and I breathe in the cold Columbus winter air. As my feet pound on the pavement, my emotions from the nightmare settle and even though I’m now running, the tightness in my chest is easing up and I can breathe again.

When we lost my dad almost ten years ago, running became my way to cope, one of the few ways I could let out my emotions.

I was hurt, grieving, and pissed off.

Pissed off at the world and, mostly, at my mom.

I might have been almost an adult at the time, but my sister Kelly was only fourteen. She still needed Mom. But when Mom couldn’t handle what life had thrown at her,couldn’t deal with two grieving teenage daughters, she shut down.

As I run, I think about how I tried to be there for Kelly. I forged school field-trip signatures and parent signatures on report cards, scraped up lunch money for her and anything else she needed.

I thought I was okay and so, instead of focusing on my grief, I focused on Kelly.

Turns out I wasn’t okay.

I became the girl who had to control everything around her to decrease the risk of getting hurt and who learned that she couldn’t trust people when they said they loved her and would take care of her.

My therapist says that’s from abandonment issues because of the havoc losing Dad created in our family. She and I worked hard so that I could try to overcome my control and trust issues.

Then that dickwad, Jason, went and erased three years of progress in therapy because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.

Anyway, enough thinking about him.

Five miles down, and I’m feeling better as I approach Mom’s house and the end of our run.

Bean and I sneak through the kitchen door and try to be quiet in case she’s not up yet. No such luck. She’s sitting at the kitchen table sipping coffee and staring at me.

“What?” I ask with a sigh, looking at her and waiting for whatever will come next. I’m guessing it’s going to be something like ‘Oh, youonlyran five miles, not six?’ or ‘If you spent as much time focused on Jason as you do that dog, maybe you’d still be getting married.’

“Nothing. I just can’t sleep worrying that you’re making a mistake,” she starts, refusing to look me in the eye.

Of course, it’s not nothing. I’ve been down this road; Iknow there’s more to come. It looks like maybe today she is serving self-doubt and a side of guilt for breakfast.

“Mom, I’m not moving that far away. I’ll be just outside of Cleveland. It’s like two hours.”

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