Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read

Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:57:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 http://www.ilovenovels.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/favicon.png Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom – Read Books Online Free Ebooks good best novels to read http://www.ilovenovels.com 32 32 Resonance of Stars Read online Anne Malcom (Greenstone Security #5) http://www.ilovenovels.com/resonance-of-stars-5-read-online-anne-malcom Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:57:33 +0000 http://www.test123.demo2.xyz/resonance-of-stars-5-read-online-anne-malcom Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Romance Authors: Anne Malcom Series: Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
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Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 104919 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 525(@200wpm)___ 420(@250wpm)___ 350(@300wpm)

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Read Online Books/Novels:	Resonance of Stars (Greenstone Security #5)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Anne Malcom Books
Language:	English
ISBN/ ASIN:	B08D6S1WV2
Book Information:
I was a movie star. I'd let the world convince me I was nothing more than that. Until him... Duke is employed to protect me. To make me disappear before I testify. Nothing more. There aren't many places in the world that someone like me can disappear to. Not when billions of people know my name. I'd worked hard to make it that way. To hide underneath layers of fame, beauty and wealth. A ranch in Montana offers escape. Safety. But those Montana skies don't let me hide. Not from myself. Not from the truth. I'm no longer a movie star. I'm a witness. I'm a job. I'm a woman slowly falling in love with a man that despises me. He's tasked to protect my life, instead he ruins my soul.
Books in Series:	Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
Books by Author:	Anne Malcom Books

1

“How does it feel being the most in-demand actress in Hollywood right now? Arguably one of the most talked about and famous women in show business?”

Horrible. Nauseating. Suffocating.

My smile was as fake as my teeth, tits, and tan. “It’s such a blessing. I feel so lucky to be given chances in Hollywood as a woman, cast in movies directed by women. It’s been a long time coming, and I know we still have a long way to go, but it feels good.”

I made sure to speak softly, to sound unsure almost, humble. If I’d learned one thing, the media was not kind to arrogant women. Even if they had every right to be arrogant. Even if the woman in question had pulled herself from a life of poverty, beatings, dirty sheets, and empty stomachs to superstardom. Even if said woman was paid millions of dollars per movie and owned a mansion in Beverly Hills. Of course, the stomach was still empty because that’s how it worked.

I was starving right this moment. Which wasn’t outside the norm, but I hadn’t even indulged in my meager excuse for lunch. Every second of this day was spent promoting the shit out of this movie, smiling this fake smile, answering mundane questions, and counting down the seconds until I could leave. Hunger was now mingled with annoyance.

Breakfast was coffee and a cold pressed juice. My head was pounding from lack of sleep and the fucking lights glaring at me in this suite at the W Hotel.

This was my last interview. I’d been here for hours, smiling, pretending I was proud of this piece-of-shit movie my agent talked me into.

I usually made a point to be proud of every movie I put my name to, because I’d earned the right to do that. At the beginning, when I was poor and desperate, I took what I could. And I was proud of that, even if the movies were terrible. They’d got me to here.

But now, after all my hard work, I had enough money and fame to be able to pick my own movies. Apart from this movie, the one I was pushed into doing.

I wasn’t on a relentless crusade to only portray certain women or even change the way women were viewed, but I also wasn’t about to be some fucking housewife in a movie purely there for her pretty face or comedic relief.

I’d dropped the ball on this one.

The director was the darling of the industry. He’d collected many awards throughout the years for his edgy, dark films. I’d known as soon as I’d read the rambling script it was going to be a dud. Over ten years in the industry had given me that insight. I was intelligent in many ways—because if you weren’t, this industry, this world, would eat you alive—and had a knack for knowing when a crappy script would turn into an absolute disaster.

A crappy script wasn’t always the end of the world. With a good cast and an excellent director, it could be salvaged. This director was known to be excellent, but I’d never liked a single one of his movies.

Which should’ve made me more forceful with my agent when she told me to reconsider. She wasn’t usually one to try and fight me when I made a decision but there were a lot of high-profile stars in this one. There was a lot of hype. A lot of money to be made.

I didn’t relent because of the money—I had plenty of that—though I did have a sickening obsession with always making more. Nor was it about the star-studded cast. I was well past being impressed by movie stars.

The truth was, I was tired, which was not really something I should be at thirty-four. Then again, Hollywood was already preparing to try to put me out to pasture, cast me as the hot mom or bitchy boss.

I was happy to play the bitch, but I was already exhausted thinking of the fights ahead of me. Which was why I relented to the movie.

And why I was sitting here with that pounding headache, empty stomach, and ever-present smidge of self-hatred.

The interviewer was boring, from her mundane questions, right down to the mousy hair and lipstick on her teeth—which I hadn’t told her about, despite what girl code said. I’d tried it once and was labelled as a bitch because of it.

All I was thinking about was a giant martini—not because I liked them but they were the most sensible, calorie wise—two olives, and a treat for dinner. Maybe some soft cheeses. Or I’d go wild and have prosciutto as well. No bread. I hadn’t eaten bread in years.

I’d just wrapped on this movie. I’d worked fourteen-hour days, barely slept, had pretended to like all the assholes on set, and I’d be jumping straight into my next project at six tomorrow morning. I deserved one treat.

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Shield Read online Anne Malcom (Greenstone Security #2) http://www.ilovenovels.com/shield-2-read-online-anne-malcom Sat, 08 Dec 2018 01:57:33 +0000 http://www.test123.demo2.xyz/shield-2-read-online-anne-malcom Genre: Alpha Male, Biker, Contemporary, MC, Romance Authors: Anne Malcom Series: Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
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Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 129408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)

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Read Online Books/Novels:	Shield (Greenstone Security #2)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Anne Malcom
Language:	English
Book Information:
My name’s Rosie and I come from a dynasty of sorts… the Sons of Templar, maybe you’ve heard of them. I just happen to be the daughter of one of the founding members and am the sister of the current president. The fact I’m a woman means I don’t wear the patch, but it’ll never change the fact that I'm a Templar by blood. We're known as royalty in the outlaw world. Though, the dynasty is dancing on the right side of the law these days. That doesn’t mean that the law and those who enforce it are friends. It will remain the one constant in my tumultuous life. The one rule in our law-free existence. Befriending the law and those that enforce it is a betrayal. Which means me being one half of a doomed love is that much more comical when he’s a cop. Or was. Before I went and ruined it all. Before he shattered that shield he wore to protect society in order to protect me. He saved me and I damned him. I damned myself too, but to be honest, I was damned long before that.
Books in Series:	Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
Books by Author:	Anne Malcom Books

Prologue

Rosie

Age Five

Most doomed romances didn’t actually know they were doomed at the beginning. I mean the very beginning. Before the tragedy. In that Hollywood mega zoom-in moment when their eyes meet and lasting—and more often than not, fatal—love is born. First comes love, and then comes all the rest of the shit.

This is in most cases.

Romeo and Juliet, Heathcliff and Catherine… and I don’t know any more, come to think of it. I flunked English.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m never going to fit into the category of ‘most cases.’

Or maybe I’m the ultimate fucking cliché. The girl who strives so hard to be extraordinary that she meets the masses doing the exact same thing. Falls for love right where she shouldn’t. Just like the rest of them.

Whatever.

I knew it was doomed before it even began. The second I saw him.

I was five. First day of school. Yep, it’s that fucking pathetic. Even more so because he didn’t even know I existed at that point, and many points after.

Total fucking cliché.

I knew who he was. Even at five, I knew the line drawn in the sand. The one splattered in blood.

Dad dropped me off at school, with me riding on the back of his motorcycle. My dad was the president The Sons of Templar MC.

Not many people had stark, in-detail memories of their five-year-old selves. Normally it was a mix of images, some memories muddled with make-believe. Recalling it was like staring at an interior TV screen. Maybe because moments with my father could’ve been held in my hand, treasured because moments and memories were all I had left.

Maybe it was because then, precisely then, was when my life stopped being my own.

“Now, baby, what do you do if anyone gives you trouble?” Daddy asked, his knees clicking as he bent down so I could see his eyes smiling, even if his face didn’t.

Daddy didn’t smile around other people. Bad for his image, he said.

I didn’t get that. A bad image was like a photo of someone who looked bad. And even when he wasn’t smiling, my daddy never looked bad. I thought my daddy was the most handsome man ever.

I grinned, holding up my fist, squeezing it tight so my nails cut into the insides of my palm. “I give them a knuckle sandwich,” I said.

Daddy chuckled, rustling my hair. “That’s right, my princess. No one fucks with my girl.”

I was laughing too, happy I’d made Daddy laugh. I collected that sound, and it made me smile whenever I was the reason Daddy chuckled. His laugh stopped when he focused on a car.

I looked at the car too, uninterested, until I got a look at him.

He was dropped off in front of us, in a policeman’s car—his daddy wore a uniform. With a great big badge on it.

I barely knew how to tie my shoes, but I knew the police were bad. We didn’t like the police, and they didn’t like us.

I also knew the look that darkened Daddy’s face.

It meant someone was in trouble. A lot of it.

I’d seen that look a lot, though never directed at me. Mostly it was directed at the men in the club if they did something to ‘fuck up.’ I knew fuck was a bad word from the way it sounded in the air, harsh and wrong. I heard other mommas yell at their kids who said it in the grocery store. But I didn’t have a momma, not to take me grocery shopping at least, and no one yelled at me when I said it. No one had ever yelled at me.

I was the princess. That was what my brother Cade called me. And Daddy.

But I’d never really felt like much of a princess. And I knew I really wasn’t when I caught sight of the older boy getting out of the police car. The second I saw his blond hair, his beautiful face, his clean clothes, I knew. He was the prince. The real one, like in the movies. The good guy.

I looked down at my boots, the smallest ones at the Harley Davidson store and they were still a little big. Daddy said I’d grow into them. Another reason why I knew I wasn’t a princess—they always wore froufrou dresses and a lot of pink, and their hair was always in lots of pretty braids.

I didn’t wear pink. Pink was for pussies, as Uncle Steg said, so I always wore all black. Like my brother, Cade. Black was my favorite color in the whole world. My hair was always curly and crazy; I didn’t know how to braid, and neither did Cade or Daddy. Sometimes Daddy would brush it and tie it up into the ponytail I had it in right now. But my hair wasn’t straight and shiny like Barbie or princesses; it was curly and wild, and some of it was always escaping from my hair bobble.

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Still Waters Read online Anne Malcom (Greenstone Security #1) http://www.ilovenovels.com/still-waters-1-read-online-anne-malcom Tue, 20 Nov 2018 13:57:33 +0000 http://www.test123.demo2.xyz/still-waters-1-read-online-anne-malcom Genre: Alpha Male, Biker, Contemporary, MC, New Adult, Romance Authors: Anne Malcom Series: Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
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Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 124574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 623(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)

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Read Online Books/Novels:	Still Waters (Greenstone Security #1)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Anne Malcom
Language:	English
Book Information:
There’s a phrase: Still waters run deep. But there’s more to it than that. Because "still" doesn’t denote peace. Nor calm. Nor happiness. It’s an illusion. It's chaos. The only way to handle chaos is to become it. That’s what Lucy did. She created stillness out of the chaos tumbling inside her and called the most chaotic motorcycle club in the United States her family. The Sons of Templar gave her chaos, friendship, family, danger and death. But she wouldn't want it any other way. Then he came. The one who showed her that her handle on chaos was tumultuous at best. Showed her how to stand still. And how good it could be. And how drowning in those waters comes as easy as breathing.
Books in Series:	Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
Books by Author:	Anne Malcom Books

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” I murmured, tracing my blood-red fingernail around the rim of my martini glass.

A throaty laugh carried over the melody of “Motorcycle Man” by Saxon, a song only thrashed by true lovers of the genre.

Bikers. Of course. The original rockers. Rebels without a cause. The one percent that the AMA said didn’t stay inside those carefully drawn lines that governed society.

Outside the law.

Outlaws, in other words.

And so off-limits.

Despite the fact that if there was any case of spontaneous orgasm, it would be from a smoldering look courtesy of the many, many bad boy hotties currently shooting the shit and dripping male beauty all over the place.

It couldn’t be done, though. They couldn’t be done. By me, at least.

Most rules were made to be broken here. I’d broken a lot myself. Almost all of them, actually. Just not that one I’d set for myself. One that became necessary for treading water in this world when I started flailing nine years ago. Or, if we wanted to get really specific, two decades ago.

“Babe, you could drink,” Rosie told me, her mouth closing around a beer and taking a sip before she raised her perfectly groomed eyebrows at me.

She gestured across the party with her beer, the movement fueled with drunken excitement so white foam bubbled from the top and trickled down the neck of the glass.

“You could drown,” she corrected, waving the bottle at the sea of leather, not noticing the fact that she was watering the yellowing lawn with her beer.

I gazed at the very sea we were in the midst of. The one I was more than used to. Not that you were exactly immune to it. No matter how long I’d been involved with the Sons of Templar—which was since Rosie and I became best friends in kindergarten when we both posed a daring escape after becoming bored of finger painting—I wouldn’t get used to the fact that an unsightly percentage of their membership looked like GQ had lost a gaggle of models when they decided to do an “Outlaw Chic” shoot.

Though, these men were better than GQ. They weren’t groomed or sculpted or one-dimensional. They were real. Three-dimensional men who weren’t perfect by society’s standards because they didn’t live in a society where men paid three hundred dollars for haircuts and looked in the mirror more than I did.

No. They lived in a world where their chiseled and droolworthy muscled and tatted physiques weren’t to sell magazines. They were to stay alive.

To fight.

To endure.

And shit, did they endure well.

“No,” I murmured, my gaze finding Jagger, from the New Mexico chapter. His emerald eyes fastened on me and glowed with a look that I’m sure melted many a panty. Mine even felt deceptively hot. Even with the scar marring half of his face, he was something. Shit, the scar made him.

And the eyes. The ones that held the demons every woman wanted to conquer but few would be brave enough, special enough, to touch. Most likely only one or two would be capable of at least taming them.

But I had my rules. And amidst the lifestyle where rules were frowned upon, broken and stepped on by heavy motorcycle boots, they were important. Pivotal.

Control over those and myself was necessary for my continued sanity. And survival. Just like these men needed to endure, I did too.

I just did it with heels and an icy façade instead of a cut and a gun.

So, no horizontal tango with the bikers who I considered my family. It could, and almost certainly would, end badly. And then I’d have to either face the awkwardness of wading through the destruction of a relationship or cut out my family completely.

I wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that. Family was everything to me. The ones I shared blood with and the ones I didn’t.

Hence the rules.

I’d slipped once.

Or twice.

But they were careful slips, even a teenage me, inebriated on beer and testosterone, had been thinking.

Nomads.

Ones I had seen less than a handful of times since then.

Ones who didn’t pose a danger, because they didn’t take anything from me that couldn’t be given back.

I might not be able to take back my virginity, but I still had the box it came in, and that was fine with me. I read that on a T-shirt somewhere, so not an original thought, but apt.

“I won’t drown,” I continued after I’d waded out of my mind. “Not when I’ve mastered the art of swimming.” I gestured with my glass, not spilling my precious martini because I’d only just arrived, and Rosie had been here since—I glanced at the table—at least four beers ago.

She could handle more than that.

Much more.

Despite her appearance—chocolate brown curls, delicate makeup and light pink, skintight dress with matching wedges—she was not innocent. Being the sister of the president of a motorcycle club, not to mention the daughter of the previous president, meant that innocence was something she wasn’t even born with.

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Chaos Remains Read online Anne Malcom (Greenstone Security #4) http://www.ilovenovels.com/chaos-remains-4-read-online-anne-malcom Wed, 18 Jul 2018 13:57:33 +0000 http://www.test123.demo2.xyz/chaos-remains-4-read-online-anne-malcom Genre: Alpha Male, Dark, Romance, Suspense Authors: Anne Malcom Series: Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
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Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 134045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)

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Read Online Books/Novels:	Chaos Remains (Greenstone Security #4)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Anne Malcom
Language:	English
Book Information:
My story isn’t unique. Isn’t rare. Which is, I guess, what makes it so sad. The story about a girl who falls in love with the wrong man, lured by tender gazes, devoted promises and gentle touches. The gentle touches disappear and she’s held captive with ugly insults and brutal beatings. It’s common, this story. My past. I can’t change the past. I wouldn’t even if I could. The ugliness of my past gave me a future worth living for. Worth dying for. It gave me a reason to fight. To escape. That was my mistake. Thinking girls like me could have a choice. I wasn’t given many promises in my life that weren’t broken, but chaos is a constant promise, always kept, never broken. He comes amongst the chaos. Amongst the ugly. He doesn’t promise a way out. He definitely doesn’t promise peace. But he gives me the opportunity for a different ending to my story.
Books in Series:	Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
Books by Author:	Anne Malcom Books

Chapter One

I’m not a person who panics.

Not when I found my father after he’d overdosed when I was seven years old. I calmly called 911 and followed their instructions until an ambulance arrived.

Not on my wedding day when a hurricane ruined our ceremony on the beach.

Not when my water broke in the middle of an important event for my father-in-law and I had to grit my teeth and wait for him to finish his speech before I was taken to the hospital.

Not even when my husband hit me for the first time.

Or the second.

And especially not when I finally found my backbone underneath fractured ribs and escaped the beautiful house that had become my prison, with my two-year-old and not much else.

But now, I was panicking.

I was speeding.

Veering in and out of traffic.

Scrolling frantically through my phone while simultaneously glancing up at the road.

Never would I be on my phone and drive. Never. Because I usually had my son in the car. His safety was everything to me and I wouldn’t dream of risking it that way.

But my son wasn’t in the car.

Which was why I was panicking.

Because my abusive, soon-to-be-ex-husband, also detective and son of a senator, kidnapped my son.

And I didn’t know where he was.

I didn’t know where my son was.

A fist fastened around my lungs, air coming strangled, in short, quick bursts.

At the same time, a location popped up on my phone and I veered across three lanes of traffic at the last minute to get to my exit.

I prayed that I didn’t get pulled over as I sped through the streets of LA. Most people would have been happy to see the flashing blue and red lights behind them after their son was kidnapped by his abusive father. I was not most people in this situation.

And the police had proved to be worth less than nothing.

“So you don’t have primary custody of your son, ma’am,” the officer said, looking bored, and hardened to my distress.

The police in the precinct had originally been concerned and responsive when I rushed in there to inform them that my son had been kidnapped. That was until they found out he was kidnapped by his father. No, that was after they found out who his father was.

Their demeanor immediately changed then.

Much like the officers had in our old hometown when I went in to report the abuse.

Robert had power.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

Robert’s name had power.

Police generally protected their own. I already had that against me. But when one of their own was the son of a state senator who could end their careers with one phone call?

That was something entirely different.

With me, broken and brutalized, it sucked but I understood it. Because I’d had countless lessons of how hard, cruel, and unfair the world was. I didn’t grow up with the illusion that life was full of justice for those who wronged others. I knew all about the ugly truths.

I had been frustrated but resigned when they turned me away after I finally found enough courage to report what had been then, years of abuse. I was resigned to the fact the police wouldn’t help me, and, like always, I’d have to help myself. My son.

And I did.

But this was different.

This was a child.

My child.

Pure.

Beautiful.

Helpless.

And still, the officer was looking at me with that bored, hardened expression.

“I have full custody,” I gritted out, my nails digging into my palms as I tried to stay calm. How does anyone stay calm when they didn’t know where their baby was?

“Given to you by the courts?” he asked.

Tears prickled the backs of my eyes, I didn’t let them fall. Not just because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop them if I did, but because I wouldn’t give this man that. This horrible man that was clutching onto a distorted version of brotherhood at the expense of a child.

“No,” I said, my voice shaky but strong. “Up until today, his father had no interest in even fighting for custody. He has not been in his life in three years.”

I wish I could say he had not been in my life for as long, but his visit yesterday made that impossible. I should have known that something would happen after. That he wouldn’t just leave me alone.

The officer glanced at me without sympathy. “A father has a right to see his child, ma’am. And if he hasn’t got a court document barring him from contact, he is within his rights to pick him up from school.”

“He didn’t just pick him up from school,” I hissed. “He took him. Not because he is a father. Because he is a monster. He wanted to hurt me. He is a violent man. A dangerous one. I don’t give a damn about the fact he has a badge just as shiny as yours, and you shouldn’t either. Not when a little boy is in danger.”

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The Problem with Peace Read Online Anne Malcom (Greenstone Security #3) http://www.ilovenovels.com/the-problem-with-peace-3-read-online-anne-malcom Mon, 18 Sep 2017 01:57:33 +0000 http://www.test123.demo2.xyz/the-problem-with-peace-3-read-online-anne-malcom Genre: Romance Authors: Anne Malcom Series: Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
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Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 137119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 548(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)

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Read Online Books/Novels:	The Problem with Peace (Greenstone Security #3)
Author/Writer of Book/Novel:	Anne Malcom
Language:	English
Book Information:
Everyone expects the fairy tale from me. Because on the outside, I look like I live in a fantasy. I'm a hopeless romantic. I fall in and out of love. I change careers, zip codes and hair colors on a whim. I'm a free spirit without a care in the world. I'm the one that loves everyone and hates no one. But I've got a secret... I'm not a free spirit. Not really. I'm not free at all. My life is only designed to look chaotically peaceful. I'm only designed to look like that. Peace is lost to me. Because I'm trying to escape something. Trying to escape him. My life isn't a fairy tale. It's time the world saw that.
Books in Series:	Greenstone Security Series by Anne Malcom
Books by Author:	Anne Malcom Books

Prologue

I smoothed my dress for the hundredth time.

It was as smooth as it was ever going to be.

Not that it needed to be smooth.

It was kind of the point of this whole wedding.

It was a Polly wedding after all.

I had flowers in my hair.

I was barefoot.

My dress was simple white lace, form-fitting. Chosen not because it was my dream wedding dress, but because Craig had mentioned casually how he loved seeing me in tight things. It was pointedly uttered as I was reading a bridal magazine and dog-earring a page with a long flowing princess style dress that wasn’t exactly the ‘meringue’ dress, but it didn’t hug my curves either. I’d always dreamed of a whimsical dress, only hinting at the things that my husband would discover later on in the night.

“You’ve got a beautiful body, sweetheart,” he said, circling me from behind. “I just want to see it on our wedding day, know it’s all mine.” He kissed the side of my neck, chasing away the small amount of disappointment I had at his words.

I wasn’t worried about forgoing my ideal dress for what Craig liked. Because I loved him. And I loved making him happy. It wasn’t a hardship. This day was for us, after all, not about the vanity of me wearing a big poofy dress.

Plus, the poofy dress wouldn’t go with the ‘Polly’ wedding everyone imagined. The one on the rooftop of my loft, decorated with fairy lights and low-key music. Ordained by my friend who read everyone’s auras before the ceremony. Lucy and Rosie had scowled and muttered under their breath at this. But they did it. Every single one of my family did it. They indulged me.

Because it was me.

This was the wedding everyone expected from me.

Not the one I envisioned.

Not the one I’d dreamed of on and off since I was old enough to read romance novels. And solidified when I was eighteen years old when I was in a crowded and foul-smelling bar.

Where I was wearing that whimsical, flowing dress, lightly beaded, a long flowing train, in a church—the one on the corner across from our house in Amber—despite the fact I wasn’t religious. I believed in the power of the universe, and some kind of higher being. But I didn’t think that higher being had a book of rules about how to act. Yet I liked churches. I liked the simple peace they offered when one didn’t get caught up of the politics of it all.

But Craig had been against that.

He wasn’t religious. He didn’t believe in a higher being. And he didn’t want to have to have meetings with the priest to get permission to be married in the church.

“I’m not asking anyone’s permission for marrying the woman I love,” he growled.

He didn’t ask my dad’s either.

Not that we were old fashioned like that.

But a tiny part of my new age persona had nurtured that little thought that my fiancé would want to formally ask my father.

But I didn’t dwell on that. Because life happened, and it was very rarely the way we envisioned. Mostly it happened the exact opposite way.

And in order to find joy in life, you had to find joy in moments that didn’t look at all like you’d thought they would.

I stared at my eyes in the mirror.

I wasn’t wearing much makeup. Craig didn’t like women who wore a lot of makeup. Which was good since I never really bothered with it anyway. My skin was clear, we were lucky, and we had good genes. It was a lot more tanned than Lucy’s because I didn’t go crazy on SPF like she did.

She lectured me about the sun’s premature aging qualities. I didn’t think that slathering something with enough chemicals to block the rays of the sun was something that would be entirely beneficial. And I wasn’t worried about aging. I had a scattering of freckles as a result of my stance on SPF.

My hair was long now, brushing down past my bra strap, it was bleached from the sun and in tousled curls down my back. I knew that I had that kind of look that didn’t need makeup, I was all about being natural, outwardly and inwardly.

But it seemed I should’ve had some on because my eyes were shadowed with my lack of sleep, my face a little dull, my lips thin and red from me constantly biting them.

I was nervous.

My hand stayed over top of my stomach.

It was normal to be nervous before a wedding, right? It wasn’t like I didn’t love Craig. I did. I really did.

But...

A knocking at the door stopped that dangerous thought in its tracks. I couldn’t be thinking about that on my freaking wedding day.

It was probably Lucy coming to yell at me about how insane this was and what a terrible name Craig was and then attack me with a concealer brush. I would welcome any and all versions of my sister. Even if it was yelling. Especially if it was yelling. Because yelling was the loud and unmissable proof that she was here, she was alive, strong enough to be pissed, to be back to her old self.

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