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Stay With Me
J. Lynn
Another outstanding New Adult novel from the bestselling author of WAIT FOR YOU – a NEW YORK TIMES bestsellerNot all scars are visible on the surfaceCalla Fritz is used to hiding. Hiding the scar that she believes mars her beautiful face. Hiding the burns that cover so much of the rest of her body. Hiding her past and her family secrets from her new college friends.But when her mother clears out her bank account and disappears, Calla is forced to return home and face up to a life she’d rather forget about. What she didn’t count on was meeting the one guy who seems to be able to see past her defences. Jackson James, known as Jax, is beyond smokin’ hot – and Calla can’t quite hide her feelings for a man who knows that beauty isn’t only skin deep.But with some dangerous characters looking for her mother – men who are perfectly happy to punish Calla for her mother’s sins if she doesn’t turn up soon – Calla and Jax have more troubling things to think about than the searing heat between them…
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014
Copyright © Jennifer L Armentrout 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover photographs © TBC
Jennifer L Armentrout asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007531011
Ebook Edition © September 2014 ISBN: 9780007531028
Version 2015-07-24
Always for the readers. Without all of you, this story wouldn’t be in your hands now.
Contents
Title Page (#u269dfd06-a4d0-5ce4-96a2-6ac74681f4fc)
Copyright (#u4c43beee-ef59-5916-a719-9e338a6c85ed)
Dedication (#u67f663bc-ddad-51f4-857b-6b7cd536cc37)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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
Acknowledgments
Keep Reading
About the Author
Also by J Lynn
About the Publisher
Chapter 1 (#u61c4e561-efdc-5938-b2e5-4e32584e820f)
The Hot Guy Brigade surrounded me.
A lot of people believed that the Hot Guy Brigade was a myth. Nothing more than a campus urban legend, kind of like the story about the homecoming queen who’d pitched herself out of one of the dorm windows because she was tripping balls on LSD or crack, or she had fallen in the shower and busted her head open or something. Who knew? The story changed every time I heard it, but unlike the supposed dead chick who haunted Gardiner Hall, the Hot Guy Brigade was a real living and breathing thing—several things to be exact.
Several hot things.
It was rare that they were all together nowadays, which is why they’d become sort of campus lore, but wow-wee, when they got together, it was a whole lot of eye candy.
And it was probably the closest to perfection I’d ever get in my lifetime—that and the miracle makeup called Dermablend, because it almost covered the scar on my face.
We were all piled into Avery Morgansten’s apartment. Based on the rock on her ring finger, she was well on her way to getting a last-name change, and although I didn’t know her well, really didn’t know anyone except Teresa, I was happy for her. Anytime I’d been around her, she was always sweet. She could be a little quiet sometimes and seemed to disappear into her own head, but anyone could tell she and her fiancé, Cameron Hamilton, were deeply in love by the way they watched each other.
Like the way he was watching her now, as if there were no other woman in the world but her. Even though they were sitting together, Cam on the couch and Avery in his lap, those bright blue eyes were fixed on her as she laughed at something his sister Teresa said.
If I had to rank the Hot Guy Brigade, I’d say that Cam was the president. It wasn’t just his looks, but also his personality. No one felt odd or left out around him. He had this . . . warmth that was absolutely contagious.
Secretly, and I’d totally take it to my grave, I envied Avery. I barely even knew her, but I coveted what she had—the gorgeous hot guy, who was also genuinely a good guy, who still could make you feel comfortable around him. That was rare.
“Want another drink?”
I dipped my head to the left and then back, toward the voice of Jase Winstead, and my breath caught a little. Here was the opposite of Cam—extremely good-looking, but totally did not make me feel comfy when my eyes locked with his deep gray ones. With his swarthy skin, longish brown hair, and almost unreal, model good looks, he’d be the lieutenant of the Hot Guy Brigade. He was by far the sexiest out of all of them, and he could be supersweet, like now, but he wasn’t as easygoing or charming as Cam, which was why Cam held top position.
“Nah, I’m good.” I raised my half-full bottle of beer I’d been sipping since I’d gotten there. “But thanks.”
He smiled and then moved off, circling his arms around Teresa’s waist. She cocked her head back against his chest as she placed her hands on his arms. His face softened.
Yeah, I was a wee bit envious of Teresa, too.
I’d never been in a serious relationship. There hadn’t been any dates in high school. The scar on my face had been a hell of a lot more vibrant then, something no miracle makeup could camouflage . . . and high school kids, yeah, they could be unforgiving when it came to very visible flaws. And even if someone could look past that, with the way my life had been back then, there hadn’t been room or time for a date let alone a relationship.
Then there had been Jonathan King. He was in my history class freshman year, really cute guy and we’d hit it off. For obvious reasons, I’d been reluctant to go out with him when he asked, but damn, he’d been persistent and I’d finally said yes. We’d gone out a few times, but as the relationship progressed and he, being a totally normal guy, had made a move on me one night, when we’d been alone in my dorm, I’d been stupidly convinced that since he could see past the scar on my face, he’d been able to see past everything else.
I’d been wrong.
We didn’t even kiss and we sure as hell didn’t go out again after that, and I hadn’t told anyone about him and that disastrous night. I didn’t think about him. Ever.
Well, except for right now, damnit.
As I watched the Hot Guy Brigade being all hot, I was totally aware of the fact I was boy crazy due to my lack of . . . well, of boys in my life.
“Got it!”
My chin jerked up as Ollie rounded the couch, his girlfriend, Brittany, trailing behind him, her eyes rolling back so far in her head I thought she might pass out as she shook her head.
Ollie approached the coffee table and leaned down, holding some kind of box tortoise in his hands. My brows rose as the little guy’s legs wheeled. What the . . . ?
“It’s not a party until Ollie breaks out the tortoise,” said Jase, and my lips curved up in a grin.
Cam sighed as he leaned around Avery. “What in the hell are you doing with Raphael?”
“Correction.” Ollie placed him on the table. With one hand, he brushed his shoulder-length blond hair back behind one ear. “This is Michelangelo, and I think it’s pretty fucked up you don’t even know which one is yours anymore. You’ve probably sent Raphael into a depression.”
“I tried to stop him,” Brit said, folding her arms. The two of them looked like they finaled in the Perfect Blond Couple Award. “But you know how he is . . .”
Everyone knew how he was.
Ollie was in grad school now, to become a doctor—surprisingly—but his antics were as big a legend as the Hot Guy Brigade. Ollie would be second to the lieutenant. He got a lot of bonus points for coming down to Shepherdstown every other weekend to see his girlfriend and for being a shameless goofball.
“As you can see, I have fashioned a new leash.” He gestured at what looked like a miniature belt secured around the tortoise’s shell.
Cam stared up at him. “Are you serious?”
“You can walk them now.” And then he proceeded to demonstrate this by leading Michelangelo across the table, and I had to wonder if Avery and Cam ate off it. “It’s better than yarn.”
Walking a tortoise? That . . . that had to be worse than walking a cat. I started giggling. “It looks like a Barbie belt.”
“It’s a designer leash,” he corrected, his lips twitching. “But I did get the idea while we were in Walmart, checking out the toy section.”
Teresa frowned. “Why were you in the toy section?”
“Yeah,” Jase drew the word out. “Is there something you two aren’t telling us?”
Brit’s eyes widened.
Ollie just shrugged. “I like to check out the toys. They are so much cooler now than when we were kids.”
