Jane Lark - I Need You

JANE LARK

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

HarperImpulse an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014

Copyright © Jane Lark 2014

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Jane Lark asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for 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,

downloaded, 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.

Ebook Edition © October 2014

ISBN: 9780007562244

Version 2014-10-06

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Contents

Cover

Title Page I Need You JANE LARK A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright HarperImpulse an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014 Copyright © Jane Lark 2014 Cover images © Shutterstock.com Jane Lark asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for 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, downloaded, 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. Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007562244 Version 2014-10-06 Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Praise for Jane Lark Praise for Jane Lark "Jane Lark has proved what a writing talent she really is. This is an engrossing and telling read…. Be prepared to have your heart squeezed!" BestChicklit.com "An amazing book. It is dark and edgy yet flirtatious and even made me laugh. It’s such a combination that made me not want to put my kindle down at all." After the Final Chapters "Dark, gritty and wholly mesmerizing, I Found You is a haunting and compelling read you will not easily forget!" Bookish Jottings "Emotional, romantic, and heartbreaking." Imagine a World

I Need You I Need You Guilt can eat away at you, but love can cut like a knife… Wanting his best friend’s girlfriend is a cliché Billy knows well – it’s the tightrope he’s walked for years. But now Jason and Lindy have broken up and Billy can’t help but be there for the girl he’s loved from afar for so long. She’s hurting. Fighting to find a road to the future, Lindy’s heart hurts. She’s trying to escape the truth, but Billy keeps making her face it – and it’s ugly. How can she keep living when it feels like everything around her is made of glass and it could shatter at any moment? Her one constant is Billy. Only, rebound isn’t his style and when Lindy starts to see him in a different light, he just can’t trust her. He’s no one’s second best.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Author’s Word

Bonus Material

Title Page

Chapter One

Also by Jane Lark…

Also by Jane Lark…

Jane Lark

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

"Jane Lark has proved what a writing talent she really is. This is an engrossing and telling read…. Be prepared to have your heart squeezed!"

BestChicklit.com

"An amazing book. It is dark and edgy yet flirtatious and even made me laugh. It’s such a combination that made me not want to put my kindle down at all."

After the Final Chapters

"Dark, gritty and wholly mesmerizing, I Found You is a haunting and compelling read you will not easily forget!"

Bookish Jottings

"Emotional, romantic, and heartbreaking."

Imagine a World

Guilt can eat away at you, but love can cut like a knife…

Wanting his best friend’s girlfriend is a cliché Billy knows well – it’s the tightrope he’s walked for years.

But now Jason and Lindy have broken up and Billy can’t help but be there for the girl he’s loved from afar for so long. She’s hurting.

Fighting to find a road to the future, Lindy’s heart hurts. She’s trying to escape the truth, but Billy keeps making her face it – and it’s ugly. How can she keep living when it feels like everything around her is made of glass and it could shatter at any moment?

Her one constant is Billy. Only, rebound isn’t his style and when Lindy starts to see him in a different light, he just can’t trust her. He’s no one’s second best.

Billy

Jason’s hand gripped my shoulder as we walked. “I’m glad you agreed to this. It’s cool we’re talking again.”

Glancing sideways, I smiled. I felt good. We’d had a few beers, talked and the world seemed a lot better. We hadn’t talked for months but he’d texted earlier and said, “Rach had the baby. A boy. We’re calling him Saint. And, Billy, I need someone to go wet his head with… I want it to be you.”

I’d wanted things to be right for half the months we hadn’t talked; I was glad he’d made a move to fix it.

Stars pin-pricked the black sky above. But the street lamps lit the ground white and smothered the true splendor of the night sky. Out at the lake you could see millions, not thousands, of stars. They were up there, just hidden by the brighter, closer, streetlamps, and yet if you were in space, each star was a sun, and it would be loads brighter.