The Reason Read online

  The Reason

  Book One of the Just Say Yes Series

  Jen Andrews

  Copyright © 2014 Jen Andrews

  ISBN 13: 978-1-941380-00-0

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language, and sexual situations. It is intended for adult readers.

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Author Bio

  To my husband Jake, for putting up with me going crazy about this book series for months on end. For cooking me dinner when I wouldn’t to do it myself because I didn’t want to stop writing or editing. For ignoring me when I asked you to and for your never-ending support. I love you!

  To Julie Brammer, you have been with me on this journey from the very beginning and I cannot thank you enough for your support. You have probably read this book more times than I have. Thank you for the late night calls and the lunch dates to go over changes. Your encouragement kept me going more times than I could ever say.

  Thank you so much to my wonderful Beta Babes: Jessica, Emma, Karen, Casey, Judene, Melissa, MaRanda, Andrea, Veronica, and Chelle.

  Big thanks to my friends who read The Reason and gave me the support and encouragement that I so desperately needed when I felt like my story wasn’t good enough: Heather, Tiah, Shannon, Charity, Tiffany, and Cheri.

  Thank you to these amazing ladies:

  Kendra Gaither, at Kendra’s Proofreading, Line Editing, and Reviewing- Thank you for beta reading and being a wonderful editor and friend! Thank you for all your advice, suggestions, patience, and for always being there to lend a hand, an ear, and a voice of reason.

  Joann I Martin Sowles- Thank you for the endless questions you have answered, the comic relief texts, capes, boots, trucks and shovels, and for just being awesome!

  Lindy Zart- You are one of my favorite authors, and I still cannot believe you read my book! Thank you for taking a chance and giving me great advice. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.

  Sarah Underwood- My Kiwi sister! Thank you for making sure that Andy’s Kiwi/New Zealander side came through loud and clear. I cannot wait until we retire and live on the beach in En Zed, drinking wine, and lounging around while sexy Kiwi men read books to us. Oh, and we’re definitely going to watch the All Blacks play some rugby!

  Thank you to all the bloggers who have supported me, and the promotion of The Reason. I appreciate you so much!

  Thank you to Sarah at Sprinkles On Top Studios for my beautiful cover. I could not be more pleased with how perfect it is.

  Thank you to Tami at Integrity Formatting for making the inside of my books as gorgeous as the outside. You are a true joy to work with!

  Last, but certainly not least. Thank you to all the musicians and bands that have inspired me and kept me writing. Thank you to Snow Patrol especially, for making great music and writing the best lyrics. You are the reason I started writing, and even though you will probably never see this, I will thank you anyway!

  My eyes fluttered closed involuntarily, and I was in the dark again.

  I heard sirens, and when my eyes would cooperate and open for me, I saw flashing red lights and my best friends crying while talking on their cell phones.

  This is bad. I wanted to scream, to know what happened. Why am I in so much pain? My head felt like it was going to explode, my ribs hurt when I breathed, and my hip was killing me. I tasted blood in my mouth, so I ran my tongue over my teeth, praying they were all still where they were supposed to be.

  Oh God, why does my head hurt so badly?

  The black enveloped me again.

  Mommy hadn’t been home for two days. I didn’t know what day it was, I just knew that I was supposed to be in school, but wasn’t. I missed music class and the hot, school lunches. I only had one friend at school, and I missed her, too. She was my teacher, Mrs. Cooper.

  Before Christmas break, Mrs. Cooper bought me a new coat. It was pink and had white fur trim on the edge of the hood. Pink was my favorite color. I liked Mrs. Cooper and wished that she was my mommy. She was nice and she smelled pretty. She smelled like flowers.

  My belly growled loudly, so I went to the kitchen to find something to eat. I was tired of potpies, so I opened the door of the fridge to see if there was any food. On the bare wire shelves, I found a jug of milk, a squeeze bottle of mustard, and leftover cake from my birthday.

  A month ago was my eighth birthday, and our neighbor, Mrs. Francis, baked me a round birthday cake. It was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and she put a big candle shaped like the number eight on it. I had never eaten cake before, and I was sad that I didn’t get to eat all of it.

  Unsure, I poked at the cake with my finger. It was hard, and not soft and squishy like it had been when Mrs. Francis brought it to me, but I really wanted a piece, and I was hungry. The frosting was hard, too, and had greenish-gray icky looking stuff on it. It looked fuzzy.

  After I had cleared a space on the messy countertop, I took the cake and milk out of the fridge and set them down. I pulled the drawer open to get a spoon to eat my cake with, but there weren’t any in the drawer. We ran out of spoons a lot because Mommy used them for her medicine. She was sick all the time.

  I took a fork and a knife from the drawer and set them down next to the cake and milk. Being eight, I wasn’t tall enough to reach the plates in the cupboard, so I pushed a chair from the table over to stand on. The chair made a loud scraping noise on the floor, and it gave me goose bumps. Once I climbed up on the chair, I pulled a plate and a plastic cup from the cupboard and set them down on the countertop.

  As I started to step off the chair, my right foot wouldn’t move. I looked down in time to see that I was standing on the ear of my right bunny slipper with my left foot. Since I was already in the middle of stepping down, I fell off the chair and landed flat on my tummy on the dirty floor. My face smacked the linoleum hard, and I felt like crying, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to cause a fuss.

  Even though I was home alone, I knew better than to cry. When I raised my head, I felt something dripping from my nose down to my chin. I wiped at my nose, and when I saw my hand, it had blood on it. I got scared and didn’t know what
to do, so I pinched my nose and went next door to see if Mrs. Francis could help me.

  When I got to her door, my bunny slippers were wet from the rain and my feet were frozen. I opened the screen door and knocked quietly on the wooden door. I didn’t want to make Mrs. Francis mad at me for being loud. She didn’t come to the door. I turned to leave and when I let go of the screen door, it slammed loudly. I ran down the sidewalk before I got in trouble.

  “Zoey, honey, is that you?” Mrs. Francis called out to me. I was scared that I made her mad by slamming her screen door. Slowly, I turned back toward her, still holding my nose. Her face turned white, and her eyes got big.

  Oh no, she’s really mad at me! Letting go of my nose, I turned and ran to my special hiding place at home as fast as I could. Since my bed was just a mattress on the floor, I hid in my closet.

  From my hiding spot, I heard knocking on the front door. She was calling my name. Her voice sounded funny, like she was mad, so I stayed quiet. As I hid, I watched the crack between the bottom of the door and the orange carpet of my floor. When a shadow passed by my closet door, I started crying.

  “Zoey, sweetie, please come out so I can help you,” Mrs. Francis said from inside my bedroom.

  She’s not mad and she wants to help me?

  “Please, Zoey,” she said, “I need to see if you’re okay. Did you hurt yourself?”

  My nose hurt badly and so did my chin. I wanted to let her help me, but I was scared and didn’t want to get in trouble.

  “Mrs. Francis, I fell off the chair,” I said quietly from behind the closet door. “I’m okay. You can go home.”

  Again, I watched the crack under the door, until the shadow came back and stopped outside of my hiding spot. Nothing happened for a few moments, but then the doorknob turned, and Mrs. Francis slowly pulled the door open. She looked down at me sitting on my closet floor and made a sad face.

  But then something strange happened. She began to cry. Mrs. Francis quickly wiped her face and held her hand down to me.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up, sweet girl,” she said quietly. Her voice was sad as she helped me up from the floor. “Where’s your bathroom, Zoey?”

  Not letting go of her hand, I led her to the bathroom. She picked me up and put me on the bathroom counter then found a washcloth and wet it with water from the tap. As she wiped the drying blood from my face, I heard the front door open.

  A moment later, my mommy’s laugh echoed down the hallway along with the laugh of one of her visitors. She always had visitors. They went straight into her bedroom and slammed the door shut. Everything was quiet as Mrs. Francis continued to clean my face, but then the gross noises started.

  The man was making funny sounds and telling Mommy she was a whore, but I didn’t know what that was. When she started making noises too, I hopped down and shut the bathroom door. She always told me to close the door when a man was there because she didn’t want them to see me.

  She made me be extra quiet, and I didn’t want her to know Mrs. Francis was there, so I put my pointy finger up to my lips, “Shh,” I whispered, so she knew to be quiet too. She nodded and continued to clean off my face. Just as she finished, the bathroom door flew open, and it scared us so bad we jumped.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the gross man asked from the doorway. He came inside the bathroom, and he was naked. I slapped my hand over my eyes and gasped.

  Mrs. Francis grabbed me, picked me up, and quickly took me out of the house. I uncovered my eyes when the cold air from outside hit me and made me shiver. She carried me to her house, and once we were inside, she set me down and locked the door behind us. She took my hand, led me to the kitchen, and asked me to sit at the table while she went to speak to Mr. Francis.

  While I waited, Mr. and Mrs. Francis talked in the living room. They were trying to be quiet, but I still heard them.

  “Michael, that child can’t weigh more than forty-five pounds! She’s eight years old, for crying out loud! Her mother is strung out on something, and we just had to hide in the bathroom while she had sex with some disgusting man!” Mrs. Francis said loudly.

  “Calm down, honey, she’ll hear you. Call the police instead of CPS. Tell them she’s being severely neglected and not fed,” Mr. Francis said. “They’ll have to do something this time.”

  While Mr. and Mrs. Francis talked, I looked around the kitchen. It was clean, and not like the kitchen at my house. My house was dirty, and there were bags of smelly trash piled in the corner. At this house, in the corner was a small table with a pretty plant sitting on it. I wanted a closer look and tiptoed over to the plant. The plant had pretty, white flowers with purple in the middle.

  “Zoey, are you hungry?” Mr. Francis asked from the kitchen door.

  I nodded, and he went to the fridge, pulled a dish out, and put it in the microwave. While the food cooked, he came to stand beside me.

  “It’s called an orchid,” he said and pointed to the plant. He told me they were Mrs. Francis’s favorite flowers, and he’d bought it for her birthday.

  “It’s real pretty,” I said as the microwave chimed.

  Mr. Francis went to the microwave, pulled the dish out, and set it on the table. He poured two glasses of milk and sat down.

  “Zoey, our lunch is ready,” he said.

  It smelled good, and my belly growled again, so I hurried to the table and sat down with him.

  “Is Mrs. Francis having lunch, too?” I asked.

  He shook his head as he scooped some macaroni and cheese from the dish onto two plates. He placed one in front of me and the other in front of himself. “She’s making some calls right now. Maybe she’ll join us in a bit.” He smiled as he tucked his napkin into the top of his shirt and picked up his fork. “Dig in, sweetie,” he said. “My wife’s mac and cheese is the best.”

  Just like Mr. Francis had done with his, I tucked my napkin into the top of my jammies and started eating. I had never tasted macaroni and cheese the way Mrs. Francis cooked hers. The noodles were different. Not like the kind I ate at home. It tasted good, so I ate faster. I ate until my belly hurt because it was the best thing I had ever eaten.

  “Zoey, do you want to watch a movie on TV with me while my wife finishes with her calls?” Mr. Francis asked when he finished his lunch. There was no TV at my house, so I was happy to watch with him. He let me pick out a movie from a big cabinet in their living room.

  When the nice lady in the fancy suit came and knocked on the door, I had been sitting on the couch in my jammies and bunny slippers, singing. I was memorizing the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” because I had just seen The Wizard of Oz for the very first time.

  The pretty song was stuck in my head because I wished that I could be just like Dorothy, and a twister would pick me up and take me far, far away from my house. The lady in the movie with the green face and the tall, black hat scared me though. She reminded me of my mommy when she got mad and yelled at me.

  The lady in the suit came to talk to me and asked me a bunch of questions about my mommy, her visitors, and school. I answered all her questions and told her the truth. When she was done talking to me, she made a call in the kitchen and then came back to me.

  “Zoey,” she said in a quiet voice. “I’m going to take you to a place that’s called a foster home. Do you know what that is?”

  I shook my head, and she went on to tell me that Mommy wasn’t taking care of me the way she should, and that I would go live with another family while they tried to help her get better. “Does that sound okay to you, Zoey?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. It was hard not to cry, but I didn’t want her to be sick anymore, and I wanted to go back to school. Once the nice lady let me say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Francis, she took my hand and led me outside to her car.

  While sitting in the car, I looked over at my house. There was a policeman there, and he was taking Mommy and the man that came into the bathroom to his car. They both had their hands behind their backs. Anot
her man in a suit came out with them and got into the front seat of the car where I was. A police car was parked in front of us and my mommy saw me as she waited to get inside the police car.

  “Zoey! What have you done to me, you little shit?” she yelled, and it caused me to jump. “Zoey! You fucking little brat! This is all your fault!” She continued yelling my name until the policeman pushed her head down and shut her inside the back of his car.

  She yelled bad words and screamed at me from the back of the police car. I could see her jumping around and kicking the windows to get out.

  “Zoey!”

  “Zoey!”

  “Zoey!”

  “Zoey.”

  Something smacked me on the face as I slowly woke from my dream about my birth mom.

  “Zoey.”

  Whack! Another smack to the face, this time whatever it was hit my forehead.

  “Zoey!”

  Someone laughed, and then a man’s voice said, “Knock it off, Adam!”

  Smack! Something hit my chest.

  “Zoey!”

  A warm hand gripped my shoulder and shook me. “Z, wake up.”

  After I rubbed my eyes and opened them, I stretched my arms over my head as I continued to wake up. My brother, Jeremy, was knelt on the floor at my side, shaking me.

  “You fell asleep on the couch in the lounge. You okay?”

  “Yeah, what time is it?” I asked and glanced around the customer lounge at the shop. The last thing I remembered was sitting down to flip through a magazine until closing time.

  “It’s almost five,” Jeremy said. “Mom’s here and she wants you to go somewhere with her.”

  When I sat up, I noticed that the couch and floor around me was littered with balls of wadded up paper. I picked one up and looked questioningly at my brother.

  He shrugged and smirked. “Adam was trying to wake you up.”

  I heard a chuckle, and glanced over at the entry door of the lounge. My younger brother, Adam, was there with a big, stupid grin on his face.