Surviving Love (Surviving #2) Read Free Page B

sure Ellie is fine after school. If need be, I will take her to my house and you can collect her from there. She can play with James and Hetty, they’re inseparable at school so having her over for tea won’t be any hardship.”
    I nodded but I hadn’t heard anything she said, all I heard was critical. “I don’t understand it, everything was fine this—” I gasped when I realised today was the day Elliott was being released. “He wouldn’t, would he?”
    “Who?” Joyce asked, interrupting me.
    I lifted my gaze to meet her confused stare, shaking my head. “Nothing. I better go.” I stood and before she could say anything else I left her office, went to the staff room, collected my bag with my car keys, and went in search of my sister. Today was the day Elliott, my sister’s demented ex, was being released from police custody after she made allegations of him abusing her in the most horrendous ways possible. But due to lack of evidence and some silly cow giving him an alibi, Eve dropped the charges.  I raced to my car and started the engine.
    Five minutes into my journey I picked my phone up and dialled Dominic’s number; it immediately went to voicemail. I tried Mum and Dad but again voicemail. Then I tried the only other person I could think of who would have seen Eve that day.
    “Hello.”
    “Hi, it’s Lou...Louise...Eve’s sister,” I stammered, sounding like a buffoon. I don’t know why I felt the need to clarify who I was when we lived together. Johan lives with Eve and I. He also works with my sister and Dominic.
    “I know who it is.” He chuckled and I couldn’t deny the tingles I got when I heard his voice.
    “Do you know...have you heard anything about Eve today...it’s just that...”
    “Lou, are you driving?”
    “What? Yes!” I snapped.
    “It’s dangerous to use your phone while driving. Where are you?”
    “I’m heading to the A1, I’m going to the hospital. Eve’s—”
    “Come home first and pick me up. I’ll explain what’s happened, I promise. Just...I don’t want you driving when you’re distracted.”
    “Johan—”
    “Please Lou.” The aguish in his voice shocked me, but also broke my determination, so I turned down the street that would lead me back home.
    “I’ll be there in two.”
    “Okay,” he whispered before hanging up the phone. I threw my mobile onto the passenger seat and drove toward our house.
    I lived in a small semi-detached house in York with my sister Eve and her colleague Johan. Johan had moved overseas a couple years ago to work for the same pharmaceutical company his father was CEO of in America, but he didn’t talk much about where he’d come from and I never asked. Eve’s boyfriend Dominic also worked there, so the three of them had a lot in common as far as the workplace went. Sometimes I felt left out of the equation.
    Eve had recently escaped an abusive relationship with Dominic’s elder brother Elliott. We thought she was safe, but the monster wasn’t ready to let go, and I feared the worst. Although he was annoying at times, Johan adored my sister; he’d encouraged Eve to come forward about Elliott’s abuse, and for that I was eternally grateful. With no family in the UK, he was alone, so we’d  adopted him into our crazy patchwork family.
    Elliott and Dominic are my cousins; their mum, Jill, is my dad’s sister. My parents married when Eve was a baby, after her biological father ran off. Even though Eve and Dominic aren’t related by blood, only cousins by marriage, I still tease her about it when we’ve had a few drinks. And Ellie, our little sister, is adopted.
    We’re a close family, but from the moment my parents moved next door to Jill, Eve fell in love with Dominic; the relation by marriage never once occurred to her, he was her true love in waiting. But Elliott got his nasty claws into her and refused to let go. And now she’s lying in a hospital bed and I have no clue whether she is okay or not.
    As I turned