Finding Hope: Book 6 of the Rollin On Series Read online

  FINDING HOPE

  By: Emilia Finn

  Copyright 2018. Emilia Finn

  Cover Design: Amy Queue

  Editing: Brandi Bumstead

  This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This Book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy.

  To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of Emilia Finn’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

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  Finding Hope

  The Rollin On Series, #6

  By Emilia Finn

  This one’s for Brittany, because she really, really wants it. Ha!

  I hope Jack is everything you always hoped he’d be.

  Other Books Written by Emilia

  (in reading order)

  The Rollin On Series

  Begin Again – A Prequel

  Finding Home

  Finding Victory

  Finding Forever

  Finding Peace

  Finding Redemption

  Finding Hope

  Written in the Stars – A Short Story

  The Survivor Series

  Because of You

  Surviving You

  Without You

  Rewriting You

  Always You

  Take A Chance On Me

  The Inamorata Series

  The Fiera Princess (coming soon!)

  Want to know where to find me?

  Website: www.emiliafinn.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmiliaBFinn/

  The Crew: https://www.facebook.com/groups/therollincrew/

  Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/ds5vML

  Email: [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Want to know where to find me?

  In case you were wondering:

  – Jack –

  – Jack –

  – Jack –

  – *Not* Jack –

  – Jack –

  – *Not* Jack –

  – Jack –

  – *Not* Jack –

  – Jack –

  – Bobby –

  – Jack –

  – Britt –

  – Jack –

  – Britt –

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  – Britt –

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  – Britt –

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  – Britt –

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  – Britt –

  – Jack –

  – Britt –

  – Jack –

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  – Britt –

  – Jack –

  – Britt –

  – Jack –

  – Jack –

  – Jack –

  – Britt –

  Epilogue

  WHAT’S NEXT?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CONTACT ME

  In case you were wondering:

  Ages and children

  Jack (25) and Steph (24).

  Bobby (35) and Kit (34) – Bryan (7), Brooklyn (6) and Emma (4).

  Aiden (33) and Tina (31) – Smalls/Evie (11), Alexandra (6) and Sarah (5).

  Jimmy (31) and Izzy (29) – Bean/Lucy (8) and Jamie (7).

  Jon (35) and Tink (35) – Bobby and Luke (Twins, 3)

  – Jack –

  Nobody ever said life was fair.

  It’s not.

  Life is a horrible bitter bitch that likes to hurt the best kind of people. For every bad person’s life that ends, the world likes to snatch away a handful of the good kind, too.

  A drunk driver hits a minivan hauling its young family home from vacation; the drunk dies, but so does the mom and the two small children in the back, leaving a distraught father with no surviving family, a father who would eventually drink himself to death or take too many pills to silence his misery.

  A junkie dies from a dirty batch she bought with her child welfare payments, but that child also starves in her crib because the mom has alienated everyone for so long, no one thought to come looking until it was too late.

  It seems the universe likes to mess with me.

  Specifically, me.

  My mom died when I was a toddler, and although the general consensus says she was a grade-A abusive bitch, a kid still wants his mom.

  Then my dad died when I was fifteen. He wasn’t an abusive man. He was one of the good ones. He was the best dad anyone could ask for.

  That’s two down, but at least I still had my sister. No matter what life tried to sling at me, I still had my sister. I was competing with my mom in the Grade-A category, I treated Kit like shit, but she stuck with me anyway. She never gave up on my punk ass, and she never beat me with a stick – though I know she really wanted to.

  She stuck it out and stayed.

  Until someone tried to take her, too.

  Already an orphan, I had one single living relative left, one who truly loved me, even when I was a fucking asshole. She saved my life a million different ways when I was a teenager, but that universe, that bitter harpy, she wasn’t done with me yet.

  I almost lost Kit, too.

  But though the universe can be so fucking horrible, sometimes it likes to flip the other way. Sometimes it can be amazing, too.

  Even someone like me can be looked down upon and gifted with the greatest treasures of the whole world.

  My family was down to one. Kit and I sat on a perilous edge that was set to tip in a single strong wind, an edge that Kit kept balanced all on her own, since I was so set on tipping us over.

  But somewhere along the way, we found our feet. My sister married, and I was rewarded with a brand-new family.

  Not even a shitty family that we have to visit for obligatory Christmas lunches.

  Despite my asshole behavior, my orphaned ass was thrust into an amazing family and I found myself with four new brothers overnight.

  Then sisters.

  Then nieces and nephews.

  Life was good. Life is good.

  At twenty years old, I was one of the youngest fighters to ever win the world heavyweight title. At twenty-one, I defended and retained my title. At twenty-two through to twenty-five, I’ve gone back time and time again and I’ve fought and kept my title.

  No one can beat me.

  They line up, they try, they crave the media coverage they receive even if they lose. And they do lose. Every single time.

  I can’t be beat.

  I’m too big. Too fast. Too strong.

  I train too damn hard, and I train with the best of the best.

  We. Can’t. Lose.

  But my strength and the hours I spend in the gym day after day don’t mean a damn thing as I sit on the road with Steph’s rapidly wilting body against my chest.

  My speed and precision didn’t mean shit when the drunk driver slammed into my car, folding us in half and flipping us in to the freeway center barrier.

  My success in the octagon and on magazine covers won’t buy Steph’s light back again.

  Money can’t fix everything.

  The noise around us is like steel on steel, crashing waves on drowning ears, flashing lights on pained eyes.

  It hurts. It all hurts, but none of it makes sense.

  It’s just chaos.

  One second, it’s a muffled roar in my ears, a single blended noise buzzing in my head, then clarity slams through and it’s people screaming and cars screeching, glass breaking and people crying.

  Me crying.

  “Stay with me, baby! Wake up. Please wake up.” I grope Steph’s small body in a desperate search for any muscle or bone that remains intact.

  Her beautiful eyes flutter open and have my heart racing. The broken glass bites into my legs. The sounds of honking horns and do-gooders rushing around scream inside my head.

  Shut up! Everybody, shut up.

  She opens her mouth to speak, but blood spills out instead. Her broken chest heaves as she seizes and chokes, then her eyes clo
se with fatigue and have my failing heart revving with panic.

  “No!” I shake her fragile body. “No! Wake up, Steph. Wake up, baby. Help’s coming.”

  “I called 9-1-1!”

  My eyes snap up to a random balding man. Spare tire around his waist. Jowls. Red eyes. Doesn’t take care of himself.

  Bringing my eyes back to Steph, I watch her laboriously drag in air. “Steph, baby, hold on to me.” I hold her as gently as I can, though the adrenaline slamming around my body fogs up my perception. I don’t want to crush her, but I can’t let go.

  She’s so tiny.

  She still looks the same as she did back in high school, with the adorable freckles, and the tiny overbite in her teeth. Her curly hair that she’s never been able to tame, brown with a slight tinge of red, flies free in the gentle breeze and reminds me of the million times I’ve run my fingers through it over the years.

  I’ve known her for only seven years, but it feels like a lifetime. We were just kids when she first stumbled through the school halls, ducking her head low and avoiding eye contact as much as humanly possible.

  I watched her for weeks. Months! I watched, because she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life.

  And I knew beautiful girls.

  By the time I met her in high school, I was the youngest brother in a giant family of fighters, and all of those fighters were married to beautiful women.

  Some of those beautiful women, including my sister, were also fighters.

  I was surrounded by fit, young, beautiful people, and I was ringside for years watching my sisters fight, then at the world championships with all the celebrities and Botox injected wannabes watching my brothers.

  I was never without beautiful people, yet Steph’s shy smile and darting eyes dragged me in and tied me down.

  I tried to talk to her at school, I tried to catch her eye, but every time my six and a half feet approached her tiny five and a half, she’d let out a squeak and duck into the closest bathroom.

  I didn’t give up.

  She’d captivated me.

  After a little while, she had ventured out to the cafeteria to eat lunch instead of hiding away alone. And as is typical in every school across the country, there will always be those guys. The kind with small dicks that pick on the small people to make themselves feel big.

  Steph may as well have hung a sign around her neck, ‘Kick me, I don’t mind.’ These guys tried to pick on her; well, mostly they tried to talk to her.

  Maybe they saw what I saw. Maybe they thought her beautiful.

  Maybe they wanted to get to know her like I did, but as tactless as most sixteen and seventeen-year-old boys tend to be, they were loud and obnoxious.

  Steph needed calm and quiet.

  But that was fine by me, because their tactless asses finally landed her in my lap, so to speak.

  I rode in on my white horse, stood behind her and gave the guys the beady eye, then I swooped down and swept her off her feet.

  Or more accurately, I developed a speech impediment and she took pity on me.

  She had a gift for seeing the best in everyone, and though I was big and gruff and scary, lived in a frat house of sorts with a bunch of my brothers and sisters and no mature adults in a twenty-mile radius, and I clearly wasn’t someone a mom would choose for their shy daughter, Steph still smiled and shared her lunch.

  I might’ve lied and said I had none, simply because I knew her compassionate heart would take pity.

  I had no shame in my Stephanie game.

  “Sir.” Hands try to push me back. White gloves. Blue uniforms. Noise and pain. Real life and shattered glass. “Sir! Move out of the way.”

  I shrug the hand away and refocus on Steph’s fluttering eyelids.

  It’s like we’re back home and she’s dreaming. Like we’re in our room as the light filters through lace curtains while she lies on her belly and her hair smothers us both.

  “Wake up, baby. Don’t go to sleep.”

  Beautiful, hazel green and golden specked eyes meet mine. A single tear spills over and breaks my heart. She opens her mouth to speak, but more blood spills out.

  “It’s okay.” I brush her hair aside with shaking hands. “Just rest, baby. Don’t try to speak.”

  “But–” Her body convulses and blood bubbles up and stains my shirt as she chokes.

  “It’s okay! Shh.” My heart thunders with panic. “I love you, Steph. I love you, okay?”

  She nods weakly.

  “And you love me,” I cry. “I know. I know that’s what you wanna say.” A tear slides along my nose and drips onto her blood smudged cheek. “It’s okay. Just rest, baby. We’ll make you all better. Just hold on.” I shuffle bare inches to the side to let the persistent gloved man into our space. He slaps an oxygen mask over her face, but the blood continues to escape her fragile body. “You’ll be okay. Just stay awake and let them help you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry we said mean things. I’m so sorry, baby.”

  Clamoring for oxygen, my lungs heave and claw at what little air there is left in the universe. Dots swim in my vision, but when Steph’s eyes close for the last time, as her hand squeezes mine then falls limp; when the paramedic shouts time of death and informs me he’s sorry, and when they take her oxygen mask away and slide a sheet over her white face to keep the busybodies at bay – as my life falls apart around me – my chest caves in on itself to the point I’m strangled and cannot catch my breath.

  The dizziness and darkness try to overtake my body, but like a beacon of hope – a higher power or some kind of sign – I turn to my left and find a bleeding, staggering man in handcuffs by a black police cruiser.

  Letting out a roar and springing to my feet like the young, fit athlete that I am, I turn to sprint for him.

  I’m going to kill him. He deserves to die.

  He took Stephanie, so he deserves to die.

  But like the universe just isn’t done with me yet, she gives me the smallest taste of hope, then she swiftly takes it away. I don’t make it more than four feet before I eat the road and fall into the darkness.

  This is fine, too. I can go with my love. She’s bringing me with her and that’s fine.

  I don’t want to be where she isn’t anyway.

  – Jack –

  I Didn’t Die

  “Pneumothorax, laceration of the lung, tears of the spleen and kidney, multiple rib fractures, fractured ulna and radius, shoulder dislocation…” The doctor shakes his head like I’m a naughty little boy. “I don’t know how you stood up, son.”

  Don’t fucking call me son.

  “I don’t know how you stayed conscious for as long as you did. Frankly, I don’t know how you’re alive. Instead of asking for help, you figured swan diving onto the I40 was a great idea. You could’ve died.”

  I don’t dignify his stupid fucking comments with an answer.

  What am I supposed to say? Well sorry, doc, I didn’t mean to upset you.

  Idiot.

  Instead, I turn away and study the faded CPR poster on the side wall of my hospital room.

  My sister is here, and her husband, Bobby. Iz and Jimmy stand in the corner. Aiden and Tina, by the door. Jon and Tink squish into the far corner.

  Everyone’s here; all my brothers and sisters watch me carefully. They’re waiting for my emotionless, seemingly mute ass to break down and sob.

  Fuck that.

  Can’t break down, because that requires emotion. Heart. I have neither… They went to heaven with Steph.

  Stepping forward with tears in her eyes, Kit’s shaking hand takes mine. “Jack.”

  I attempt to squeeze my fist closed. I don’t want her kindness. I don’t want her anything. But broken bones scream through my cast and deny my wishes to be left the fuck alone.

  “Jack–”

  My unused voice comes out gruff and hoarse. “Where’s Steph?”

  Kit’s tears fall heavily, sliding onto her lips, and dripping off her chin. I don’t want my sister to hurt. She’s been through enough, but I can’t find it inside me to tell her to stop. To tell her I’m okay.

  I’m not okay. I’m dead inside.

  “Um,” her voice shakes. “Her mom and dad… they took her.”