Love and Other Words Christina Lauren Read Online Free

  praise for the novels of Christina Lauren

"At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn."

— The Washington Post on Dating You lot / Hating Yous (A Best Romance of 2017 option)

"Delightful."

— People on Roomies

"A passionate and bittersweet tale of dear in all of its wonderfully terrifying reality… Lauren successfully tackles a weighty subject with both ferocity and compassion."

— Booklist on Autoboyography

"Christina Lauren hilariously depicts modern dating."

— Usa Weekly on Dating You / Hating You

"Perfectly captures the hunger, thrill, and doubt of young, modern beloved."

— Kirkus Reviews on Wicked Sexy Liar

"Christina Lauren'south books have a place of honor on my bookshelf."

— Sarah J. Maas, bestselling author of Throne of Glass

"Truly a romance for the twenty-beginning century. [Dating Yous / Antisocial You is] a smart, sexy romance for readers who thrive on girl ability."

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Lauren brings her feature charm to the story. Holland's tale is more than an unrequited trounce; it'south about self-expectations, problematic friendships, anarchistic family, and the foreign power of beloved."

— Booklist on Roomies

"In our eyes, Christina Lauren tin can practise no wrong."

— Bookish

"The perfect summertime read."

— Self on Sweet Filthy Male child

Christina Lauren is the combined pen proper name of longtime writing partners/besties/soulmates and brain-twins Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, Usa Today and #ane international bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Sublime, The Firm and Autoboyography.

Yous can find them online at:

ChristinaLaurenBooks.com

Facebook.com/ChristinaLaurenBooks

@ChristinaLauren

books by christina lauren

Dating You / Antisocial You

Roomies

Beloved and Other Words

the beautiful serial

Cute Bounder

Beautiful Stranger

Cute Bowwow

Beautiful Bombshell

Cute Player

Beautiful Kickoff

Cute Beloved

Beautiful Hugger-mugger

Cute Boss

Cute

wild seasons

Sweet Filthy Male child

Dirty Rowdy Thing

Dark Wild Nighttime

Wicked Sexy Liar

young adult

Sublime

The House

Autoboyography

COPYRIGHT

Published by Piatkus

978-0-3494-1757-8

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely casual.

Copyright © Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings 2018

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No office of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval organization, or transmitted, in any class or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned past the publisher.

PIATKUS

Little, Chocolate-brown Book Group

Carmelite Firm

50 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DZ

www.littlebrown.co.u.k.

www.hachette.co.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland

Beloved and Other Words

Table of Contents

praise for the novels of Christina Lauren

nigh the writer

books by christina lauren

COPYRIGHT

dedication

prologue

now

and so

now

then

now

and so

at present

then

now

then

now

and so

now

then

now

then

now

so

now

and so

now

then

now

and then

now

then

now

then

now

then

now

then

at present

then

now

then

now

then

now

then

now

then

now

then

now

now

acknowledgments

READERS Group GUIDE

Introduction

Topics and Questions for Word

Heighten Your Book Club

For Erin and Marcia,

and the house well-nigh the creek in the wood.

prologue

Thousand

y dad was a lot taller than my mother – I mean a lot. He was six foot five and my mom was just over v human foot three. Danish big and Brazilian petite. When they met, she didn't speak a word of English. But by the time she died, when I was ten, it was almost as if they'd created their ain language.

I remember the mode he would hug her when he got dwelling from work. He would wrap his arms all the way effectually her shoulders, press his face into her hair while his torso curved over hers. His arms became a set of parentheses bracketing the sweetest hole-and-corner phrase.

I would disappear into the background when they touched like this, feeling like I was witnessing something sacred.

It never occurred to me that dear could exist anything other than all-consuming. Fifty-fifty as a child, I knew I never wanted anything less.

But then what began as a cluster of malignant cells killed my mother, and I didn't want any of it, ever over again. When I lost her, information technology felt like I was drowning in all the love I still had that could never be given. It filled me up, choked me like a rag doused in kerosene, spilled out in tears and screams and in heavy, pulsing silence. And somehow, as much as I hurt, I knew information technology was even worse for Dad.

I ever knew that he would never autumn in love again after Mom. In that style, my dad was ever piece of cake to understand. He was straightforward and quiet: he walked quietly, spoke quietly; fifty-fifty his anger was quiet. It was his dearest that was booming. His love was a roaring, vociferous bellow. And afterward he loved Mom with the strength of the sun, and later the cancer killed her with a gentle gasp, I figured he would exist hoarse for the residuum of his life and wouldn't e'er want another woman the way he'd wanted her.

Before Mom died, she left Dad a list of things she wanted him to think equally he saw me into adulthood:

1.

Don't spoil her with toys; spoil her with books.

ii.

Tell her you honey her. Girls need the words.

iii.

When she'southward tranquillity, you do the talking.

4.

Requite Macy x dollars a week. Brand her salvage ii. Teach her the value of money.

5.

Until she's sixteen, her curfew should be ten o'clock, no exceptions.

The listing went on and on, deep into the fifties. Information technology wasn't so much that she didn't trust him; she just wanted me to feel her influence even later she was gone. Dad reread information technology ofttimes, making notes in pencil, highlighting certain things, making sure he wasn't missing a milestone or getting something wrong. Equally I grew older, the list became a bible

of sorts. Not necessarily a rule book, but more a reassurance that all these things Dad and I struggled with were normal.

One rule in particular loomed large for Dad.

25.

When Macy looks then tired after school that she can't even form a sentence, take her away from the stress of her life. Detect a weekend getaway that is piece of cake and close that lets her breathe a lilliputian.

And although Mom likely never intended that nosotros actually buy a weekend home, my dad – a literal type – saved, and planned, and researched all the small towns north of San Francisco, preparing for the day when he would need to invest in our retreat.

In the start couple of years after Mom died, he watched me, his ice-blue eyes somehow both soft and probing. He would ask questions that required long answers, or at least longer than "yes," "no," or "I don't care." The get-go time I answered one of these detailed questions with a vacant moan, besides tired from swim practice, and homework, and the boring tedium of dealing with persistently dramatic friends, Dad called a real estate agent and demanded she find us the perfect weekend home in Healdsburg, California.

Nosotros first saw it at an open house, shown by the local Realtor, who allow us in with a broad smile and a tiny, judgmental slant of her eyes toward our big-city San Francisco agent. It was a four-sleeping accommodation wood-shingled and sharply angled cabin, chronically damp and potentially moldy, tucked back into the shade of the woods and nearly a creek that would continually bubble exterior my window. It was bigger than we needed, with more land than we could possibly maintain, and neither Dad nor I would realize at the time that the most important room in the house would be the library he would make for me within my expansive closet.

Nor could Dad have known that my whole world would end up next door, held in the palm of a skinny nerd named Elliot Lewis Petropoulos.

now

tuesday, october iii

I

f you drew a straight line from my apartment in San Francisco to Berkeley, it would only exist ten and a half miles, but fifty-fifty in the best commuting window it takes more than an hour without a car.

"I caught a bus at six this morn," I say. "Two BART lines, and another bus." I look downwardly at my watch. "Vii thirty. Not too bad."

Sabrina wipes a smudge of foamy milk from her upper lip. As much as she understands my avoidance of cars, I know at that place'south a part of her that thinks I should simply power through it and go a Prius or Subaru, like any other self-respecting Bay Area resident. "Don't let anyone tell you you're not a saint."

"I actually am. Yous fabricated me leave my bubble." Just I say it with a smiling, and look down at her tiny daughter on my lap. I've but ever seen the princess Vivienne twice, and she seems to have doubled in size. "Good thing you're worth information technology."

I hold babies every twenty-four hour period, just it never feels similar this. Sabrina and I used to live across a dorm room from each other at Tufts. Then nosotros moved into an apartment off-campus before quasi-upgrading to a aging house during our respective graduate programs. Past some magic nosotros both concluded up on the West Coast, in the Bay Expanse, and now Sabrina has a baby. That we are old plenty now to exist doing this – birthing children, breeding – is the weirdest feeling ever.

"I was upwardly at eleven last night with this 1," Sabrina says, looking at us fondly. Her smile turns wry at the edges. "And two. And four. And 6…"

"Okay, you win. But to be fair, she smells better than most of the people on the motorcoach." I constitute a small osculation on Viv's head and tuck her more deeply into the crook of my arm before carefully reaching for my coffee.

The cup feels foreign in my paw. Information technology's ceramic, not a paper throwaway or the enormous stainless steel travel mug Sean fills to the brim for me each morning, assuming – not incorrectly – that information technology takes a hulking dose of caffeine to get me prepare to tackle the day. It's been forever since I had time to sit downwards with an bodily mug and sip annihilation.

"You already look like a mama," Sabrina says, watching usa from across the small café table.

"The do good of working with babies all solar day."

Sabrina is repose for a breath, and I realize my mistake. Ground rule number i: never reference my chore around mothers, especially new mothers. I tin can practically hear her middle stutter across the table from me.

"I don't know how you do information technology," she whispers.

The sentence is a repeating chorus to my life right now. It seems to bungle my friends over and over again that I made the decision to become into pediatrics at UCSF – in the critical-intendance track. Without fail, I catch a flash of suspicion that maybe I'm missing an important, tender bone, some maternal brake that should preclude me from being able to routinely witness the suffering of sick kids.

I requite Sabrina my usual refrain of "Someone needs to," then add, "And I'm good at it."

"I bet you are."

"Now pediatric neuro? That I couldn't do," I say, and then pull my lips between my teeth, physically restraining myself from proverb more.

Close up, Macy. Shut your crazy blubbering rima oris.

Sabrina offers a small nod, staring at her babe. Viv smiles up at me and kicks her legs excitedly.

"Not all the stories are sorry." I tickle her tummy. "Tiny miracles happen every twenty-four hours, don't they, cutie?"

The subject change rolls out of Sabrina, loud plenty to be a niggling jarring: "How's wedding planning coming?"

I groan, pressing my face up into the sweet babe smell of Viv's cervix.

"That good, huh?" Laughing, Sabrina reaches for her daughter, as if she's unable to share her any longer. I can't blame her. She's such a warm and shapable little package in my arms.

"She's perfect, beloved," I say quietly, handing her over. "Such a solid footling daughter."

And, as if everything I do is somehow hardwired to my memories of them – the raucous life next door, the behemothic, chaotic family I never had – I am hit with nostalgia, of the last non-work-related infant I spent whatsoever real time with. It's a retentiveness of me equally a teenager, staring down at baby Alex every bit she slept in her bouncy chair.

My brain leapfrogs through a hundred images: Miss Dina cooking dinner with the swaddled packet of Alex slung against her chest. Mr. Nick belongings Alex in his beefy, hairy arms, staring downwards at her with the tenderness of an unabridged village. Sixteen-year-quondam George trying – and declining – to change a diaper without incident on the family couch. The protective lean of Nick Jr., George, and Andreas as they stared downwards at their new, near dearest sibling. And then, invariably, my mind shifts to Elliot merely across or backside, waiting quietly for his older brothers to movement on to their fighting or running or mess making, leaving him to pick upwardly Alex, read to her, give her his undivided attention.

I anguish, missing them all then much, but specially him.

"Mace," Sabrina prompts.

I blink. "What?"

"The wedding?"

"Correct." My mood droops; the prospect of planning a wedding ceremony while juggling a hundred hours a week at the hospital never fails to frazzle me. "We haven't moved on it yet. We still need to pick a date, a identify, a… everything. Sean doesn't care well-nigh the details, which, I guess, is practiced?"

"Of course," she says with fake effulgence, shifting Viv to covertly nurse her at the tabular array. "And besides, what's the rush?"

In her question, the twin thought is very shallowly cached: I'thousand your best friend and I've only met the man twice, for fuck'south sake. What is the rush?

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