Seeking Me To Find You (Finding You Series Book 1)
Finding You Series
By
Anna Mychals
Seeking Me To Find You
Copyright © 2014 Anna Mychals
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Beth Maddox, Cover It Up Designs
www.facebook.com/coveritupdesigns
Editor: Shannon BranDee Eversoll
ISBN: 978-0-9909098-0-4
Kindle Edition
I dedicate this book to my husband, Harry. Thank you for always believing in me and supporting me on this journey. You are my lover and my best friend. Love you!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
– Jackson
I am very fortunate to have such a loving and caring family. Harry, you once gave me a necklace that said, “Property of a U. S. Marine”. I want you to know that I am honored to have such a brave husband who put his life on the line for his country. The Marine Corps says that your loyalty and dedication is to God, Country, Corps, Family, and Self. What I know is that no matter where you are your loyalty and dedication to our family makes me proud to be your wife. Thank you for always working hard so that the kids and I are never without.
Thank you to my two monkeys, Jake and Riley. You are my gifts from God. Every day you inspire me to be a better person. I admire you both for being your own person. Jake, you keep me in stitches with all the jokes you share. Thank you for still cuddling with me on the couch while I have my coffee even though you are almost sixteen. Riley, I admire your spunk. I wish I had the confidence you have when I was your age. Keep pursuing your dream of becoming an author.
To my dear friend MaryAnn, thank you for sharing your secret on that crazy February morning. You gave me the confidence to take the story that had been tucked away in my brain and put it on paper. Your constant guidance and support means the world to me.
I want to say a special thank you to my beta readers, Jennifer Alumbaugh, Danielle Petersen, and Lynn Smith who took time out of their busy schedule to read a piece of work from an unknown. I treasure your feedback and cannot wait to share my next book with you.
Thank you to Beth Maddox of Cover It Up Designs. My cover! I love my cover! Thank you for bringing my vision to life.
Thank you to my editor, Shannon BranDee Eversoll. People always think that I am joking when I say I’m dyslexic. I was diagnosed when I was five years old and struggle with it every day. Your attention to detail helped my dream come together.
I want to extend a special thank you to my readers. Thank you for giving a newbie a chance. I hope you enjoy my story. I wrote it especially for you.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
– Rumi
Grace
T
his is me,
Grace Weatherly, always the odd-girl out. People tell me that I’m a natural beauty. What does that really mean? To me I seem like a normal girl trying to just make it through. I don’t find anything unique about my looks. How many girls do you know that are five feet two with long, sandy-blonde hair and delicate features? What does
that
even mean? Delicate features?
My mom always thought I needed extra protection. She had me when she was just seventeen. Upon my sperm donor hearing that mom was pregnant, he pretty much bolted! He was a kid himself, just three years older than my mom. In boy years that’s like thirteen years old. He told mom that he had dreams of going to Hollywood to be an actor. Why couldn’t he have stayed and
acted
like my father? One way my sperm donor branded me was by insisting that I have his last name because “one day” he would be famous and he knew that I would appreciate that. Not! It pisses me off because she went along with it. She thought that if things appeared normal then I would feel normal; she never spoke ill of him. I think she was trying hard to protect me from his outright rejection, however, I saw through all that bull. Once he made it big, not as an actor but as a Hollywood agent, he sent obscene amounts of money. I didn’t want it, and in a way my mother didn’t want to appear to need it. That is why she eventually started to set it aside so that one day I could use it to create a comfortable life for myself. Money versus my biological father in my life…hmm, which would a girl choose?
My real father came in the form of a Marine that married my mother when I was five. From day one he took me in as his own. He made sure that all of my needs were met and fostered my independent side. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t protective. Holy moly was my stepfather protective. Starting at a young age, he made sure that I could take care of myself. Since every Marine is required to learn hand-to-hand combat, he required the same from me in the form of Judo lessons. He use to say that he knew what went on in every young boy’s mind and that he was going to make sure his daughter didn’t become a victim to those thoughts.
Because I was raised rough and tough, I always seem to gravitate to playing with boys. Man, I could keep up with the best of them. I had two concussions, a broken collar bone, and enough bruises to color me black and blue by the time I was twelve. The girls at school called me the odd girl. Just because I can relate with the male species better than trite females doesn’t make me
odd
. Just because I can hit an unsuspected boy square in the chest with a paintball while on my way to capture the flag doesn’t make me
odd
. Girls are just too whiny. They don’t want dirt under their nails and revel in this thing explained to me as
drama
. Who has time for that? I never understood how guys could flock to girls that were so catty and would dumb themselves down just for a boy.
Once I hit high school I really started feeling like the odd girl out. I’d been
one of the boys
for so long that no one came knocking on my door to ask me out. While girls were dressing up, wearing makeup, and batting their eyelashes, I was comfortable in jeans and t-shirts. I spent my extra time running on the cross country and track team while accelerating in my classes. That’s why when I was sixteen years, eleven months, two days old, I graduated early. I had to escape the insanity known as high school.
So here I sit in a dimly lit part of the campus library, with six months from graduating college, early of course, with a Masters in Secondary Education and Minor in Music Composition. Nate, my best friend, has just asked me to move to LA with him and his band. He’s so comically animated and loud that the librarian is about to take him out with one swoop of her laser eyes. Of course he’s oblivious of this. I really think this is the first time he has entered this sanctuary in the five years he’s been here. Nate is my absolute best friend and no he’s not gay. I always get a little chuckle when people suggest that they have the perfect guy for him to meet.
Nathan, sweet Nathan, is a jaw dropping, rock starring, fine specimen of a man. We met in the common lounge of our co-ed dorm my freshman year. Nate was in his second year as a freshman. Poor guy was drawn in by that damn red solo cup and those girls that looked like angels but were more like those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz – clingy and green from puking up so much alcohol. Upon hearing my age, Nate could not believe that my parents would ever let me come to college early and live in a Co-Ed dorm of all things. Nate and I bonded over our love of flag football, love of music and love of cheesecake. He’s marveled at my ability to outwit and out maneuver guys three to four times my size on my way to scoring a touchdown. What the guys didn’t know was that I safety pinned my flags to my undies when I had to go to the
ladies room
before the game began. I also used baby oil gel when I got out of the shower before the game. It made me a little harder to hold on to. Guys would try to grab my arm and I would just slip away. Tricky I know, but I’m a small girl, I have to even the odds somehow.
Also, Nate has always said that he is in awe by watching me produce a song in fifteen minutes by him just expressing an idea. What can I say, I’m a natural. For as long as I can remember, music has always been a part of my everyday life. My mother was a music teacher so between working on my hand-to-hand combat and digging in the dirt, she made sure I could read and play any kind of music. Every night before I went to sleep, I would write in my journal. Instead of writing “Dear Diary” entries, I would write poems. Eventually a tune would weave its way into my head causing those poems to turn into songs. Nate has never understood why I never wanted to play with his band. I guess I’m not at natural when it comes to getting on stage where I’m the center of attention. On the other hand, when Nate stands on stage performing our music, I’m the one standing in awe. I get a rush just by watching him play to crowd and feeding off their energy.
I bet you’re curious about the bonding over cheesecake. Besides being a music teacher, my mother has a love of baking. Growing up she would always tell me that a way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. We would spend Saturday evenings making a dessert for Sunday’s lunch. Since my favorite dessert was cheesecake, I always would want to make it. Because of this, I learned to make cheesecake in many different ways. My favorite is Chocolate Chip Cheesecake whereas Nate’s… Let’s just say, if it says cheesecake, Nate is all over it. It is an experience to watch him place a whole slice of cheesecake in his mouth and down it without even a drop of water. Awesome!
Nate’s band is made up of guys he has known since high school. In the beginning, he felt success was coming slower than what they anticipated because they weren’t in the mix of things. The other guys decided that going to class during the day and mixing it up in the college bars at night would lead them where they needed to be. At that point, Nate determined that besides working on his elusive record deal, his grand mission in college wouldn’t be to actually graduate with a degree, but to keep the frat boys, hell any boy, away from me, his sweet Grace.
Whatever!
Many people thought we’d eventually fall in lust and go at it like rabbits in the spring, but no. Nate became my best confidant, best music buddy, best cheesecake tester, best friend.
Nate has no family to speak of, but along with the band, I became Nate’s family. His mother passed away when he was ten. He was left alone trying to deal with his loss while his father checked out and sought comfort with a little Southern Comfort. Most nights we sit up late talking about our families and how our fathers, who are suppose to be such strong men, seem to hide when the going gets tough. In many of our late night bitch fests, I came to understand that Nate needs me more than I need him. So here we are, about to take that next step…life beyond college.