When You Come Back to Me ©2020 Emma Scott Books, LLC Cover Art: Lori Jackson Designs Cover Photographer: Cory Stierley Cover Model: Dylan Brooks Photograph Licensed by: The Cover Lab, LLC Proofing and Formatting by: R. Anderson No part of this eBook 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 written permission from the author. This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, events or incidents, businesses or places (such as Santa Cruz Central High School, Soquel Saints, Campbell Coyotes, Gold Line Records) are fictitious or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Contents Books by Emma Scott Playlist Content Warning Dedication Prologue Part I Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Part II Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Part III Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Part IV Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Part V Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Epilogue Author’s Note Acknowledgments Sneak Peek About the Author Books by Emma Scott (All books but the Beautiful Hearts Duet are available for FREE through Kindle Unlimited) Duets Full Tilt All In Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts #1) Long Live the Beautiful Hearts (Beautiful Hearts #2) Series How to Save a Life (Dreamcatcher #1) Sugar & Gold (Dreamcatcher #2) The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys #1) When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys #2) The Last Piece of His Heart (Lost Boys #3) coming soon RUSH (RUSH #1) Endless Possibility (RUSH #1.5) Standalones Love Beyond Words Unbreakable The Butterfly Project Forever Right Now In Harmony A Five-Minute Life Someday, Someday MM Romance Someday, Someday When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys #2) Novellas One Good Man Love Game Playlist Walkabout // Augustines (opening credits) Señorita // Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello Night Running // Cage the Elephant (feat. Beck) When Doves Cry // Prince Fix You // Coldplay I Will Possess Your Heart // Death Cab for Cutie Fine Line // Harry Styles Wish You Were Here // Pink Floyd Not Over You // Gavin DeGraw Superposition // Young the Giant (closing credits) Content Warning Please note that this book contains content that may be triggering for some sensitive readers such as the death of a family member, depression, mental health struggles, repercussions of conversion therapy, and sexual exploitation (off the page). It is my sincerest hope I have treated these issues with the care they deserve. Intended for readers 18 and up. Dedication For Bill, with all my love. Thank you for being the calm to my storm. Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final —Rainer Maria Rilke Prologue Sanitarium du lac Léman Geneva, Switzerland “Can I tell you a secret?” The lump in the twin bed on the other side of the room answered with a petulant sniff. I tried again. “I’m not kidding, Milo. It’s a very important, life-changing secret. Trust me.” My roommate hunched deeper in his blanket. “Leave me alone.” Milo resembled a snow-covered mound in our whitewashed room. White sheets, white walls, white linoleum floor. Like the inside of an igloo. If I dwelled too long on all that white, I’d start to shiver under my own thin blanket. Not because I was cold. Switzerland in August was quite pleasant, actually. But my parents had sent me to a brutal conversion therapy camp in Alaska for six months, which necessitated this vacation at the Sanitarium du lac Léman. A year later, and my brain was still turning my waking hours into a remembered nightmare. My room’s walls and ceiling would morph into the vast white plains of Alaska. The green forests surrounding the sanitarium grounds awoke memories of endless night marches through bitter cold. The indoor pool’s warm water became the icy depths of Copper Lake where I’d been plunged, naked and freezing… I don’t swim in pools anymore. Dr. Lange would say I was projecting my past trauma onto the sanitarium, that was actually warm and inviting. But PTSD doesn’t give a rat’s frilly pink ass what a thing was supposed to be. Its computations are mindless. White = snow = Alaska = torture. And warm and inviting wasn’t how I’d describe the room I shared with Milo anyway. Sanitarium du lac Léman was a mental hospital trying to disguise itself as a bed and breakfast. The moonlight filtered through the barred windows over our meager furniture: twin beds, one bookshelf—filled mostly with my journals, and a few of Milo’s drawings on the wall (hung with tape, not pins or nails). I give an A for effort, but bars on the windows were less cozy hotel and more prison chic. And prisons were high on my list of things onto which I projected my trauma. I’d let myself be trapped twice—first Alaska and now here. Never again. Milo sniffed under his blanket, upset that I was getting out in the morning. I couldn’t fathom why. If I were gone, I wouldn’t miss me. But he was a sweet kid. I hated that he felt bad. I leaned over in my bed to try again. “Milo, hey.” “Don’t talk to me.” “My secret is kind of a big one,” I said. “Like, huge. You’re not going to want to miss out.” “I said, leave me alone.” The pain in his voice—child-like and tear-choked—pierced the
