Free The Hand That Holds Mine by Jennifer Loren

Prologue
    ~Adeline ~
     
    How many blows from life’s fists can one person take before they stop believing?
    My name is Adeline Beal, I was born with next to nothing but aspired for everything. The world around me has always moved quickly, and with a darkness that hovers over me like a never-ending storm. My life was set to be like my mother’s, working day and night, caring for children she couldn’t afford and taking care of a dying husband until she had nothing left of herself. She had strength like no one woman could but still … the world beat her down. The world took my parents from me and sent my brothers and sisters to places I could never find. The world has a way of taking more from you than it is ever willing to give. When you are born, no one promises fairness or even hope. The only thing you are given is a life and it is up to you to make the best of it but I wanted to do more than simply - make the best of it. I have never spent a moment not dreaming, not believing in another place, another world, a better world. I refused to believe that this was going to be my life, that - struggle and heartache, were going to be the only life I know.
    With what I had learned from my own life experiences and my imagination, I escaped to write my first book - in the backroom of a sandwich shop. My manager was kind enough to allow me breaks long enough to get a chapter a day done. The man I married called it a waste of time, a foolish hobby, an annoyance that he was sick of hearing about. Books and writing, all fantasies that have no place in real life and no security for what he wanted. Two years after I finished my first book, it was published and six years later, I completed my best-selling series and made enough money to live a life I had always dreamed of. I could finally buy a home, have children and a dog to sleep at my feet as I write. A chance to travel to places I had only seen in pictures. My road was becoming brighter and brighter and I felt as if I could almost touch that beaming light at the end of my jagged road. That I could reach out and it would warm my hand and instantly set me free from my past.
    In every book I read as a child, it always ended with, “And they lived, Happily Ever After.” Happily ever after? How is that possible? Am I suppose to believe that they never fought? That they agreed on everything - forever? That they never had any concern of any sort? Did they spend every moment of their lives together just being … happy? Well that doesn’t sound all that appealing to me. It’s the twists and the bumps in the road that make the journey so exciting and so much more fulfilling when you overcome them. In my books, it is the ability of the hero to overcome but only with his heroine at his side, battling every step of the way, hand in hand. Together they make a life, by traveling down a long and rocky, but oh so exciting road, making their happiness with each day that they overcome together. My stories may end with a resolution and the hero and heroine may come together but not happily ever after, but happy to journey together, forever. At the end of each of my books I place a symbol, my symbol for happily ever after. The perfect rose encircled by its own twisted, rugged vine. For they may be happy now but they will most certainly run into bumps and twists along their journey, but true love will always help them return to the perfect rose.

    That is the life I wanted, not the happily ever after but just like in my books someone to travel by my side and help me return to the perfect rose.

    What a beautiful life, a beautiful life that now appears as if it will never be.

Chapter 1
    ~Adeline ~
     
      Joshua slips away from his enemies and searches through the darkness to find what he has always wanted, what he has been endlessly searching for …
    The golden statue! … no … His hat? - oh, that is so bad. He … is … searching for … his mind apparently, because I got nothing. I have no