Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
He helps me down, hands steady, strong, warm around my waist.
My breath hitches.
He hears it. I see it in his eyes. He ignores it anyway. He’s being painfully careful with me, too careful.
“Ledger?” I ask softly.
“Yeah?”
“What were we, before all this? Really?”
He stiffens.
“You said earlier we were ‘something.’ What does that mean?”
His mouth works like he’s fighting the answer.
“You want the truth?” he asks.
I nod.
He stares at me, long, unblinking, and for a second, I feel everything he’s holding back. “It means I was an idiot,” he says quietly.
I blink. “What?”
He exhales roughly, hands dragging through his hair. “It means I had you in my life and didn’t give you what you deserved. Means you were right in front of me wantin’ more, I knew it even when you wouldn’t admit it, and I pushed you away. Means I thought I was protectin’ you by keepin’ things simple. When all I was really doin’ was bein’ a coward.”
My throat tightens. “Ledger.”
He shakes his head tightly. “Not done.”
I fall silent.
“It means I lost you before the accident,” he states on a tight breath. “And now I gotta live with the fact that you don’t remember any of it, the good or the bad.”
His voice cracks just the smallest fracture, but I notice.
“And I gotta earn you all over again.”
My breath leaves my lungs.
Earn me. Earn me. Not win me. Not keep me.
Earn me.
I stare at him, heart pounding in a frantic rhythm.
“Riot,” I whisper.
He steps closer, but not too close. Close enough that heat rolls off him, not close enough to touch.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For everything.”
Something inside me bends, a soft, fragile place I didn’t know I still had. Then a noise cuts through the air.
A branch snapping.
Riot goes rigid every muscle, every nerve firing at once. His hand grips my wrist.
“Inside. Now.”
My heart jumps. “What?”
“Inside,” he growls, already pushing me toward the small house.
We rush in and he slams the door, locking it in one fluid motion. Then he drags a chair up under the handle and reaches for his gun.
“I saw someone,” he mutters. “Edge of the fence. Too close.”
A tremor races through me. “Again?”
He nods, scanning the windows. “They’re getting bold. Or desperate.”
I wrap my arms around myself, breath shaking.
He turns, sees me trembling, and in two strides he’s in front of me again.
“Come here,” he whispers.
I don’t think. I move. He pulls me into his chest, arms wrapping around me with a gentleness he doesn’t use on anyone else. I melt against him, breath syncing with his, fear dissolving under the weight of his warmth.
My cheek rests over his heart. It’s racing.
“Riot,” I whisper. “What if they come inside?”
His grip tightens.
“They won’t touch you,” he murmurs. “Not while I’m breathing.”
His voice vibrates through me, low, rough, vow-carved.
And something clicks inside my head a flash so strong my knees buckle.
Him.
Holding me like this.
Not here, but somewhere else.
My face in his neck.
His hands on my back.
His voice in my ear whispering the same words.
I’ve got you, sunshine. Always.
I gasp sharply.
He pulls back just enough to see my face. “What is it?”
“A memory,” I breathe. “I—I remember you holding me. Like this. And saying something.”
His eyes soften. “Yeah?”
“You said you’d keep me safe,” I whisper. “I didn’t hear the whole sentence but the feeling—”
Emotion cracks across his face not relief, not joy, but something deeper.
Hope.
Fear.
Regret.
And buried under all of it…
Love.
He doesn’t say it.
I don’t remember it.
But I feel it in him.
“You’re remembering the right things,” he says quietly.
I swallow hard. “Why, why does it hurt so much?”
“Because we weren’t done,” he answers. “And now we gotta start from scratch.”
My heart lurches.
He lifts a hand and brushes a thumb across my cheek. Not a kiss. Not a claim.
A promise.
Thunder rolls outside, distant but echoing.
The storm’s coming. Why does the rain have to come now?
Inside me, another storm brews softer but just as destructive.
“Riot,” I whisper, “if I remember everything what then?”
His breath shudders.
“Then we finish what we should’ve started,” he says.
“And if I don’t?”
He cups my face fully now, his forehead almost touching mine.
“Then I’ll make damn sure you never feel alone in your head again.”
My chest aches.
My eyes sting.
But before I can say anything more, before I can ask what he means or why it feels like my heart is on a tightrope between two cliffs—His phone buzzes.
He stiffens. Checks it.
His eyes go lethal.
“What?” I whisper.
He looks up, jaw clenched.
“They found somethin’,” he says.
My pulse spikes. “What?”
“A message,” he says softly. “Left at the scene of your crash.”
A chill tears through me.
“A message for who?”
Riot’s gaze locks on mine.
“For me.”
Fifteen
Ledger
They came for her to get to me. That’s a mistake none of them will live long enough to regret.
* * *
The moment my phone vibrates, I know it isn’t good.
Good news doesn’t come in the middle of the night.
Good news doesn’t come from Looney texting instead of calling.