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)
My throat tightens. He cups my face, gentle, devastating. “I need you to know somethin’.”
“Okay,” I breathe.
His thumb strokes my cheek, slow and soft and grounding. “I would’ve told you before the accident. If I wasn’t such a coward. If I didn’t think you deserved more than a man with a life lived in the dark.”
“Tell me now,” I whisper.
His voice cracks. Just barely.
“I loved you too.” He inhales, “I loved you then and I love you now, Kelly.”
A sob punches out of me before I can stop it. He catches me instantly, arms wrapping around me, pulling me tight against his chest.
I bury my face in his shirt, gripping him like he’s the only solid thing in a collapsing world.
“You can’t lose it again,” he whispers into my hair. “You can’t forget this again. I can’t. I can’t do that twice, sunshine.”
“I won’t,” I whisper. “I promise.”
He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes. Searching. Needing. Breaking and rebuilding all at once.
“I wanted to fix it,” he whispers, voice raw. “I wanted you to know I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“And now?” I ask softly.
“I’m gonna fix all of it,” he murmurs. “Every piece. Every memory. Every bruise. Every broken thing I left behind.”
I don’t know who moves first. It might be him. It might be me.
But suddenly we’re closer. His forehead against mine. His hands sliding into my hair. My fingers curling into his shirt.
It’s not the kiss from the safehouse, the desperate one, the remembered one.
This is quieter. Softer. A breath shared. A promise remade.
I tilt forward slightly, he stops me with a soft groan, fingers tightening in my hair.
“Kelly…” he whispers. “I want to. God, I want to. But not tonight. Not like this. Not when your heart’s cracked open and we’re stuck underground preparing for war.”
My cheeks flush. “I didn’t mean.”
He hushes me with a thumb across my cheek. “I know what you meant. I know what you feel. I believe it. But I’m not takin’ one piece of you while you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” I state and realize it’s true.
He searches my eyes like he’s checking for lies.
“Maybe not,” he says softly, “but you’re not whole yet either. And when I kiss you again, I want all of you rememberin’ it. Not just pieces.”
My heart flutters so violently it almost hurts. Patience is hard when my entire life feels like some crazy chaotic mess. But somehow I know this will be worth the wait.
Twenty-Three
Ledger
They call it a hunt. I call it a reclaiming.
Before there is time to settle in, Chux returns and gives me a nod. They have a lock on Jonas Greene. My time to join in is here. With a quick promise of my return to Kelly I join my brothers in the battle to send this fucker to the ground. No one fucks with the Kings.
The minute I step out of the safe room, it’s like the Earth itself inhales and holds its breath. In mere minutes Shaft comes to a stop with the van full of us in front of an old abandoned department store. I can’t remember if it was a Sears or K-Mart, but the old shopping store is gone leaving nothing but asphalt and graffiti covered cinder block walls. The glass doors in the front of shattered or missing parts. My mind doesn’t care about any of that.
Find Jonas Greene. Only then can I feel free.
End this.
Protect what is mine.
I grip my gun tightly. My knuckles ache. My jaw aches more. My heart aches worst of all, but I bury that behind the rage carving itself into my spine.
Kelly is safe. Alive.
And the bastard who tried to take her is somewhere close.
Breathing. That won’t last long.
Chux signals a halt with his fist in the air. We stop at a junction where the hallway splits into three areas from the old business, some kind of office, a breakroom, and restrooms. Emergency lights bathe everything in a sickly red glow.
Shaft whispers, “Thermals picked up movement in the west corner of the office.”
Mellow taps his earpiece. “But then it disappeared. He’s moving like he knows the layout.”
Chux’s eyes cut to me. “Because he does.”
I nod once. No point denying it. Greene wasn’t club. He wasn’t family. But he was a shadow from before Kings, a ghost from the kind of life I never talk about.
He wasn’t supposed to come back. I left my past in the past and devoted my all to the Kings as did my brother Chux. The life he was living, the plans they had did align with the men we wanted to be. The law isn’t something I ever want to be in line with, man makes them and this man breaks them. But I have my own code to follow. Jonas Greene has no code.