Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147545 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
I feel the tears welling again, and I’ve said all I really needed to say, so I stand, clear my throat, and turn my back to the mausoleum.
I don’t try to stop the tears this time. I let them track down my cheeks as I head back to the car.
Once I’m inside, I glance at the mausoleum one last time, knowing I won’t be back. “Goodbye, Tim.”
___
I push the key into the lock and turn it, and a moment later, I’m where Tor told me to be: inside my apartment.
My body feels heavy with exhaustion, both the emotional and physical varieties.
When I turn the corner, I expect to see Tor sitting in my living room on my couch, and I’m too tired to deny the tug of disappointment when he isn’t there.
I don’t want to talk to him, but he’s right, we do need to talk.
I don’t want him here, but it feels awful that he isn’t.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I don’t waste energy trying to figure it out. I shower alone, then go straight to bed.
There’s nothing I want more than the escape of a dreamless sleep, but the moment I curl up alone in my spot on the bed, all I can focus on is the emptiness of Tor’s. The unfairness of missing the person who may have ruined my life is a lot to bear, and I don’t want to go down the paths my mind leads to when I think about that.
It’s just that I can’t escape it either.
I’m alone in the dark inside a building he owns.
That family owns everything in this town, but I thought I made it clear they couldn’t buy me.
And they couldn’t.
Not with money, at least.
For two weeks, falling for Tor hasn’t felt like falling into line because I thought he was on my side, but now I have to consider the possibility that he had ulterior motives from the start. That he isn’t who I thought he was. That maybe it was never about protecting me at all.
For two weeks, I thought I’d slain the monster in the Walters family, and it turns out maybe I fell in love with him instead.
CHAPTER 41
TOR
I nudged Cassie toward Shaley because I knew she needed a friend, but I didn’t adequately anticipate just how aggravating it would be for her to have a sanctuary I wasn’t providing.
To be fair, at the time, I never thought she would seek sanctuary away from me.
She must have only returned home last night to pack a bag because first thing this morning, she was back at Shaley’s and out of comfortable reach.
I can still get to her there, of course, but it would be messier and carry greater risk. For now, I let her have her separation. I have things to do as well.
Typically, when I’m working on something important, I get tunnel vision, but not knowing exactly where Cassie’s head is right now has me distracted. My mind wanders back to her again and again, wondering what she’s doing, what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling.
What she has told Shaley, and how big of a problem that will end up being.
It’s irksome, but Cassie has made a deliberate choice to keep her phone off. She hasn’t simply blocked me—she has blocked out every avenue that she knows I use to keep track of her.
The only advantage I have is that it hasn’t occurred to her I’m also tracking the Lexus. I always know where she is.
I’m sure she would think of it if she weren’t so upset. I have my poor Cassie’s mind spinning pretty wildly right now, and I’m guessing she lacks the capacity to think clearly.
You don’t murder someone who broke your heart unless you’re somebody who gets trapped inside tunnels of intense emotion, after all.
Before Cassie, I couldn’t have even imagined what that must be like, but when Nina lit the fuse the other night, I found myself loading crates of dynamite into every tunnel, prepared to blow up our entire world just to scoop her up out of the rubble until my mom, likely sensing the pending doom in the air, found me and reminded me to take a breath—and to let Cassie take one, too.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt like it at that moment.
I tend to be pretty logical and clearheaded most of the time, so I managed to switch gears, but I figure that’s how Cassie must have been feeling when she showed up at our lake house with a gun, her pure heart polluted with so much darkness that she pulled the trigger.
I put all that darkness there, whether directly or indirectly, and I’ve been meticulously clearing the area and building her back up, but Nina has jeopardized everything by bringing in the one element my masterpiece cannot be built around—the truth.