Total pages in book: 331
Estimated words: 315585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1578(@200wpm)___ 1262(@250wpm)___ 1052(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 315585 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1578(@200wpm)___ 1262(@250wpm)___ 1052(@300wpm)
Placing her hands on my face, she forces me to look at her. I reach up and push some loose strands from her face. Her eyes are glassy from the alcohol, but she looks stunning.
“I wanted…” She pauses, swallowing, and I frown. “I wanted to tell you thank you.”
My pulse races at her words, because I know exactly where she’s going with this. “Eve—”
“I’ve never celebrated a birthday before, and I want to thank you for giving me something so special.”
Janice was nice enough to let me help plan this party for my wife. “You better get used to it, angel. We’ll be celebrating it every year.”
“Gosh, every year?” She rolls her eyes like she’s terrified of the idea, but the smile on her gorgeous face tells me the truth.
“For the rest of our lives,” I assure her. And thanks to the enhancements, it’ll be a very, very long time.
She places her lips on mine, and my hands cup her face while she kisses me. When she pulls away, her eyes drop to my jeans. “I’ll take that quickie now.”
I grab her thighs, and she jumps up, wrapping her legs around me, giggling, as I walk her to the bed, knowing damn well I’m not going to be done anytime soon. The party will just have to wait for the birthday girl to return.
The memories come and go like the weather. There’s no controlling them. At first, I thought it was the silence.
It was driving me mad. There isn’t a TV in this godforsaken place. Eve broke it when she fought the man the night I took my belt to her ass, and they haven’t replaced it.
Just a small radio. And after fiddling with the knob for who knows how long, I could only find a country station. I hate that shit. So fucking depressing. But it’s better than nothing.
I’m currently sitting on the end of the bed, elbows on my thighs and bent over, gripping my hair with my hands. I’m so tired. Who knew heartbreak would be so exhausting? It’s an inner battle that I just want to give up on.
A part of me has died, but for some reason I’m still breathing.
The pain. It’s crippling. I remember losing my mother, and it didn’t feel like this. Maybe it was because I knew my mother was better off. Whereas with Eve, I wanted to give her a better life. I wanted to be someone she’d be proud to call her husband.
“Whiskey Lullaby” by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss begins playing, and I jump up and rip that bitch from the fucking wall, snapping the cord and tossing it across the room as well.
Silence it is.
A knock comes at my door, and I don’t even bother to answer it. No one knows where I am, and if it was one of my brothers, they wouldn’t be fucking knocking.
“Sir?” The soft knock comes again.
I groan; it’s the bartender. Yanking the door open, she gasps, taking a step back. Her wide eyes look over my busted face, and then she leans to her left to get a view into my room. She scrunches her button nose at the smell that rolls out of the open door like a cloud of smoke.
“What?” I bark and she jumps again.
“I, uh…” She unzips her overly large coat to remove two bottles of whiskey. “I thought you could use these.” Her cheeks blush as she glances up to meet my stare. I’m pretty sure my right eye has swollen shut. The bastards didn’t kill me. Just beat the shit out of me and left me in the parking lot. I can’t catch a break.
Patting down my jeans, I find my wallet in my back pocket and hold it out to her. “Thanks.”
She averts her eyes to her dirty shoes and bites her bottom lip. “Oh, I don’t need…”
I rip the bottles from her hand, throw the wallet at her and step back, slamming the door shut in her face.
“Wait! What about your wallet?” she hollers from the other side of the door.
“Keep it.” I won’t need it.
I go over to the only dresser in the room and set the two bottles down. Then I sit on the end of the bed, taking a swig of the one I started on this morning. It’s almost gone.
The whiskey runs down my chin and onto my chest. Pulling it away, I toss the now empty bottle across the room, and it shatters into a million pieces against the wall before falling to the floor like the others before it.
A week I’ve been hiding in this run-down hole-in-the-wall motel out in the middle of nowhere.
No cell. No tracker. No connection to the outside world.
After I laid her in the ground, I had to get away. The “I’m sorry for your loss” wouldn’t change anything. She’s gone. Nothing I can do will bring her back.