Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 140(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28083 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 140(@200wpm)___ 112(@250wpm)___ 94(@300wpm)
I pick up the plaque and hurl it across the room, hearing it thud against the wall, and watching as it bounces, unharmed, to the floor.
The scream tears out of me as the words are turned my way yet again, mocking everything I thought was happening between us.
“No attachments. No exceptions.”
***
Tears sting my eyes as I run back through the garden. There are muted voices behind me, but I don’t care.
I don’t care about any of it anymore.
I clutch the plaque as I pant and race down the path toward the cliffs and the beach. How could he send me back?
No attachments. The words are carved and burned into the wood in my hand as I struggle through the sand.
He never cared about me. He cared about his payday.
There’s a shore opposite, miles away across the water, dotted with houses, each one a palace, but none that even come close to what Sebastian has here.
“How could you?” I scream into the wind, my vision blurry as I read the words on the plaque again, feeling betrayed and alone. Then angry. Angrier than I’ve ever been. “How dare you?”
I raise my arm, and with a scream of rage, I fling the plaque into the ocean.
Plop.
The waves take it from there. Pulling it down, and a small, hateful, pre-Daddy smile curls my lips.
Then I laugh. The sarcastic, rebellious girl who arrived here is reborn inside me.
He thought he knew me? He doesn’t know the first thing about me. This is the real Larissa. This is who I am. Not his obedient babygirl, ready to be sent back to Hoover. If he wants to make me into that girl, it’s clearly going to take a lot longer.
As I turn from the waves, his face flashes behind my lids.
Daddy’s face. Sebastian. My uncle.
Sort of. But more than that. So much more.
I remember him giving me a room painted yellow like Belle’s dress, just because he knew I would love it. I remember Maria talking about how a mother should be. I remember…
I remember Daddy laying me down in his bed, spreading my legs, and giving me everything.
“What have I done?” I yell to the sky, the seagulls circling above. “Oh my God, what have I done?”
The plaque belonged to him. It wasn’t mine to throw away.
Throwing away something that belongs to him surely will not convince him to keep me here. What if I misunderstood?
God, I’m impulsive. I’m not that strong, I didn’t throw it that far out…
“Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter, turning back around to the sea.
Before I know it, I’m up to my thighs, the saltwater darkening the hem of my yellow dress. I should never have even been in his office. The sign said so.
I’m disoriented in the water, but when I look back to the shore, I think I’m at the place where it went in.
I suck in a deep breath, counting to five, and then plunge under the oncoming wave.
The shock of the water draws in my breath as I reach and feel for the sand at the bottom.
But my clothes swirl up around me. I can’t reach down far enough.
Before I can rise and take a full breath, another wave jolts me back under, turning me like a helpless leaf under the water. It’s dark, loud, I’m choking, and I’m turning over and over, the weight from my clothes dragging me under.
The saltwater burns, the water tugs at my feet, a current grabbing at me as I flail, trying to break free, but it pulls harder, harder, dragging me helpless into the darkness.
I’m gagging and kicking in a frantic attempt to find the sandy bottom. But there’s nothing. Only water.
I’m back under, the sense of impending doom causing my arms and legs to thrash as the power of the ocean laughs at my feeble attempt to control it.
I’m going to die out here…
I have no sense of up and down, or from which direction the light is coming. My last thought is of so many things I wanted to do, how I just discovered something as close to love as I ever knew.
Someone who has grabbed me by the heart in such a short time, a mere stranger, and taught me a depth of care so complete, I’m ready to give myself to him for all time.
He dragged me under the same way the ocean is now.
My final emotion is fear, a frantic last attempt to find the surface. Instead, my hands hit something solid…
Hands, fingers, and flesh. I grab and thrash until my face breaks into the light, coughing up water and sucking in oxygen.
Thick arms drag me upward as I bob helpless in the waves. I blink stinging water out of my eyes, finally focused enough to see the familiar cut of that square jaw, the precision line of onyx hair around his ear.