Total pages in book: 174
Estimated words: 172061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 574(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 172061 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 860(@200wpm)___ 688(@250wpm)___ 574(@300wpm)
My gaze flashed down him again. Over the scars that I could barely make out in the dusky light. Some that I was sure he had sustained that night, but there were innumerable others that had to have been inflicted later.
He looked like a warrior who had fought a thousand battles.
Heartbreaker.
I definitely felt mine splintering apart right then.
“You say it like you’re going to…kill him or something.” I let go of a tittering laugh, trying to make light of it. Brush it off. Because there was no way he actually meant what he seemed to imply.
He only darkened further, a crash of that ferocity filling the space between us.
In discomfort, I fiddled with the hem of my sweatshirt and shifted my bare feet.
“That’s exactly what I mean.” His words were shards. Broken fragments that toppled out onto the floor.
A ball of razors suddenly formed in my throat.
Shock and confusion filling up my thoughts while my spirit settled on the truth.
He wasn’t the same person I knew.
“Should…?” I looked away before I forced myself to meet his gaze. “Should I be afraid of you?”
He’d warned me he was a bad man, but I’d refused to believe it.
Haunted, yes.
But I was having a hard time wrapping my head around what he was insinuating. Around what he’d become.
Questions swirled through my mind every time he left the house on his motorcycle or locked himself behind the door at the end of the hall.
A door he never allowed any of us to peek behind.
“I would never harm you.” A strike of severity flashed through the air. “But I would kill for you.”
His words impaled me like blades.
Or maybe he was the one who was being carved out by them. Cut wide open and revealing the secrets that hovered around his being.
The man just…laying it out.
Plain.
An offering.
“Have you…done it before?” I couldn’t believe this was the first real conversation we were having after what I asked him the first night we came here.
For the last two weeks, I’d been tiptoeing.
Trying to feel him out.
Attempting to understand a man I once knew better than anyone else.
Waiting for the right moment to broach the subject of my children again.
But the more I waited, the more I came to realize he was different. I’d been so reluctant to come here. To ask this of him. Not wanting to put him at risk but not knowing where else I could go.
But now I was recognizing he might be the most dangerous one of all.
Grimness covered his expression, and the veins in his muscled arms and chest seemed to crawl beneath his flesh.
“You really want to know?” It left him a challenge.
My heart stuttered in my chest.
When I first came here, I told him that I’d gone to the police with information on my ex. The things I uncovered on Ethan were just…unimaginable. His world fueled by greed and selfishness. Willing to steal life and peace in order for him to have more than he already did.
Was Cash involved in the same sort of thing?
My spirit flailed, unable to accept it.
Those hazel eyes speared me.
Waiting.
Was he asking me for his trust in this?
Frantic, I searched around inside myself for an answer. It wasn’t hard to find. I truly believed that he wouldn’t hurt someone out of greed or cruelty. If he’d done something, he had a reason.
He had to have.
I lifted my trembling chin. “Yes.”
“Many times over, but I’ve never once touched an innocent.” His words were blunt.
His admission blew me back three feet, and I fumbled on a gasp, nearly tripping and falling to the floor. My hands shot out, and I gripped onto the back of a dining room chair.
Many times over.
What was he saying?
It took me a moment to gather myself before I lifted my head.
Both terrified…but…unafraid.
I blinked at him through the bleary darkness. “Who are you? I really don’t know you anymore, do I?”
Rage and grief clouded his eyes. Torment so distinct in the pools that sucked me down into his nothingness. “The man you knew died that night with the rest of them.”
Emotion burned in my throat, and my stomach flopped and flipped as I tried to find solid ground.
Would we be better off if I ran? If I packed our things and fought this out on my own? Would he chase me down the same way Ethan was doing? Harm me because of what I knew?
My eyes squeezed closed, and I knew the answer to every single one of those questions was no. “I feel that man, though. I always have. And I feel him now.”
“You’re only wishing he was real.” When he did actually talk, his voice was always hard and low. But this? This was a grinding of stone.
My head barely shook as I opened my gaze to him. Taking in the monster that lurked in the night. So cruelly beautiful that my heart ached just looking at him. “He’s still there. I know he is. He’s just hardened with the loss.”