Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 131651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 658(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131651 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 658(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Faster so she wouldn’t have to rely on me. She’d rather deal with a hundred new vulnerabilities.
“I don’t blame you for hating me. Still hope you know it’s safer with me than a random driver.” I sigh.
“You’ll be with me,” she snaps coolly, her eyes flicking over me. “Like what would possibly happen? Someone’s going to rush the car with guns? They’d have a far better crack at getting us right now.”
Her comment makes me glance around, but no one’s paying any attention to us. We’re just two more bystanders in the shifting human sands of New York City.
“It would be safer,” I urge.
“Yeah, well, too late. Here he comes.”
“Cleo,” I snarl.
She won’t look at me as a black SUV pulls up. At least she had the sense to order a high-end black car, thank fuck.
I’m damnably tempted to throw her over my shoulder and carry her to the museum myself, kicking and screaming.
Maybe she’s right, though. The sooner we get this done, the quicker this torture ends.
I debate jumping in the front seat next to the driver, but ultimately decide it makes more sense if I ride in the back with her.
As I duck my head to slide in, Clee doesn’t even look at me or smile at my tall guy struggles.
The forced neutral look on her face kills me.
That’s my fault again.
I had to put this thing we had out of its misery since she wouldn’t. Now she’s bitter and angry and thinks she knows better.
Not a good working relationship.
Still, better than feeding delusions.
I wonder when the fuck I’ll finally believe that. I’ve only said it in my mind a hundred times.
The guilt can’t stop my wandering eyes, the regret in everything I don’t see anymore.
I miss the easy looks, the indigo fire she’d beam back, soft and beautifully strange as the Northern Lights.
I miss her smile.
Goddamn, that smile.
And when she’d give it to me, it felt like I fucking deserved it, too, even though I knew deep down I never did. We were the worst combination.
“Ugly traffic jam today,” the driver says, chewing gum that makes the whole vehicle smell like strong peppermint.
Just fucking perfect.
My eyes flick down to the open app on Cleo’s phone. The museum isn’t far, but it might be twenty or thirty minutes in this bumper-to-bumper mess.
A lot of time to think about what we’re walking into. My instincts feel like they’ve been dragged over broken glass.
Something about this meeting doesn’t feel right.
When you’ve been in this business as long as me, you learn to listen to your gut. Your subconscious, your intuition, often pings on threats faster than your conscious mind.
I run back everything I know, sifting for missing pieces.
Yeah, there’s a chance Fairfax was involved in the break-in somehow, and it wasn’t just a leak with his contacts.
The Black Talon boys are professionals, veterans in high-profile heists. Henchmen for all the world’s supervillains.
I lean back in the seat and close my eyes, stewing.
I think she glances at me once, then away again.
I wonder if she’ll ever look at me again without that disgust in her eyes.
She looks at the rearview mirror while the driver grinds on through traffic, chewing his damn gum. His clicking jaw only puts me more on edge.
“Are you going to glare the entire ride?” I whisper when I can’t stand it.
“If I want to, yes.”
“Fairfax, he’s bad news, Clee. No good reason for him to show up. I wish you’d see that.”
But she won’t. She wants this over and done.
She can’t fathom a harmless art dealer acting against her interests.
It’s not even that I think he’s there, armed and waiting. If he tries to undercut her deal or get between her new one, that’s almost as bad.
He has no fucking right.
“We’re wrapping this up today, Holden. No more delays and no more worries.” Her little hand balls into a fist on her knee. She stretches her fingers out, like she doesn’t want me to know how stressed she’s feeling.
Futile for both of us.
I want to put my hand over hers and it’s ridiculous that I can’t.
One more sick consequence of making this so complicated.
My previous love life was never this protective. Just two people trying to figure out if they could share a life, and one of them deciding she wouldn’t.
With Charli, I tried to press her into my family’s mold when she wasn’t having it. Not even because I wanted her that bad. Because we had Kit and it felt right.
The same reason I held water to her dying lips.
The same reason I wiped her cold, pale face when she was too drugged out to even know who I was anymore.
By guilt, by moral duty, by the sheer twisted fuckery of life, I never had a choice.
Until Clee, I never fucking wanted.
The soft line of her jaw sharpens as she pretends she’s not paying any attention to me. I know she’s probably still trapped in angry words over the past week, in everything we meant before that.