Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 144435 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144435 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
She also waited until I flew home today to tell me I couldn’t stay with her this summer. I’ve spent every summer with my dad since my mom died. I have nowhere else to go. I always knew she didn’t like me much, but I never knew how much she hated me until I landed at Sea-Tac, and she dropped the bomb on me. She couldn’t even be bothered to do it in person.
I just want my dad back.
“Are you crying?” Rhys growls.
I jump, my gaze flying upward.
He’s standing in the doorway, a pile of clothes in his arms, a look of horror on his face. It’s the same way he looked at me when I cried the day he picked me up from the airport three months ago. The day after my dad died.
This bristling, scowling giant was so kind to me then. I don’t remember much from that week, but I remember him. He was a bright spot in the dark, my port in the storm. He just walked right up to me at the airport, wrapped his arms around me, and promised me I would be okay.
I hadn’t cried until that moment. It didn’t feel real until then. But in his arms, the tears finally came. I sobbed while he held me, not caring that everyone passing by could see me. Not caring that they were probably taking pictures. If they did, I never saw them. Rhys wrapped me up in his arms and shut out the entire world.
All week, his presence kept the world at bay. He took care of everything while I drifted through the whole awful affair in a fog of grief. I ate because he made sure I did. I slept for the same reason. I survived because he was beside me, lending me his strength. I don’t remember the details. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the service. I don’t know who spoke. Who shook my hand. Who hugged me or offered their condolences. I don’t know who was kind to me or who whispered behind my back. All I remember is Rhys sitting beside me the whole time, his rough hand clasped tightly around mine.
“Why are you crying, Raven? What the fuck happened?” He grows before my eyes, bigger, fierce. Dangerous, my mind whispers. “Did someone hurt you?”
Only my heart, I want to say. The only thing that emerges from my lips is a pitiful, wretched sob. I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle the sound, embarrassed that I’m crying in front of him again. I did enough of that three months ago.
“Fuck,” he swears, crossing to me in two steps. His strong arms close around me.
I let him drag me up against his chest. I’m too damned cold and miserable to resist. I’ve missed him. More than I want to admit. More than I think he’d like to know. Rhys doesn’t like me much. I think I’m an obligation to him, someone he pities.
To me, he’s the standard by which I’ve measured every man since I was eighteen and met him for the first time. None ever competed. None ever compared. They weren’t handsome enough or strong enough, or brave enough. They didn’t scowl enough or growl enough. Their eyes weren’t the right shade of forest green.
They didn’t make me ache.
Rhys does. He has for three long years. He doesn’t know it, but I’ve been in love with him since I first set eyes on him. The only time we ever met before my dad died, he took one look at me and seemed to hate me on sight. It wasn’t like that for me. I took one look at him and felt like I was staring at the sun. He blazed so brightly that he blinded me, leaving behind a permanent, lasting image of himself.
I came alive that day in ways I never was before. For the first time, I understood the desire I’d only ever experienced through song. I’d sung about the piercing ache so many times, but I never truly understood it until then. How deep it went, how much it changed you. How completely it eclipsed everything.
And then my dad introduced him, and I realized he was unattainable, something forever out of my reach. To him, I would never be anything but his best friend’s annoying kid, someone he didn’t even want to converse with, let alone see as a woman.
Even if he had seen me that way, he was off-limits. My dad would have lost his mind.
“I’m s-s-sorry,” I sob, clinging to him with both hands. “I d-d-didn’t h-have anyw-where else to g-g-go.”
“Shh, songbird,” he whispers, lifting me into his arms. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
I burrow into him, desperate to believe him, if only for a moment. Desperate to believe, if only for a moment, that he’s mine and I’m not wholly and utterly alone in this world.