Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 102361 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102361 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
I frown down at her. “What else is there?”
She blows out a breath. “Jesus, I’ve never said this out loud to anyone.”
“I’m not just anyone,” I remind her.
“He must have had fifty mistresses in the time we were together,” she whispers, and my blood heats with more anger. “That’s why he insisted on separate rooms, so he could come in and out of the house without me noticing. He wasn’t fucking me, which is fine, but he was fucking. When his estate was settled, it was discovered that he had left a huge sum of money in a trust for one of those women. I don’t care. I don’t want his money. But he made me the executor of her trust.”
I frown down at her. “Wait. That piece-of-shit motherfucker made it so that you have to be in constant contact with his side piece?”
“Pretty much.” She nods and then huffs out a laugh. “She gets automatic payments, but she burns through the money so fast that she always tries to get more from me.”
That must be who called her that morning, asking for money.
“Jesus, he fucked you over.”
“I think that’s the shittiest part. I mean, he left me with everything else. I sold the huge house we lived in and used the money to buy my building and start my restaurant. The rest of the money I don’t want, so it just sits in an account. I won’t touch it. Although with all the water damage, I might have to dip into it to fix my place up.”
Jesus, I feel like shit. All those years, she dealt with an abusive piece of garbage, and I didn’t know.
“I never should have let you go.” I press my forehead to hers. “I should have stood my ground and fought for you. I shouldn’t have walked away.”
“I understand why you did,” she insists. “Brooks, I was a shitty girlfriend that last year. I was absent. You were way more patient than you should have been.”
I’m shaking my head, but she finally straddles my lap and frames my face in her sweet hands.
“Listen to me. We can shoulda woulda coulda the whole situation for days, but it doesn’t change anything. The past is the past. It happened, and thank God it’s over. Thank God it’s over.”
She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me close, and I hug her back.
I want to burn down those fifteen years.
I want to resurrect that asshole and kill him all over again.
More than anything, I wish I could go back and do everything differently.
But I can’t. All I can do is build something new with her now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into my neck. “I’m sorry I moved home. I know you don’t want me here, and I should have gone anywhere else, but I really missed it here.”
“It’s your home.” She shifts in my arms, and I brush her blond curls back from her face, then run my fingertips down her soft cheek.
Christ, now that I’ve touched her again, I can’t seem to stop.
“This is your home, Wildfire. You have as much of a right to be here as I do.”
“I really don’t,” she whispers. “But I haven’t fit in anywhere in so long, and I really missed the mountains, and—”
“Hey. You don’t have to justify anything to me. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I think I’m a really bad person,” she says with a voice so small, it shatters my already broken heart. “And that’s why all of these horrible things keep happening to me.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a beautiful person. That’s why he was able to control and manipulate you. I’m the shitty one because I’d like to skin him alive, then set the rest of him on fire. I would relish his screams of terror. That’s a bad person, Jules.”
“You’re not bad.” She wiggles closer to me, and I soak in the feel of her cuddled up against my chest. “You’re protective. Even when you hate me.”
We sit in silence for a moment as I drag my fingers up and down her arm.
“I don’t hate you,” I murmur. “It’s not possible for me to hate you. And I think that’s what pissed me off the most. Because I wanted to hate you, Juliet.”
“I know.”
Chapter Eleven
JULIET
The smell of bacon pulls me out of a deep, dreamless sleep. Sitting up, I rub my hands over my face and look around. Daylight spills in through the curtains on the window, and Brooks is gone.
He’s making breakfast.
I have no idea where the bathroom is in this house. I hardly remember him carrying me in here last night. I was so freaking exhausted. Not only physically but also emotionally.
I still am, if I’m being honest.
I pad out of the open door and find a bathroom just across the hall. There’s a new toothbrush sitting by the sink, and I use it after doing my business, washing my hands, and splashing some water on my face.