Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Yet, somehow, I felt as if I’d recognized them all along.
“Amazing,” she quietly admitted, lashes fluttering low as those tender fingertips danced across my chest.
“That so?” I kept it soft. Close to a tease. Probably should have been impossible with the way this moment felt profound.
Emery sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, so fucking cute when she got coy, and she gave a slight nod. “You want me to sing your praises, my dragon?”
It was her own tease. Something playful ridging into her features, her tenderness so deep and wide I thought there was a chance we might be floating in it.
“Well, a man needs to know if he lived up to expectations.” A smirk hitched at the edge of my mouth.
“I think you already know you by far exceeded my expectations.”
My brows lifted. “An A+ performance?”
“A perfect ten.” She might have been playing along, but she whispered it in awe.
My tone intensified as I let the pad of my thumb caress along the defined angle of her cheek. “That’s what I want to be for you. A perfect ten.”
“I think you’re proving yourself to be so much more than that.” All the ribbing had drained from her words, and I drew her even closer, needing to feel her life beat burning through my veins.
I ran my lips across her forehead. “Guess that’s fair since you’ve become my everything.”
We stayed like that for the longest time, just existing in those words. In the silent promises that were woven in between.
Finally, I broached the topic that I didn’t want to give any credence to. The topic I didn’t want anywhere between us, tainting the moment. But it was there, anyway, a part of Emery that I needed to understand.
A piece I needed to hold.
Share with her because when I told her she didn’t have to go it alone anymore, I meant it.
Because fuck. I didn’t want any secrets between us, which I recognized the irony of considering the charade that I lived.
“What you said at the doctor’s office…you couldn’t let it happen again.”
The question darkened the air like a wraith had just crawled in through the cracks in the walls.
Emery winced, rigidness lining her spine as she grappled with the shift. I could feel the war go down inside her. Her uncertainty up against the trust that I had gained.
My spirit flailed. Couldn’t stand the thought of sullying or defiling that trust. Couldn’t stand the idea of her fearing me when she’d just learned that there was no safer place for her than in my arms.
Hated that I was keeping things from her when I was asking her to cut herself wide open.
But I couldn’t let her behind the veil of who I was yet.
Not until I knew she would stay. Not until I knew she wouldn’t run. I couldn’t put my crew or her at risk like that.
The situation was already jacked.
But there was no way to imagine her not becoming a permanent part of my life. To me, there was no other solution or conclusion than her being right here.
With me.
With Maci.
With us.
I could do nothing but curl my arms tighter around her, like locking her against me would bring her to the same resolution.
“It was a long time ago,” she finally whispered into the tension that bound us. Like it was enough of an answer and explained everything.
“Yeah?” I encouraged.
She nodded against my chest, and I caressed my thumb along the small of her back.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
My voice was choppy as I asked, “But you didn’t leave it there, did you? It has chased you? Haunted you?”
Her exhalation was shaky. “It’s always with me. Lurking in every corner of who I am.”
Protectiveness slammed me as fast as a summer storm.
Crushing.
Pervasive.
Compelling me to demand a name. That’s all I needed.
One little name, and I’d do the rest.
But I knew it wasn’t always that simple. Even if I put the monster in the ground, it wouldn’t erase the scars that had already been written on her.
I waited, giving her the time to see that she could tell me anything.
“Emmalee and I were seventeen.” Emery’s voice was sallow, and her sweet hands clung to me as if I could keep her from being sucked back to that time. “We were on a team trip out of state for a cheerleading competition. Our best friend Jana was with us. We were supposed to stay in our rooms, but we snuck out.”
Tears blurred and bleared that fathomless gaze, and I hated the torment that I could see written there.
“I tried to convince them not to go, but Jana and Emmalee were up for a good time. They wanted the thrill of experiencing something scandalous and new. It didn’t take much for them to convince me to go, too. I’d wanted all those experiences, Kane. I wanted them.”