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)
Confusion bound me when I peered at it. A middle-aged woman sat in the front-passenger seat, clearly as agitated as Emery.
Emery who mumbled, “Oh my God. This can’t be happening…”
She was shaking. Shaking and shaking before she suddenly turned and bolted down the steps and back to the car without saying anything else.
What the fuck?
“Emery!” I shouted.
She didn’t slow or turn. She tore open the driver’s door and jumped inside, and the car was in reverse and flying backward before I realized there was another passenger in the back seat.
A child in a car seat who had her face turned as close as she could get it to the window.
Hair the same golden blonde as Emery’s and eyes just as wide.
A little girl.
Protectiveness rushed me, this thing inside me coming alive.
Uncontained.
I stumbled down the porch steps and out onto the gravel on my bare feet, shouting, “Emery, wait! Tell me what the hell is going on.”
It didn’t even penetrate.
She shifted the car into drive and blew down the dirt road, leaving a trail of dust behind her.
“Fuck,” I grunted as I bent over, trying to process what the hell had just gone down.
Why she was here.
How she even knew where I lived.
A grim awareness settled over me, guts a tangle of aggression, thoughts right back to her demeanor when I’d first noticed her last night.
The grief she’d been covered in.
Her reaction to that fucker who’d gotten grabby with her.
Her begging me to make it stop hurting.
And I knew…knew she was in need.
In trouble.
Running in fear.
And I wasn’t just going to stand there and pretend I didn’t know it.
SIX
EMERY
No. No. No. No.
Sickness turned in my insides, and I was worried the alcohol I’d consumed last night might come back up. My stomach churned in a fit of nausea so severe there was a chance I might have to toss the door back open and lose it right there on the ground beside the car.
As if all of this wasn’t humiliating enough.
I did my best to keep it at bay as I threw the car in reverse. The tires peeled out on the gravel as we blazed backward, then I shifted into drive and gunned it down the long driveway.
“What’s going on? Was that not him?” My mother wheezed it in her own turmoil as she shifted to look over her shoulder through the back window.
My heart ravaged violently at my chest. My blood thick and slogging through my veins. Head spinning at finding the man who’d touched me in a way I didn’t let anyone do standing in the doorway. A man I’d already convinced myself I was going to hate.
My natural enemy.
Kane Asher.
How hadn’t I known?
“I’m just not ready.” I had to force the craggy whisper out through the rocks clogging my throat. I clutched the steering wheel, my palms so sweaty I could barely hang on as I struggled to see through the blur of moisture coating my eyes as I sped down the dirt lane.
“I really fink we should go back and talk to him, Auntie! Did you see him? He ran aww the way down the stairs to come say hi.”
I could see Maci’s tiny hands wave through the air with the embellishment, and my chest nearly burst with the force of it.
Or maybe it was caving.
Imploding.
I didn’t know.
Still, I was unable to stop myself from lifting my gaze to the rearview mirror.
Dust billowed behind us, a heavy plume that rose to the sky, but I could still see him in the midst of it.
At the base of the stairs of the gorgeous old house.
The man shirtless and barefoot and so ridiculously attractive that the lingering vestiges of pleasure that still tickled through my body flared.
What a cruel, sick joke.
I could see that his chest was heaving with his own surprise.
With his questions.
Questions that clawed their way toward the car to get to us.
My hands quivered against the steering wheel as my attention flicked to Maci.
Maci who was trying to turn around in her car seat to get a better look.
Regret billowed through.
I shouldn’t have brought her with us. It was a mistake. She didn’t understand the full scope of what was happening.
How could she?
She was four.
Four years old.
My guts tangled in a gnawing of pain, a black hole with a force so great I was sure it was going to swallow me. Suck me down into a darkened, unfathomable abyss where I’d forever drown.
Somehow, I managed to respond. “I saw him, sweetheart, but I think he was busy.”
“We better go back later when he doesn’t got to be too busy then. Besides, I think I got very starving, and we better eat. I got a belly growl. Did you hear it so loud?” She giggled with the last. This child a joy unlike anything I could comprehend.