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)
A quiet hitch of caustic laughter climbed my thickened throat as I tossed my legs over the side of the bed and scrubbed both hands over my face.
Healed?
As if the way I reacted to men wasn’t a direct consequence of that night?
The anger that I’d worn as a shield to protect myself from the things I couldn’t control?
It had always felt so much easier than being vulnerable.
So much easier than putting myself in a position where I could be hurt.
It was easier to be alone.
To hole up in my little house and hide myself away.
It was something I’d been working on for a long, long time. First accepting it rather than pretending as if it hadn’t happened, then slowly trying to find myself on the other side of it.
Who I wanted to be and how I wanted to handle my life. To discover my needs and joys. Chase after experiences that had dwindled into the faint pictures of fantasies in the back of my mind.
My chest squeezed and my stomach tightened.
Nerves scattering with the thought of the way I’d let go with Kane. The way it had felt. I almost wanted to wish it’d only been a dream, almost as desperately as a part inside wanted to cling to it as proof that one day I would stand in that light.
Find me in the darkness, bring me to the light.
The small words that I’d had tattooed to remind me of the hope that remained burned on the inner part of my wrist.
How could he be the one with the power to do it? How could he be the one to touch me and I could actually feel it rather than giving into the numbness I normally felt? How could he be the one to elicit goosebumps on my flesh? The one who’d sent the charge of ecstasy spinning through my body?
A swell of anger swooped in right behind it, and I exhaled a shattered breath.
How badly I wanted to blame him for all of this.
But what would I do if I were in his position?
God, Emmalee. If I could only talk to you one more time. If you could just make me understand.
Yearning for insight, for a connection to my sister, for a way to calm the storm that raged inside me, I slipped off the high bed and tiptoed over to the desk on the opposite side of the room. I pulled out the chair, sat, then switched on the small lamp.
A swath of muted light filtered into the room, and I leaned over and dug into my laptop case. I brought my laptop so I’d be able to do some of my freelance work while I was away, but what I was after were the few things that I’d brought of Emmalee’s.
Her tablet and one of the memory books that I’d found with all the things she’d hidden at the back of her closet.
I pulled out the memory book and opened it on the desk.
Anxiety pulsed through my being as I flipped through the pages.
I should have known looking at it wouldn’t calm anything. It only stoked the confusion that bound as I looked at the chaos she’d kept inside.
We’d both been devastated.
Traumatized.
Reshapen.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised to find a book full of a lifetime of pictures that we’d shared with our best friend, Jana. I had a million of them, too.
But it was the jumble of news articles that she had clipped that had left me unsettled. Some printed from online, others cut from actual newspapers and magazines. Every mention of her disappearance from when she’d been stolen away from us. All the speculations and hypotheses.
Maybe the hardest part was knowing we’d been intended on being stolen away, too.
We’d made it out.
We were safe.
But Jana…she was gone.
The thing I hadn’t known was that Emmalee had clearly become obsessed. The unintelligible notes she had scrawled in a frantic hand. As if she’d thought she could sift through the debris and bring her back to us.
My chest squeezed in a fit of pain.
Except that was impossible.
We’d all known it.
I kept flipping through the disorder, the pictures of predators that she’d printed and glued into the book, the notes she’d written around them.
I flipped the book shut, then hesitated as I glanced down at my bag, not sure if I even wanted to delve into whatever Emmalee had been involved in. But I pulled out her tablet, anyway, sliding my thumb across the screen and bringing it to life.
I inputted the passcode that we had always used for everything and easily gained access.
Her files mostly contained things for her boutique, Ivy Threads. Vendor receipts and financial information.
But it was the one file that was buried and locked that had left me itching. What had given me that strange sense that Emmalee might have been hiding something. That she might have been in trouble.