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)
This was Emery.
Emery.
This woman who’d come into my life and changed everything.
Even in the muted light, I could see the moisture blear her eyes. Torment fermented in the depths.
“I was so ignorant,” she suddenly admitted. She reached up and swiped a tear that got free. “Believed myself indestructible, I guess. Like everything was perfect in my safe little bubble, and no one could touch it. I mean, you always hear the horror stories, right? But until it happens to you, it’s never truly real.”
Her eyes squeezed closed like she was trying to shield herself from the memory.
From whatever affliction had struck her down.
While I itched. Going fucking mad with rage and this impossible bond that made me desperate to take it away.
“I should have stopped them from going,” she suddenly choked over a sob. Anger followed in its wake. “I knew it was a bad idea. I just…knew. But instead of begging them to stay, I went with them.”
Dread pinched my brow. “Who?”
“My sister and my best friend. We…” Agony clipped off her confession, and her breaths came short.
These wrenching, stumbling heaves right before she curled in on herself.
Her phone went toppling, flashes of white fabric and purple bedding flickering across the screen before everything went completely black.
In one flat second, I was out of my bed and on my feet. Heart bleeding so fucking bad I might as well have been stabbed.
That violence a simmer in the well of my being, though right that second, there was something else a thousand times more prevalent.
This ache that had struck up in my chest. Arms fucking burning and guts a mess.
I stole to her door, hand shaking in agitation as I reached for the knob and pushed it open.
Faint light illuminated the room, and I nearly came apart when I found her huddled in a ball in the middle of her bed, on her side and silently weeping.
Rocking as she held her knees to her chest.
And there was nothing I could do. Nothing else I wanted to do. Nothing but move to the enormous bed and climb onto it, voice hushed as I murmured, “I’m right here. I’m right here.”
I didn’t give her some bullshit that it was okay because it obviously was not. I just needed her to know she didn’t have to hold it alone, anymore.
So, I pried her apart and pulled her against me, and I laid down with this woman whose muffled sobs wracked her body.
This woman who was afraid I was going to wreck her, but in truth, that’s what she’d done to me.
Completely and wholly wrecked me.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” I murmured as I shifted around to draw the covers over us before I leaned over and snapped off the lamp.
Darkness rained down, and she tremored and shook, and I brushed my fingers through her hair. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Emery. Let me hold some of it for you.”
And she did. She let it pour out, her tears seeping onto my bare chest, her body shivering. Freezing cold yet emitting a hundred degrees of heat.
Her hair bunched in my face and her spirit touching me everywhere.
“Kane,” she whimpered.
“I know, baby. I know.”
I might not know the details, but I knew.
I fucking knew.
And she cried like that for what felt like forever. Curled into me while I softly ran my fingers through her hair.
Had no idea how much time had passed before her body went slack. Before all the tension drained and her breaths evened out.
This woman asleep in my arms, our legs tangled and her pulse beating in time with mine.
But she finally gave.
Let me hold it.
And I whispered at the crown of her head once again, “I’ve got you.”
Only that time I added, “And I’m never going to let you go.”
THIRTY-ONE
EMERY
“I fink this is a very good idea.” Maci sang it as she kicked her feet from where she was buckled in her new car seat in the back.
I inhaled a shaky breath.
No, I thought it was a very horrible, bad idea. Especially after what had happened between me and Kane in the middle of the night. Well, what seemed to be happening between us every night. This connection deepening with each moment that passed.
He’d stayed with me the entire night. Until the dawn had broken, and I’d felt the soft brush of his fingertips along my cheek before he’d quietly slipped from my bed.
Then I’d spent the entire day locked behind my bedroom door pretending to work on plans to take over my sister’s store when I returned to Wisconsin in a vain effort to protect myself, then tried to come up with a million reasons why I couldn’t come with them tonight, only to land on the one reason why I had to.
Maci.
Maci who was meeting people who were supposed to become her family.