Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 32532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
We’re both quiet for a long time.
“It still feels unreal,” he finally says. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”
I can only nod. So much of this is hard to take in. The murder. The life insurance. Braxton.
And the part where Trina sold me to human traffickers for fifty thousand dollars.
But that part, I have no plans of telling Dane. He and Trina dated all through junior and senior year. He loved my cousin so much I don’t think he ever really got over her, even after she dumped him for Braxton.
For someone older.
More exciting.
Look how that turned out.
After saying goodbye to Dane and promising to keep in touch, I find myself wandering aimlessly around campus while I recall the few good days I had with Trina. She’d cook me breakfast once in a while. Chat with me when she’s bored. Those were the best memories I had of her, and it was enough. I loved her like a sister even though I always knew it was never reciprocal.
A couple is walking toward me on the pathway, both of them holding glossy brochures for the university’s astronomy department. Prospective graduate students, maybe, or people considering a short course. But what really makes me look at them and pay attention is the fact that they’re speaking in French.
“Mars est ingérable,” the man is saying.
Mars is unruly, I translate in my mind.
“Et Pluton est obsessionnel,” the woman replies with a laugh.
And Pluto is obsessive.
I bite back a smile as I pass them.
I don’t believe in astrology, but the conversation reminds me of that old book. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and I’m guessing dogs are from Pluto?
It’s the silliest thing, but it makes me smile and forget, even just for a while, that life will never be the same again.
CALIXTE WATCHED THE girl vanish through the doors before pulling out his phone.
“Zacharie, mon ami.” He kept his voice light, but his eyes were sharp. “Are you aware that the girl you rescued speaks French?”
Eden pressed close to his side, tilting her head to catch the response. When it came, Calixte shook his head at her, and his wife’s lips formed a small ‘o’ of surprise.
“If that is the case,” Calixte continued, “then is it possible she overheard you speaking in French? And learned of something she was not supposed to know?”
The silence on the other end was answer enough.
“I thought so.” Calixte’s smile was almost gentle. Almost. “Perhaps you should consider what exactly you said...and what she might have understood.”
ZACHARIE STOOD AT THE window of his study, the phone still in his hand, Calixte’s words ringing in his ears, his free hand curling into a fist at his side as he recalled her first night in his home.
Ironically, it was also Calixte he had been speaking to at that time, when he had said...
Je compte la marier.
I plan to marry her off.
And perhaps...that was where her accusation at her cousin’s wake was coming from.
You were the one who pretended first!
That time, her words had made no sense at all, and so he had simply assumed she was projecting her guilt on him.
I know I’m a burden to you.
All this time, he had been trying to figure out what changed. And what caused her to build walls when she didn’t even seem to be the wall-building type in the first place.
All this time—
The phone creaked in his grip.
He had been the answer.
He was the one who had changed in her eyes.
And maybe...that was life telling him it was better this way.
Chapter Nine
SOMEONE IS FOLLOWING me.
I first noticed it three days ago, walking back from Professor Sigmund’s lecture hall. A prickle at the back of my neck. The sensation of eyes tracking my movements across the quad like crosshairs finding their target.
I told myself I was being paranoid.
But then I felt it again at the campus coffee shop, where I’d been nursing a lukewarm latte and pretending to study. And again at the library, tucked into my usual corner on the third floor. And again when I was grabbing dinner at the dining hall, my fork frozen halfway to my mouth because I was absolutely convinced I wasn’t imagining it.
Someone is watching me.
And it’s starting to freak me out because I can’t stop thinking about it.
Everything and everyone around me has become a cause for paranoia. The shadow that lingers too long at the edge of my vision. The footsteps that match my pace a little too perfectly. The figure I keep catching in my peripheral, always turning away the moment I look.
My mind has gradually been spiraling into worst-case scenarios with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever chasing a tennis ball off a cliff.
What if Braxton found me?
What if he knows I was at the auction?