Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 168121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 841(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 168121 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 841(@200wpm)___ 672(@250wpm)___ 560(@300wpm)
“Is this how we’ll sleep then?” She looked up to catch him watching her. “If so, you might have to massage the blood back into my limbs in the morning.”
His laughter wrapped around her as he shifted them. A few bumps into the wood paneled wall and he had them positioned on their sides with his hips cupping her ass. “How’s this?”
Heaven. “Pull the curtain and wake me when we get there.”
His hand slid up her thigh and patted her butt. “I want to show you a couple things before everyone piles in.” He crawled over her and pulled her by her hand into the aisle. Reaching under the frame of the bed, he turned a crank she hadn’t noticed. A couple rotations raised the closest edge of the mattress and angled it toward the cubby’s roof.
Oh, wow. Extra storage space. Daylight streamed from the compartment below. He gripped the wood frame and hopped in the hole. “I had this modified hatch added so we could access the storage area from inside or outside.” He ducked, closing the exterior door on the concrete landscape beyond.
“I thought you rented this bus?”
Standing, he rested his forearms on the top edge of the compartment. “True. After what happened at the estate, I called the bus owner and sold him on the benefits of emergency exits and flashed the almighty green dollar.”
“Pimp My Ride, rock star style.”
He grinned.
Did his need for an escape hatch have anything to do with his burns? “What’s the real reason you need a secret hide away?”
He reached behind him and removed a handgun from his waistband. “Gun laws for civilians vary by state. Some states require the piece to be separate from the ammo and stored under the bus. I don’t want any trouble with the law, and I don’t want the gun out of reach.” He twisted, bending, and tucked the gun in a pocket on the compartment wall.
“I had a Bodyguard 380.” Used it to kill a Craig. Bile hit the back of her throat. “But Nathan confiscated it.” The bastard.
He jumped out. “You know where mine is if you need it, but don’t shoot at the door or windows. I had everything replaced with bulletproof glass.” He rotated the crank, returning the mattress to its seated position. “Sit down. I want to show you one more thing.”
She lay down on the bunk, and he knelt in the aisle beside her. Lifting a folder from the pocket on the wall at her feet, he opened it on her tummy and raised it so she could see the first page.
Her eyebrows clenched as she skimmed the headers.
Oxycontin. Recreational Uses. Side effects. Street names. Pictures.
She flipped the pages to the next tabbed section. Heroin. Same list of headers. Next tab. Cocaine. Same headers. A numbness settled around her heart, and she wasn’t sure if it was relief or worry.
He lifted her chin and rubbed his thumb over the skin around her mouth. “I can’t ask you to trust me. I have a long ways to go to earn that back, but I hope having this information will take some of the constant out of constantly wondering. If you know what to look for, I won’t be able to hide any of these…addictions from you.”
The rawness in his expression tightened her chest. She pinned her lips between her teeth to hold back soothing words she might not mean. She didn’t know if she trusted him to stay clean, which probably meant she didn’t.
He leaned in and pointed to two stars hand-drawn beside Cocaine. “I double starred my old favorites. A single star denotes I’ve used it at least once. And there’s information on today’s most common street drugs, narcotics I’ve never tried, but could easily acquire.”
“Do you…are there side effects from coming off drugs?”
“Some.” He swallowed. “I didn’t cling to any one chemical, so I don’t feel the usual withdrawals. Cocaine bugs was the worst, but I haven’t experienced the crawling feeling this time around.”
“You did before? When you quit three years ago?”
“Yeah.”
She caught his deep brown eyes before he kissed her cheek and sat back on his heels.
“I’m sorry you have to worry about this on top of everything else.” He stared, unfocused, at a hole on the inner thigh of his jeans, picking at the scraggly edges. Then he seemed to gather strength from his thoughts, rolled his shoulders back, and seized her with a penetrating gaze. “I won’t let you down. For what it’s worth, I’m so fucking happy you’re here with me. You make facing the crowds and the press and the long nights something to look forward to.”
“I want to be where you are, Jay.” She loved him enough to tackle the reason he turned to drugs in the first place. “I appreciate your openness about the drugs. It helps.” And it did. He wouldn’t intentionally hide it from her. If he slipped again, it would be in an impulsive moment of weakness. Didn’t comfort the throb behind her eyes. She needed more from him. For him.