Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
I love Bo.
I’m in love with Bo Porter.
I’m not sure when it happened, but it did. Somewhere along the last six months, the stranger who made me feel safe right from the beginning somehow became the very first man I fell in love with.
“So it’s been…” I blink and breathe. “You?”
His dark eyes go back and forth between mine. “Me.”
I blink and I breathe again. Then, “This w-whole time?”
Something moves across his face again, but I’m too dizzy to puzzle over what. “Since the beginning.”
This is when I break.
Or my mind does, because all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the emotions I’m capable of come to the surface and run rampant. They run from one part of my brain to the other. They run through my veins and fill the corners of my body, making me feel so heavy, so, so heavy. So achy. So riddled with pain.
God, it’s so much pain that I have to let go of the door and press both my hands on my belly. I have to clench my thighs, tighten my muscles so I can withstand it. Withstand the truth.
That there’s no Bo. There never was. The man I fell in love with doesn’t exist. Or he does but everything about him was a lie. I fell in love with a lie. An illusion.
My first love wasn’t a love at all; it was a betrayal.
But I don’t… I still don’t get it.
“Why would you want my le…”
My subconscious catches up before my brain does, and my words trail off. He would want my letters. Because he thinks Peyton was writing them.
He thinks I’m Peyton.
He didn’t kidnap me because I’m associated with the Turners. No, he kidnapped me because he thinks I am a Turner. He thinks I’m his enemy. He thinks I’m something to kill and destroy.
Because that’s what the Graysons and the Turners have been doing to each other.
Everyone in town, in the whole state of Montana, knows about the two feuding families of Black Rock. They’ve been warring with each other over land for years, for decades. The feud doesn’t involve just trivial disagreements. It doesn’t even stop at ambushes in the middle of the night—cutting fences and stealing cattle. Setting fire to timber and destroying equipment isn’t enough for them. It involves making people disappear; spying, shady dealings, and blackmail. Their enmity was the reason why we left Black Rock in the first place; it wasn’t safe for us to stay there anymore.
Because one night, the Graysons brought years’ worth of fighting to our home.
I know I should be afraid, and Jesus Christ, I am—I am shaking—but I can’t help noticing the irony. We’ve both been pretending to be other people. We’ve both been lying to each other. The only difference is that he did it out of malice, the depths of which I’ve yet to find out, while my lie was innocent.
Tell him.
Tell him now.
I open my mouth to do just that, but something else comes out: “So you… you pretended to be”—I can’t say it; I can’t say the name of the guy I’ve foolishly been in love with—“him a-and wrote me letters because you wanted to, what, fool me?”
“More like get you to trust me, but fool you works too.”
I press myself harder into the door, my shoulder blades digging into the wood. “So you could… bring me here?”
He studies me for a beat, as if looking for something, but I don’t know what. I don’t have anything to give him.
I’m not even the right girl.
“Not exactly,” he says finally, shifting on his feet.
“What?”
“Bringing you here wasn’t the plan.”
“The p-plan?”
“All straight As, right? Except sociology.” His jaw pulses. “Thought you were smart. Followin’ me back to my motel though, not so much.”
My eyes are wide. “You… you knew?”
“I’m an ex-con,” he says, his gaze steady and his features neutral except, once again, there’s a hint of irritation. “You don’t tail an ex-con, especially when you’ve got zero skills to make out your own tail.” At my confusion, he goes on, “You picked up a couple of guys on your way over. I took care of them later.”
My heart races. “Did you… Does that mean you killed them?”
He gives me a flat look. “No, just knocked ’em out. Can’t kill people in daylight.”
I shake my head. “I’m… I can’t…”
“Thought you would have smartened up when you left but”—his jaw pulses again—“you had to come find me, didn’t you? I was a little shocked when the front desk guy called, said a girl came lookin’ for me. So no, it wasn’t the plan to drug you and bring you here. But I couldn’t take the chance of you runnin’ back to your family and tellin’ them about me either.”
Family.
He means the Turners. I need to tell him. I need to tell him I’m not the girl he thinks I am. But once again, something else comes out: “I won’t say anything.”