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 clap my other hand—the non-knife-wielding hand—onto my mouth at my own horrific words as I look up at him. Only to find him staring at my trembling chest. At his blood, the trails of it all over my skin.
“Not yet,” he grunts in reply.
Then he goes for the knife. A flash of tightness passes through his face as he heaves himself up a little and dislodges it from his body. His frame jerks and he grunts at the action. Throwing the knife away, he comes back down, pressing the length of his body against mine.
My eyes skitter to his wound and my hand on his bicep flies over to cover it for some reason. “I’ve never…” I press on the spot, feeling the blood ooze, making my fingers sticky, and he grunts. “I’ve never s-stabbed anyone before.”
“Clearly,” he bites out.
I press on it harder, making him wince over me. “S-shouldn’t we do something?”
“Like what?”
“To stop the bleeding.”
“That why you’re tryin’ to jam your fingers into my wound?”
I ease up on the pressure and jerk my gaze back to him. “I-I wasn’t. I was just… I was trying to keep the pressure. I’m s-so sorry.”
He breathes through his nose, his chest shuddering over mine. “Yeah, are you?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What were you gonna do with my knife then”—he grunts again—“swat butterflies in the meadow?”
“I’d never swat a…” I begin hysterically but think better of it. “I just… I wanted to protect myself.”
Another wave of pain flashes through his face, tightening his features and shuddering his chest. “Against me.”
I swallow. “And w-wild animals. You said there were bears and w-wolves and—”
“And you thought a pocketknife would help you fight bears and wolves.” He growls low; this time the tightening on his features is anger rather than pain.
“You were going to do it.”
“There’s a difference between you and me.”
That gets my back up, and I instantly regret any remorse about stabbing him. He deserved that. And more, I decide, as I say in disbelief, “Oh my God, so you’re a sexist too?”
“I am whatever the fuck I am when it comes to knowin’ that a mere girl like you doesn’t stand a chance against a wild animal with—” He pauses here, his words slowing down, probably to scare me. “A. Fuckin’. Knife.”
I grit my teeth. “The knife was the only option I had.”
“The other option, as always before you fuck everything up to where someone ends up getting stabbed, is to just stay. The fuck. Put.”
I dig my fingers into his wounded flesh again, making him jerk and wince, probably spilling more of his blood. Before I lean up and state, “Or the other other option is you don’t use me for revenge like I’m some object and let me the fuck go.”
He emits a wordless growl in response, which I think is the result of me pressing on his wound again. Despite everything, guilt stings me, but I don’t ease up on the pressure. No matter how much blood I seem to be getting on my fingers. He needs to learn his lesson. He needs to hurt. Shame on me for wavering.
Frustrated, I ask, “You weren’t really sleeping, were you?”
His nostrils flare again with a large, painful breath. “Just nodded off for a second.”
“You never sleep.”
He grunts his agreement.
I frown. “When was the last time you slept?”
“In my cell.”
I gasp. “So you… You haven’t slept in a week?”
His jaw clenches for a second. “Quit lookin’ at me like I’m a freak.”
My eyes go wide. “No, I wasn’t. I—”
An expression passes through his features that bunches his brow and makes his cheekbones seem even darker and flushed in the dying embers. “I can’t seem to fall asleep, all right? Not on the outside. Where everything’s so fuckin’ open. There’s so much fuckin’ air and sky and goddamn people that I’m choking with it all. The only time…”
I flick my eyes back and forth between his. “The only time what?”
His brow bunches deeper and that flush on his cheekbones grows. And for a few seconds, all he does is look down at me with irritation bordering on anger. Then, “The only time I seem to drift off is when I”—he takes in a sharp, angry breath—“when I’m able to smell you.”
“What?”
His jaw moves as if he’s trying to grind his words into dust. “Your scent.”
“W-what about it?”
“It’s thicker,” he grunts, the words ripped out of his chest almost. “When you sleep. You also seem to toss and turn. A lot. Spillin’ your hair everywhere. Sometimes I can smell you from across the room and I”—he pushes out another breath—“I can sleep for a bit, thinkin’ about those fuckin’ buttercups.”
This is not real, is it? People can’t smell you from across the room, can they? If they can, your scent can’t lull them to sleep. Not my scent, the little college girl. And not him being put to sleep because of it, the asshole criminal cowboy.