Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“No rush,” I slurred. “I’ll just freeze without you.”
He chuckled quietly, and I had the urge to reach out and tug him closer by his pants leg, asking for a kiss.
We hadn’t gone much further than sleeping in the same bed seeing as his daughter was taking up the only spare room he had. But the tension was there.
He hadn’t so much as kissed me since the day we’d gone all the way in his laundry room. However, that didn’t matter to my heart.
I was so irrevocably in love with him that he could never kiss me again, and I’d still be just as in love.
Our relationship had started out purely sexual.
Our relationship now, however? It was something that they wrote romance novels about.
The tension. The need. The yearning.
It was all there.
The casual glances across the room. The long, shared looks over dinner. The way I felt against his heart as we watched movies. The way he checked my injuries every day. The way he came to my appointments to make sure that I was okay. The way he made dinner every night. The way he laughed with his daughter.
There were just so many things that I’d found attractive about the man that I was finding it hard to breathe.
“Be careful,” I told him when he started out of the room. “Love you.”
I was asleep moments later, unaware of just what I’d said to him as I’d fallen back under, but he was more than aware.
I missed the way he came back to the bed and pressed a kiss to my throat and the way he pulled the covers up high, tucking me in slightly.
I was so deeply asleep that I wasn’t aware that something was wrong until Boston all but hissed into my ear.
“Wake up.”
I started awake, which had my ribs screaming.
“What’s wrong?” I said through the pain.
“There’s someone here.”
I frowned. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded scared, and I didn’t like hearing the fear in her voice.
“Call 9-1-1,” I ordered.
She swallowed thickly before saying, “I tried on the way in here. Every time I place the call, it makes this weird beeping sound.”
I got out of bed with zero dexterity and made my way to the drawers of Weaver’s nightstand.
I’d seen the gun there when I’d opened the drawer looking for a remote to turn on the television last week.
Being a native Montanan, I’d grown up with guns. I knew how to shoot. I knew how to protect myself. And I knew what to do in case of emergencies.
My dad had taught me how to protect myself, which seems hypocritical now seeing as my father didn’t protect innocents any longer, but exploited them.
With the gun in my hand, I checked to make sure the chamber had a bullet in it and that the magazine was full.
It was.
“Try again,” I whispered. “And get into the closet. On the floor, cover yourself with the blankets we threw there after the movie last night.”
My left hand was in a cast, so the left hand was going to have to do.
“Okay,” she whispered and moved, her phone screen already lighting up.
Only when the door closed behind her did I go out to the main living area.
All seemed quiet until I heard the scratch of the back door lock being picked.
“Fuck,” I whispered to myself, terrified.
I’d never shot anyone or anything before. The only thing I’d ever intentionally maimed was a watermelon.
And now I was going to shoot someone coming into Weaver’s place.
Did I announce myself? Did I tell whoever was on the other side of the door that I was going to shoot? Should I surprise them and just fire?
I had no clue what to do.
Even worse, I didn’t know if they were bad or good.
Which was a stupid thought as the lock clicked and the scraping stopped.
Whoever was trying to get in here was doing it in the middle of the night and it was a perfectly reasonable assumption that they were doing it for nefarious reasons.
The door handle slowly pushed open, and only Weaver’s well-oiled maintenance on his doors kept it silent.
I felt like I could feel my heartbeat in my throat, though.
If someone had said they could hear my heartbeat in that moment, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
“Don’t come inside!” I said forcefully. “I don’t know why you’re here, but you need to leave!”
Shock had me freezing where I stood when I heard my father’s voice fill the room around me.
“I’m here because you’re ruining my life with lies!” my father hissed.
My hand holding the gun started to shake, and I brought the gun down lower, but didn’t take my finger off the trigger just in case.
“I’m not lying about anything, and you know it.” My voice trembled. “You need to leave. Right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Then he started running toward me, his feet pounding on the floor in such a way that I knew he was going to hit me. I instinctively started backing up.