Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 107254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 358(@300wpm)
“Oh my God. He said he was watching me”—I put my hand to my stomach, feeling it start to get sick—“even when I was sleeping. I don’t even know how many times he’s been in my house with me there, and I didn’t know. I don’t even know how I didn’t know he was messing with my stuff.” I exhale out of my mouth. “How long was I—”
“Three days,” he answers before I finish my question. “Seventy-seven hours.” I can see the rage coming off him. “Seventy-fucking-seven hours, he had you and fooled us all. Seventy-seven hours of me searching every single fucking place I could search. Seventy-seven hours of wishing I could have you back for even one second. Seventy-seven hours of feeling the pain of not being able to keep you safe. Seventy-seven fucking hours of torture.” He shakes his head. “I wish—”
“Stop,” I tell him, “don’t finish that.”
“I’ll never get those hours back,” he whispers. “For seventy-seven hours, the only thing that went through my mind was you not being safe. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe.”
I close my eyes, my heart speeding up at his words, but then I remember how he said he couldn’t do this with me, his thumb rubs over the top of my hand. “What are you doing here?” I ask, and he just smiles softly.
“You’re here,” he states, and I try to pry my hand from his, but he won’t let me go.
I’m so tired, and my strength is just sucked away from me. “You said…” I remind him.
“I was wrong.” A heavy breath comes out of him as his chest puffs out. “I was so fucking wrong. I can’t live without you. I don’t want to live without you.”
“But—” I shake my head, wanting to believe the words but not sure I can.
“I was so scared.” His voice breaks. “Scared shitless of falling in love with you and then having you taken away from me.” The pain radiates off him. “So fucking scared, but now I’m more scared of living my life without you in it.” The stinging starts in my eyes, and I try to control the quiver of my lips, but I can’t. “I’m more scared of waking up in the morning and not seeing your face.” His own tears run down his cheeks. “Come home with me,” he begs. “Come home with me and Lucy, where you belong.”
My chest contracts at his words. Words I wanted to hear two weeks ago. “What if you change your mind?” I wipe the tears away from my cheeks, feeling my bottom lip tremble.
He shakes his head side to side adamantly. “That’s not going to happen.”
I look at him, this man I love with everything I have. The man who searched and rescued me. The man who when I close my eyes is the only one I see standing beside me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you.”
Chapter Forty-Two
EMMETT
I look at this woman who, without a doubt, is the love of my life. She looks at me with the biggest tears in her eyes, breaking whatever is left of me. “I don’t trust you.” I take a step back from her, letting her hand go, the pain almost unbearable. “You just threw me away.”
“Never, I could never throw you away.” I inhale. “I was saving you.”
“Saving me?” she asks, confused.
“Saving you from me.” The minute I say the words, I know she deserves to have all of me. “Saving you from what I am.”
“What are you?”
“I’m evil,” I say the only word I can think of. “When I was eight years old”—I watch her while I tell her my story, a story no one has heard before—“I was reading a book with my dad in bed. Something we did every single night. A routine, or our routine. We would have dinner, usually just the two of us. I would hope it was just the two of us anyway.” I look up at the ceiling, my heart about to come out of my chest. My vision blurry from the tears, I pinch my nose and close my eyes to push them away. “We were just getting to the end of the book when we heard the sound of a car door.” I can see it in my head again like I’m back in that bed. “He stopped reading, and we both looked toward my bedroom door. We waited for what felt like forever for her to come to the door. We heard the stumbling before she even walked into the house. Nothing new for her to come home blitzed out of her mind.” I shrug. “She was a stay-at-home mom, who never stayed home, never cooked, never fucking cleaned, and definitely never took care of me.” The look on her face is horrified. “She came in, and my father told me to stay where I was. He put the book down on the bed beside me as he walked out of the room. I didn’t listen to him. I should have fucking listened to him, Lilah. I wish I would have listened to him. I wish I would have told him to stay with me. I wish so many fucking things.” I take a second to breathe. “They argued, which wasn’t anything new. He was always worried about me being home by myself. I didn’t care, to be honest. When I would get home and she wasn’t there, there was a sigh of relief, but Dad, he hated it. Hated that I stayed alone, so they fought about it.”