Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
I’m right.
I find him out by the old shed, leaning against the wall, one boot up on the old steel. He is just standing there, smoke curling from his mouth, eyes off in the distance, like he hasn’t got a care in the world. I know that isn’t true, though. I know his demons are eating him alive.
He turns when he hears my shoes crunch on the gravel, and he pauses. We just stare at each other for a second, neither of us blinking. I cross the distance between us and stop just out of reach. “Hey.” My voice is weak, soft, but I don’t care.
He lets the cigarette dangle between his lips. “Didn’t figure you’d want to see me.”
I laugh, but it is the sound of two rocks grinding together. “I didn’t. But I need to know why.”
His face goes blank at first, then all the rough burned edges light up at once. “Why what?” he rasps.
“Why would you risk your life to get my brother out? Hell, why do you even care after all this?”
He drops the cigarette in the dirt and crushes it out with his boot, pushing off the wall. He doesn’t step closer, he just crosses his arms. “Wouldn’t fuckin’ believe me if I told you.”
I take a step closer, my eyes fixed on his. “Try me.”
He doesn’t hesitate, but his voice is gruff. “Because it was the right thing to do. Not for me. Not for the club. For you. You need him, and I owed you that.” His hands curl into fists. “I broke you, and I wanted to give you back at least something good.”
The words hang between us.
“Is that it?” I whisper. “Just you paying me back because you hurt me?”
“What do you want from me, Callie? Do you want me to tell you that I tried to hate you, to avoid the way you were makin’ me feel? I didn’t want to feel a single fuckin’ thing for you, but I do. I do and there isn’t a single second I don’t fuckin’ rip myself apart for hurting you.”
It takes me a second to find my breath.
“You care about me?”
His eyes pierce mine. “More than I ever fuckin’ have in my entire life.”
I shake my head, confused. “Harper...”
He flinches, but doesn’t look away. “Loved her, and at the time, I thought it was with everything I have, but turns out, it was fuckin’ nothing. The way you light a fire in my fuckin’ soul is unlike anything I have felt with another person before.”
I make a pained sound in my throat. “You better not be fucking with me, Knox. I can’t handle any more pain.”
He steps forward, leaning down and taking my chin in his fingers, pressing his forehead to mine. “Believe me, sunshine, I wish I was fucking with you so this feeling would go away.”
“You want it to go away?” I whisper.
“If I can’t have you, then yeah, I want it to go the fuck away.”
“What if you could have me?”
He pulls back. “Don’t play with me, baby. I can’t handle much more.”
My heart twists so hard it might rip in two. “I just need to know that what you’re saying is the truth.”
He breathes it out, soft as a curse. “I love you. That’s the truth.”
It is my undoing.
I throw my arms around his neck and pull his mouth to mine, and the kiss is nothing like before—it is hungry, desperate, full of the ache of two busted hearts trying to fit together again. He is all hands and heat, clutching me like a lifeline, and I am all claws and teeth and wanting. I push him back against the shed, slam my mouth against his, biting, devouring.
He groans and lifts me off the ground, my legs finding his hips by instinct, and then he spins me, pinning me to the wall with a low growl. “Does this mean you forgive me?”
I answer by yanking his shirt open, buttons pinging against the barn siding. “Oh, we’ll see. Depends on how you do now.”
He grins, wrecked and beautiful, and returns the favor, hauling up my shirt with calloused hands that leave fire trails across my skin. He gets his hands under the waistband of my jeans, fingers digging into the soft flesh of my hips. He isn't delicate, but I don't want delicate. I want all the sharp, violent, real parts of him—the parts he's kept hidden, the parts that match the broken pieces inside me.
We fumble, cursing and laughing and crashing together against the roughness of the shed wall. The steel digs into my back through my thin shirt, but the pain only heightens everything else. His belt buckle clangs against the ground as he shoves his jeans down, and then he is inside me and the world slams to a halt.