Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
She chewed at her lip, seeming to consider what he’d said. “You had limits, Sam. I don’t know that you ever defined them for yourself. But you found a way to follow your conscience, maybe not every time but more than they expected. Do you know how strong you had to be to do that?”
She thought he was strong? Not even close. He was the weakest man on earth. “Oh Jesus, Autumn,” he said. Her continued faith in him hurt. It wasn’t his to keep, and to see a glimpse of it and have to let it go was more painful than all his surgeries and procedures combined. It made him feel desperate and angry. He didn’t want to give it up. He wanted to keep it, to keep her. But he couldn’t, he couldn’t, and he lashed out with the hurt, the unfairness of who he was, who he’d been made to be. “You romanticize everything,” he growled. “It’s fucking stupid because life is not romantic. Life is ugly and awful more often than it’s not. And people are evil. They kill children and they laugh about it. They lie and they cheat and they steal, and they feel no remorse at all, or if they do, they justify it anyway.”
His growl became fiercer, but her eyes grew softer as if she didn’t hear. Okay then, he’d make her hear.
“You should know that better than anyone because you were used. You meant nothing to them, less than nothing. No mother. No father. No one to protect you. So you were simply a body to test their drugs on, no better than a lab animal. They wouldn’t have cared if you died, except that they’d have to find another nothing to replace you with. They would have let you be raped and murdered, and then they would have lied about it and covered it up because you. Meant. Nothing.”
They stood there, toe-to-toe, him breathing harshly, pain etched in her face but fire blazing in her eyes. That same fire that had warmed him—not his body but his heart—so long ago in a cold forest where she’d been left to die. Oh God, he loved her. He loved her so fiercely he wanted to fall to his knees and beg her to forget the cruel words he’d said.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, turning his head.
“Don’t be,” she said, surprising him. Always surprising him, his Autumn. He turned his gaze to her again. “You told the truth. I did mean nothing to them. At least nothing more than cells and bones and systems they could test their products on in order to become rich and powerful. They did leave me to die. And yet…”
She tilted her head, regarding him. He hung on her words. He always had. He supposed he always would.
“And yet you didn’t let me be raped. Or murdered. You stepped in, and you protected me when it might have cost you. Even when you’d been trained to do differently. I might have meant nothing to a soulless group of evil people looking to profit off the backs of the weak and the helpless. But I meant something to you, and that’s what matters to me. That’s all that matters to me.”
He released a gust of breath. That pain again. The hollow one. The one that stirred his need, made it swirl inside, a bottomless tornado of longing that would only unleash destruction. On him. On her. He stepped back, turned away, looking out the window at the cloud-covered sun. He had to let her go. It was the only way to love her in the way she deserved to be loved. “Your words meant so much to me,” he said. “Every one of them. But they were a child’s words. I should have treated them with the weight of any silly child’s thoughts. You should grow up, Autumn. You should realize that the world is far different than you envisioned it once. Dreams based on impossibilities don’t ever come true.”
There was silence behind him for a moment. He’d succeeded in hurting her. It made him miserable. “Who’s to say what’s impossible?” she finally said quietly. “When there’s love?”
Love. Oh God. He wanted to scream and howl. And rejoice. And grieve. “I’m a ticking time bomb.” She shouldn’t trust him. He couldn’t even trust himself. And she certainly shouldn’t love a dormant grenade. “My training didn’t just consist of chasing you through the woods. They installed violence into our brains. It lies there in wait.”
Sam startled, his head whipping in the direction of the other room where Eddie shrieked with glee or surprise or outrage or one of the many other things Eddie shrieked about.
“Is that why you’re pushing me away like this?” she asked. “I know you need time to accept the information you’ve been given today. That’s only natural, Sam. And I’ll give you all the time you need. Years if that’s what it takes. But let me help you.” She moved closer. “Help me understand. Are you worried you’re going to mentally blow up someday? Are you worried they planted things so deeply in your mind that they might rise to the surface when you’re unaware because of a smoke alarm or…a shrieking child? Please don’t push me away because you fear what might light some latent fuse—”