Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
“Why?’
“I need to escape this place, Heath.”
His face abruptly appears within centimeters of mine, so close I feel his rapid breath as his lips hover over mine. “You can’t escape me, Kat. I told you once that if you died, I’d follow, and I meant it. It’s me and you and eternity, Katelyn Shaw. I’ll kill us both myself if you ever try to leave me again.”
Heath gathers me in his arms and lifts my weakened and soaked body. He marches off the beach, not to the home I share with my husband, but to Wainscott Hollow, my hell and my salvation. Hallowed ground where I fell in love with him, the same house that stole my innocence and in which my very worst nightmares were realized. The monument to my family’s severe dysfunction. I married Eddie to escape, only managing to lock myself away in another prison. Wainscott Hollow, the house where my dreams died, and my nightmare began. The X that marks the exact spot of the original sin.
“Eddie will be furious. He’ll kill me. You better take me home, Heath.”
Heath laughs and keeps walking, trudging through the sand as the wind whips up a frenzy of the brewing storm. The storm in my heart mirrors the aberrant weather.
He doesn’t look at me, just forges straight ahead and holds my body closer to his. So close that I can feel the drumming of his heart pounding against the walls of his chest like a warning, a smoke signal to guide me home.
“I am taking you home, Kat.”
CHAPTER 15
Heath
Wainscott Hollow is where she belongs. Not because of the house or the belongings or the family history. But this is our sacred ground. These dunes, this ocean, is where we fell in love. It’s not the house or the estate, it’s Kat and me, the two of us, our souls united.
She takes in the decrepit estate as I carry her, the corridors we used to run as children. Our laughter vibrated off these same walls as we played and chased each other with wild abandon.
“Why would Henry let you stay here, Heath? He hates you.”
I carry Kat upstairs without a reply, kick in her old bedroom door, and place her on the bed before covering her body with mine. She shivers from the chill of the stormy ocean, and I brush her hair back from her face as I plank myself over the length of her body. How I long to tear the clothing off her body and bury myself in her softness. Her skin is the map that leads my soul home. I know every inch of her body better than I know my own.
Silence encircles us as we stare into the depths of one other’s eyes, terrified that once a word is uttered, our bubble will burst and we’ll crash back into the hell of the reality we’ve made. There’s too much to say, and words do not suffice the chaos of our emotions.
Her fingers move into my hair, and my eyes close, yet I grab her wrist and yank her touch away from me. The resolve I’m precariously holding onto is about to explode from a single touch.
“Don’t, Kat,” I growl. “You don’t know what—I don't know what I’ll do to you. Just don’t.”
“What would you do to me, Heath?” she tests me with a twinge of venom laced through her voice.
“My anger is at a boiling point. I’m too filled with hate,” I tell her.
“You don’t hate me, Heath. You might want to, but you never could. Just like I could never hate you. You can’t hate your own heart, even if you want to.”
I clamp my hands around her wrists, yanking her arms up and pinning them above her head. My fingers dig into her soft, supple flesh.
“My heart turned to ash the day you told me to leave. Not only can I hate my own heart, but I can tear it out with my bare hands if it hurts me too much.”
“You don’t think it killed me inside, too, saying those things to you?”
“No, Princess, I don’t. I think you meant what you said. Playing poor was fun for a while, but once you realized it might have consequences, you chose the safe and easy path, the one that had been laid out before you. Part of me hates you, and another part doesn’t blame you for doing what you did. I had nothing to offer you. Only my heart, and what’s a rich girl going to do with some young gun’s heart on a plate? I couldn’t offer you shit, Kat. I had nothing. Sandcastles in the fucking sky when you could get a real palace just down the street.”
“That would have been enough. That’s all I ever wanted.”
“I would have vowed to spend the rest of my fucking life loving you.”