Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
It was him, wasn’t it? My masked stalker. My Phantom. Somehow he thought he had to save me from all the bad things in the world.
For someone who’d never been saved before, I found it… lovely. I thought it was the most breathtaking thing he could’ve done for me. It made me feel cherished. And maybe it was crazy, but I didn’t question it. I didn’t question who he was, where he’d come from, or why he’d been watching me. Instead, I chased that feeling. I milked it as much as I could. I flirted with my dates on purpose just so he’d hurt them later. I laughed with random guys at parties just so he’d give them a black eye for me. Like a gift. Wherever I went, I always sat by the window so he could see me. I wore pretty dresses for him. I took them off at my bedroom window for him too. All because I felt safe with him. I felt like he’d never let anything touch me.
But I was wrong, wasn’t I?
He wasn’t protecting me or keeping me safe. He was fucking stalking me so he could get to my best friend. I didn’t know how it all fit together, but I would find out. That night. I would lure him out and hunt him down.
CHAPTER THREE
Present
I COME AWAKE with a start, my eyes popping open and my lungs expanding with a sudden large breath. The last thing I remember is falling, losing control of my body and going limp, freaking the fuck out. I’m not limp now. I jerk my head up and hiss in pain because somehow I’ve managed to bang it against something. Something hard and rough. Scratchy. Something that my back is stuck to.
A tree.
I look around, frantic. My brain tries to register everything all at once. I’m sitting on the ground. It’s not dark anymore. There are trees everywhere. The air is cool and still, unlike in the city. My bare calves are streaked with mud, and my dress is torn at the hem. I hear water but can’t see it. My heels are gone and my feet are bare. There’s a rusty-looking truck parked over to the side, black with a dented door. But most importantly, I can’t move. I try to, but I feel a sharp pain in my shoulders, then pins and needles. I also feel a sting around my wrists, as if from a rope. My bare arms and shoulders drag across the rough bark of the tree I bumped my head against only a minute ago.
I’m tied up. Aren’t I?
My arms are tied behind my back.
Okay. Okay, okay, okay. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Don’t panic, I tell myself. I can figure this out. I can think of something. I can… Oh God. Oh my fucking God, I’m tied up. I’m fucking tied up. I’m fucking… My frantic thoughts come to a halt when my eyes fall on something that I missed during the first perusal: smoke. Thick and white, it’s wafting from a heap of logs a few feet away.
And beyond that is a man.
He’s sitting on a log, his jean-covered thighs spread, his booted feet planted on the ground. His dark head is bent and focused on something he’s doing with his hands. I’d try to figure out what it was if I wasn’t so taken aback by everything else about him. Mostly, his size. The sheer largeness of him. Even sitting down, with his broad shoulders and a thick chest, he looks wider and taller than the trees surrounding us. He’s wearing a dark-colored shirt that’s nearly busting at the seams trying to contain his burly muscles. His sleeves are folded up to his elbows, exposing his thick forearms, and despite the situation, I can’t look away from the aggressive play of muscles and veins. His skin is tanned in a way that suggests he spends all his time outside, and his fingers appear long and thick with scraped knuckles as they fiddle with the zipper of a backpack by his feet, telling me that in addition to being out in the sun, he’s used to working with his hands.
But then again, I already knew that, didn’t I?
I’ve already seen his hands in action. Whether knocking down a guy in a dark alley or almost killing another in a parking lot, this man does know how to use his hands. Not only does he know how to handle a fragile needle—because he did use that on me, didn’t he, to knock me out—but he also knows how to tie a mean knot, because no matter how much I struggle to get my arms free, I can’t. And I struggle a lot. So much so that I think I’m scraping my skin raw. I’m also breathing very fast and making too much noise because a second later, he looks up and his eyes clash with mine.