Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 155900 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 780(@200wpm)___ 624(@250wpm)___ 520(@300wpm)
A vehemence that sank all the way down to the marrow.
A liquid steel that ran through me, solidifying into a thousand blades.
Blades I wouldn’t hesitate to protect her with.
“She’s going home with me tomorrow. Where she belongs.” I kept my chin high as I declared it.
There was no surprise on Kane’s face at my assertion. The faint lines at the edges of his entrancing eyes only deepened a fraction.
“Why don’t you sit down?” He gestured at the opposite side of the booth. The exact spot where he’d been sitting two nights ago when I’d noticed him.
Before I’d tried to drown my sorrows in him.
How had only two days passed since then? It’d felt like a lifetime. A harrowing, agonizing lifetime.
“That’s not necessary. I came here to tell you the one thing I needed to say, and now I’m going to go.” I dug into my purse and pulled out the picture I’d shown him yesterday and tossed it onto the table in front of him. “I’ll send more through the years if that’s what you want.”
The one I brought would have to be enough for now.
And that was all I was going to give him because I couldn’t sit here and face him. Not with the memories of the way he’d interacted with her earlier today. Not with his concern or care. Not with the way he’d made me feel alive for the first time in my life on Friday night.
So I fled.
Wedged heels thudding on the worn wooden floors as I rushed back through the bar.
I refused to give him the chance to try to sway me.
My hands shoved against the heavy door, and it swung open, allowing me to stumble out onto the sidewalk.
Night rained down, the mountain air faintly chilled, streetlamps glowing a hazy yellow where they lined the street.
It was only nine, so there were quite a few people out and about. Ending their lazy summer Sunday with a meal on the town.
I wanted to escape into it. Into the shadows that loomed.
Only the door burst open behind me.
My ravaged heart boomed with a bolt of dread.
Did I really think he was actually going to sit there and let me walk away? I knew this would be a fight.
But I had to do it.
I had to protect Maci.
I couldn’t hand her over to a stranger. To someone she didn’t even know. To someone who might have some fleeting feelings of love but didn’t come close to understanding what the fullness of it meant.
Because if he did, then he would understand the sacrifice he needed to make.
He would understand she needed to be where she was most comfortable.
With the people she knew and loved.
“Emery.” He didn’t even shout it as I hurried away from him down the wood-plank sidewalk.
It was this low, hoarse command that somehow held the power to make me stumble in my tracks.
Facing away, I gritted my teeth and fisted my hands.
Trying to prepare myself. To fortify and withstand.
Fat freaking chance since chills lifted on my flesh when I felt the thud of his boots reverberating the wood as he took a slow step toward me.
Another then another until he was looming over me from behind.
A beast that had risen to consume.
Severity blistered, crackling across the dead space. In it, it felt as if all the numb, paralyzed places inside me had come alive.
I attempted to control the ragged breaths that scraped from my lungs. To ignore his scent and the energy he emitted.
To completely disregard the awakening of my body.
God, I was so messed up. I was going to need to re-up my sessions with my therapist over him. Because he made me react in every way that I couldn’t.
Conjured something in me I’d only hoped one day would exist.
What a cruel joke that he was the last person on earth who I would choose to invoke it.
Yet there it was, wisping around me like a vapor that could swallow me whole.
“Please don’t make me fight you on this, Little Warrior.” Kane’s words were low and controlled, brushing against the shell of my ear.
Did he really think it was that simple? That at his whim, I would concede?
Aghast, I whirled around, unable to fathom his audacity.
At the sight of him, the places that had come alive inside me ignited into flames.
“Don’t make you fight me on this?” Disbelief curdled the words, and I slammed my palm against the bleeding, mangled organ in the center of my chest. “That’s my niece.”
Ferocity deepened the lines of his harsh brow. “And she’s my daughter.”
“You don’t even know her.”
His own fury boiled in those magic eyes. Emerald sparks that struck in the night. “Because the chance to know her was taken away from me. That’s not going to happen this time.”
Agitation ticked through my limbs.
I hated that he was absolutely right and completely wrong.