Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Something about her tone made me think she was prodding. Asking me for a detail without coming out and saying it.
Or maybe she was just making it clear that she was claiming it for herself.
Confusion bound, and I turned back to stare at where Theo caught Lucy at the bottom of the slide. “No. I guess you don’t.”
“He’s a good man,” she murmured even lower than she had been speaking before.
My belly tumbled.
“That’s good to know,” I muttered, trying to make sense of whatever was happening.
The sense of something ominous floating in the air.
A grimness that butted up against the peace.
I glanced up when I heard the engine of an automobile coming up the winding drive that led to the two cabins and ended in a small cul-de-sac.
Dread curled through me, and the fine hairs at the back of my neck lifted in sticky awareness. Old fears rose to the surface, and my eyes darted toward Finn, my feet itching to run to him. The urge screaming at me to sweep him up and rush us into hiding.
Paranoia sinking its steely talons into my spirit.
In the same second, Theo straightened, and his attention whipped toward the vehicle that I could see flashes of through the trees as it took the little loop.
It was a blacked-out SUV.
Theo moved faster than I could fathom, and before I could process it, he was on the pathway in front of where Alicia stood.
As if he were making himself a barricade between her and the view of the SUV.
Violence streamed from his body. Every muscle rigid and firing with brutality.
Menace lashed out of him in an outright warning.
A bit of the edge that had lined me dwindled when I realized this wasn’t about me. That the shimmering sense of evil curling through the air wasn’t my demon hunting me.
It belonged to someone else entirely.
I was just picking up on whatever it was that Theo was radiating.
The SUV barely slowed as it made the loop before it disappeared back up the narrow lane.
Theo glowered behind it as it drove away.
His hands clenched and unclenched as he watched it go, before he turned and rushed back to where the children were still playing in the snow. He scooped Finn into an arm and took Lucy’s hand with the other.
He rushed back to Alicia and stopped two feet in front of her.
“Think it’s time for you two to go back inside. Lucy is getting cold.” He gritted it.
Alicia frantically nodded as she took Lucy’s hand from him. “Okay.”
That single word was rushed and ragged.
What the hell was going on between them?
I didn’t care. I didn’t care.
I could tell myself it a thousand times and still I wouldn’t be able to stop the twisting of the blade inside me.
It was so stupid.
So reckless.
Yet, it was there.
Undeniable.
“I co-wed. We go fire?” Finn bobbed his head as he reached for me, angling out from Theo’s hold.
I took him into my arms, hugging him close, my nose pressed to his cold cheek as I tried to process what it was that I was feeling.
What was happening in this place that felt like both respite and a prison.
Intense, bottomless eyes slanted toward me. “Yeah, we’d all better get inside and get warmed up. I have some work I need to attend to.”
Theo basically hustled us all back to our cabins, standing guard as he watched Alicia and Lucy fumble through their door, before his consideration slid to me where I hovered at the front of mine.
My hand clutched the knob as I tried to make sense of who he was and what he made me feel.
“You should go inside for a bit.” His coarse words filled the air between us, and I felt them as a warning.
Trembling, I stood there staring at this man who I’d known was trouble the second I saw him, and I didn’t have space for any more trouble in my life.
“Why?” It came out a challenge.
“Because I asked you to.”
Disbelief scraped off my tongue, and I shook my head in incredulity.
Theo suddenly moved, flying up the porch and coming to tower over us.
A stronghold of malice and the darkest light.
The danger I felt emanating from him from the beginning rebounded at full force.
The man looked like a weapon.
All sharp edges.
Ferocious and wild.
“Need you to trust me,” he ground out.
He moved in so close that he ripped the breath from my lungs.
Finn had his face buried in the right side of my neck, snuggled close as he tried to get warm.
And still, I stood there, staring up at Theo.
“Why should I trust you?”
The wings of the moth tattooed on his throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, as if he didn’t know which lie to tell. “Because I would never hurt you.”
It seemed like the most blatant one. Because it became so glaringly clear right then just how badly he could.