Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
He frowns, and his gaze moves over to me. Something about it gives me a bad feeling. I can’t say why because his eye is all bloodshot and still foggy, but alarm bells are going off in my head as he takes us both in, all silently. Still, I swallow and assure him, “Yeah, it’s going to be okay. Do you… Do you know where you are?”
“Yeah, do you know what happened?” Peyton adds.
He swallows, rolling his shoulders. At which point he realizes that he’s free, and his good eye goes alert and my internal alarm starts blaring for some reason. Slowly, he brings his arms forward and looks at them. The ropes are still tied around his wrists in a loop, but he can use his hands just fine.
As he looks up at us, I pull Peyton away from him because she hasn’t caught on to the vibe yet. He notices my apprehension, something scary flashing through his features that even Peyton can’t miss, and slowly comes to his feet. We both take a step back, and he moves, keeping his eye pinned on us. I look for our forgotten weapons as we keep moving back, clutching each other’s arm. The slats are now lying neglected on the floor and out of reach.
This is not good. Not good at all.
I think we made a grave mistake. Whoever he is, we never should’ve come in here. We never…
My frantic thoughts break when he lunges and grabs hold of Peyton’s arm. She screams as he pulls her toward him and they begin to struggle. I run for our makeshift weapon, and grabbing it off the floor, dash to where he’s trying to subdue Peyton and her kicking feet. It’s hard to find an opening between two grappling bodies, but the instant his back is clear, I slam the wooden slat into his head.
But it’s not hard enough.
It hardly slows him down. In fact, he pushes Peyton back so hard that she slams into the wall, and he then spins on his heel to come at me. I raise my arm to hit him again, but he easily takes the slat away from me and grabs my arms. I’m twisting and kicking to get out of his hold, but with me, he does things differently. He doesn’t try to subdue me with just his grip; he puts his whole body into it and tackles me to the ground.
And fucking shit, it knocks the breath out of me.
My spine hits the wooden floor, and a howl of pain escapes me. But it’s cut short because his weight is suffocating, and oh my God, he won’t let me breathe. He’s crushing my lungs and my arms. He then pulls my hands overhead and pins them to the ground with only one of his hands. While the other, God, the other, goes lower. It searches blindly for something that freezes my heart for a second. But just as his hand grazes it—the button of my jeans—Peyton lunges at him with a scream.
She attaches herself to his back and starts pulling at his hair viciously. While he’s distracted with Peyton, I try to buck him off, but he manages to break Peyton’s hold and push her away. Then he’s back on me, and I think this is it. This is where all my nightmares will come true, things every girl tries not to dwell on but that are always there in the back of her mind. The R word that I don’t even want to think about. He’s going to force himself on me, and the only thing that comes to my petrified mind is him.
Not God. Not my mom. Definitely not my daddy.
“Arsen!”
I scream out his name like I did in the woods. Like that night, I keep chanting it as I struggle and scratch my attacker, even though I have very little hope of my forced-fake husband swooping in to save me. He doesn’t even know I’m here. He probably doesn’t even care anymore, and—
Suddenly, I feel a burst of air rushing through my lungs because the man who was crushing me with his body weight is gone. He’s thrown across the room, and like someone breaking the surface after being underwater for a long time, I gasp and cough as I sit up.
He is here.
Like I conjured him up with my words. I chanted his name enough times in the middle of the night, deep in the woods, and now the devil is here. But I’m not afraid of this devil. I know he’s here to save me.
I watch as Arsen prowls toward the man who’s crouching by the wall, struggling to get up, his eyes full of fear. My husband bends down, grabs his collar, and jerks him to his feet. The man tries to push Arsen away. He even tries to say something, but it’s all garbled because Arsen slams him into the wall before swinging his other arm back and hitting the man’s jaw. He grunts painfully, but it’s drowned out by Arsen’s second punch.