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)
For them.
“I couldn’t though,” he goes on. “I couldn’t save her.”
Somehow through my own tears and ache, I grab his face and whisper, “Arsen.”
My voice is small and broken, but he hears it still and finally focuses on me. More than that, he finally breathes. His chest shudders against mine, and the force in his grip returns. In fact, it returns tenfold. He grabs my face in his rough palms much like I’m grabbing his and says, gutturally, “They killed her. They rigged the barn. And I broke into Wildfire and tried to kill the man responsible for it. Eight years later, I’m still hell-bent on destroying him, destroying the whole Turner family and I’m not gonna stop. Nothin’ will make me stop. Do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you? These people, the Turners, the Graysons, we’re all the same. We’re all dangerous. Criminals. We’re cut from the same cloth and that’s why”—he squeezes his fingers around my face, making me look into his eyes—“you need to leave. You need to get out of here in three weeks. You need to be free. You need to forget what happened here and you need to run, you understand? Far, far away. Where no one can find you. Not Turners, not Graysons. No one.”
“Not even you?”
“I’m a Grayson, ain’t I? But more than that,” he continues, his eyes bright and fiery, “I am like your father. You were right. I’m cruel, selfish. A killer. I couldn’t save the girl I was supposed to love. She died because of me. I can’t save anyone. I’m not a protector. So you need to run, you understand? You need to save yourself. From me. Tell me you understand.”
I was wrong.
He’s nothing like my father. While my father killed the woman he loved, eight years later, Arsenal Grayson is still mourning the woman he couldn’t protect. While every time my father came around I’d try to hide behind whatever was larger than me, when Arsen puts his arms around me, I feel safe. They both have done their own brand of bad things to me, but only one of them wants me to go free.
No, they’re not the same. In fact, they couldn’t be more opposite.
So for the first time in my life, I decide to throw caution to the wind and I don’t berate myself for it. I don’t second-guess myself like I would when I wrote those letters. I wholeheartedly and in possession of all my faculties do what I do next.
I kiss him.
HE’S SHOCKED.
Because he doesn’t move for several seconds. It should make things awkward. I’m the only one who’s moving her lips over his. Closed ones at that. But I’m too busy tasting him. I’m too busy finally, finally, breathing a sigh of relief because I’ve been waiting to kiss him for a long time now.
Years, it feels like.
And even though I know nothing about kissing, I’m still forging ahead. I’m still licking the seam of his mouth. Curling my tongue over the ends. I’m still sucking his lower lip into my mouth because it’s so soft, almost bouncy. And every time I take a little bite of it, I think I taste lemonade. I want to ask him if he was drinking it like me at the party and do we have the same favorite drink. I also want to ask him a million things about himself, now that I’m not holding myself back and I have no shame left in me when it comes to him. And also, when I know he’ll tell me; I’ll make him tell me.
But then I discover how fucking amazing his stubble feels on my tongue, all scrape-y and stingy in contrast to his plush lips, and I put everything else on the back burner. There’s time for that later. Three weeks’ worth of time. Just as I’m about to lick his stubble more, though, my head’s yanked back and his face, all angry-looking, fills my vision.
“What the fuck are you doin’?” he growls.
I grab the collar of his shirt and reply, “Kissing you.”
“Kissing me.”
“Yes.” I swallow, my cheeks blushing. “Was that not… c-clear?”
His eyes narrow. “It was.”
“So—”
“I’m just”—he flexes his fist in my hair—“not sure about the why.”
“Because I want to.”
His nostrils flare with his breaths. Three breaths. I count them, and I know he’s taking them to calm himself down because he was starting to breathe a little heavier back there. Then, “Did you listen to anythin’ I just said?”
I go to nod, but his grip is too tight so I switch to a verbal response. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“What?”
“Fucking”—he shakes my head a little, his fingers mean and brutal—“repeat it to me. What I said to you.”
I cup his jaw, caressing his stubble, those cuts as I whisper, “I need to be free. I need to run.”