Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
The partners had threatened to quit if they weren’t transferred.
And now I was starting to think that there was a reason nobody wanted to work with Brianna.
I’d seen the anger and the resentment, as well as the overall attitude of Brianna all this time, but her pretty face had been enough to distract me from seeing the truth.
And it wasn’t until today, with Cannel, that I understood.
Brianna was a jealous woman. When someone prettier than her was around, she put up a front.
CHAPTER 2
When nothing goes right, go left.
-Text from Haggard to Cannel
CANNEL
“Hey, honey. How are you doing? How’s work at the new job?”
I smiled at hearing the warmness in one of my good friend’s voices.
“I’m doing well,” I admitted. “The new job is… boring. I’m on the ICU floor, and they don’t really have anything truly exciting going on there just yet. I’m still on probation until the fourth of next month.”
“I guess that’s to be expected at a new job,” Beckham admitted. “Did you go out with your friends from work like they wanted you to that first night you were there?”
I groaned. “No.”
Beckham sighed. “I know that you’re new, but you have to get back out there, sweetie. Holing up in your apartment isn’t going to help.”
It might not, but I couldn’t very well just ‘go out.’
The last time I’d just ‘gone out’ I’d ended up kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking.
Literally.
The one saving grace out of that whole experience was that I’d been sold to someone that hadn’t actually wanted to have sex with me.
The man who’d purchased me had been a very virile man. However, that man hadn’t actually been interested in women like me. He’d been interested in girls like his daughter.
In the end, I wasn’t actually sure why that man had purchased me. But I was glad that he did because I’d saved his daughter from being used more than once by him and had the battle scars to prove it.
“I’ll get there,” I lied. “This is my first month out of Traci’s home and on my own… I’ll get there.”
After being rescued, I hadn’t gone back to my fiancé’s place like I’d always dreamed about doing.
Why?
Because my fiancé, to get me back, had tried to do the very same thing to Beckham that had been done to me. He’d tried to sell her to the sex traffickers to find out where I was, and it’d backfired.
He hadn’t actually found out where I was, and he’d left a pregnant Beckham there to fend for herself.
Neither her nor I, had spoken about anything that had gone on, just like Traci, my best friend in the whole wide world, hadn’t asked. But I knew that, if she even experienced it for half a second, that was way too long.
And it was something I hadn’t been able to forgive my fiancé for.
So I’d broken up with him.
It was something he still wasn’t quite able to come to grips with.
He tried, multiple times a day, in fact, to still get into contact with me.
I’d change my phone, and he’d have the phone number within the hour—something that his money and his connections gave to him.
At this point, I just blocked him every time he called from a new number and hung up on him when I heard his voice.
It’d been exactly two years since I’d made it home, and two years since I’d officially called it off with Toot, but neither of us could move on.
At least, I thought I couldn’t move on.
I thought that I would be in love with Toot—Beau—forever. I thought he was going to be my one. The father of my children. The man that I spent the rest of my life with.
I’d thought that I wouldn’t be able to get over him, that I’d be stuck, broken forever.
That was until I met Detective Schultz today.
The moment I’d seen him walking across the parking lot next to his partner, something weird and fluttery had started happening in my chest.
The normal ‘panic’ that I had when I met someone outside of four protected walls—when I was too far away from a man that I knew would protect me if needed—had subsided.
And somehow, without even getting a clear look at his face, I knew without a single doubt in my mind that Detective Schultz would protect me with his life if I ever needed him to.
“I have a reason for calling.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh, met a man today.”
Beckham gasped. “You what?”
“I met a man,” I repeated. “A detective.”
Beckham made a squeal that had her husband, Trouper, asking her what the hell was wrong.
Beckham ignored him and said, “What do you need from me?”
She knew me so well.
“I need to look into his background,” I admitted.
I need to make sure he’s not a fucking serial rapist, sex trafficker, or murderer before I sleep with him.