Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
The guy looked over her head, finding himself almost face-to-face with me, smirk just a little too devilish to be called sheepish at being caught in the middle of his tits-out story.
“You’re quite the storyteller,” I told him.
“Easy to be when the listener doesn’t know a damn word I’m saying,” he said, shrugging. “Feelin’ better?”
“Yeah. I think. I’m not shaking, at least.”
“Adrenaline is a motherfucker.”
“You weren’t shaking.”
“‘Cause I’m used to crazy shit. Besides, I didn’t have a baby. And I did have a gun.”
He pressed Lainey to his shoulder, using one arm to hold her there and extending his other hand to me.
I bit back the urge to tell him to use two hands. The guy was clearly experienced. Hell, maybe even more than me—who had never even held a baby before I had my own.
I placed my hand in his, promptly ignoring the weird little sizzle as our skin met, and let him pull me to my feet.
“You girls got names?” he asked.
There was no logical reason my heart felt a little gooey that he’d asked for not only my name, but Lainey’s name, but it happened regardless.
“Zoe,” I told him. “And Lainey.”
“Coast.”
“That’s your name?” I clarified.
To that, he shot me that disarming bad-boy smirk again. “Yeah, baby, that’s my name. So, the fuck happened before you damn near ran into me?”
He didn’t relinquish my daughter to me. And for some reason, I didn’t reach for her either.
She was still against him, her little legs pulled up, her lips parted like they always were at rest.
His little story seemed to tire her right out.
I went ahead and told myself I left her there because I didn’t want to wake her. Not because I kind of liked seeing her so at peace on a man’s shoulder.
That was how it was supposed to be, damnit. Until I learned that some men shirked responsibility for the sake of selfishness.
“I was, uh, dropping off an order. I do deliveries,” I added.
“Good gig for a mom,” he said, getting it.
“Yeah. Well, I was walking back. There was no parking anywhere. Even though there’s nothing around here…”
“There’s a new bar over that way,” he said, nodding his head.
“Oh, that explains it. Well, I was walking back and I heard men speaking. I should have just… kept walking. But I turned my head and I saw them.”
“Saw them doing what?”
“Pushing a man on the ground. He was already all bloody. And… and…”
“Gun. Bang. Body.”
A little chill moved through me at how casually he was talking about murder. But that was quickly overshadowed by how my stomach lurched at that word. Murder. That was what I’d witnessed. Right?
“Yeah.”
“Where? Show me,” he added before I could say anything.
Not really having any choice, I followed him out of the alley. My gaze slid down, seeing his gun in his waistband, reminding myself that he could handle things if someone was still around.
“I think… there,” I said, waving toward a gap between buildings up ahead. “Yeah, that’s it.”
The broken glass on the ground was what my foot had stepped on, alerting the men to my presence.
My heartbeat started to thud loudly in my ears as we drew closer. I took slow, deep breaths, preparing myself for a dead body.
Sure enough, there was a prone figure on the ground where the men had been standing.
“What are you doing?” I yelped as he moseyed down into the lot. With my baby still pressed to his shoulder. To check out a dead body.
I couldn’t seem to unstick my feet. Not even to go grab my baby back.
I just watched as he nudged the body with the tip of his slide, then crouched down beside it.
He reached out with his free hand.
“Shit,” he snapped, getting back to his feet and striding back toward me.
“What? What is it?”
“He’s still alive. Just barely. Come on. We gotta go.”
“We can’t just leave him there if he’s alive!” I yelped, trying to turn back.
But Coast’s arm went around my lower back, pulling me with him.
It was the wrong damn time for my body to get all tingly at his touch, at his calm demeanor in the face of chaos.
It wasn’t a trait I was exactly proud of, but I had a tendency to overreact to things right at first. To catastrophize and let my confusion, fears, or uncertainty get the better of me. Instead of taking a step back and looking at the situation at a distance to see it for what it was, not what my knee-jerk reaction wanted me to believe it was.
It was refreshing to be around someone who just… pulled me along with their calm, steady current instead of letting me get pulled in my own riptide.
“We’re not leaving him,” Coast said, reading my mind. “But we can’t be seen with him either, can we? Where’s your car?” he asked.