Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79374 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79374 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
He was older than me, but only by a few years at most. I’d never seen anyone like him. One side of his neck was covered in colorful and intricate tattoos that disappeared into the collar of his yellow button-down shirt. When he adjusted my wrists, his sleeves rode up his forearms, revealing very little unmarked skin there as well. His sandy-blond hair was shaved short on the sides, longer and slicked back on top. His beard was neat, short, and several shades darker than the hair on his head.
For a brief moment I was relieved that whoever the man was, at least he wasn’t Conner or Eric.
However, that relief soon gave way to unadulterated panic.
I didn’t recognize him. Not at first, anyway. Not until he smiled and my gaze traveled from his full lips and straight white teeth, down to his pink and yellow polka-dotted bow tie. Then the recognition slammed into me like a freight train.
Oh fuck.
This man was my savior.
He was also anything but.
“I see you remember me. Well, at least now it all makes a fuck of a lot more sense,” he said, his voice a deep rumble that I felt in my chest as he leaned down over me, his lips a breath away from mine. I tried to struggle, to free myself of his grip, but he only chuckled and held me tighter. He was right by laughing because my fighting back was exactly that. Laughable. I was weak.
Too weak.
“What exactly makes sense now?” I managed to bite out, blowing out a breath of frustration at my lack of ability to fight him off.
“It’s a common knowledge around here that anyone who steals from me or my partner has got to be either dumb-as-fuck or suicidal,” he said, leaning back onto his knees. Still holding my wrists with one hand, he gestured with the other to the ledge I’d stood on seconds earlier. “The truth is that when I followed you up here I had my money on dumb-as-fuck, but hey, you surprised me by trying to take the final leap over there, I didn’t expect that. Almost didn’t catch you in time.” He then leaned back down and had the audacity to pinch my cheek, the way a crazy aunt would.
“So what? You only saved me from killing myself so you could have the honor?”
“Maybe,” he admitted, adding, “You should be proud of yourself, kid, ’cause nothing much surprises me these days. In a way,” he paused and looked around into the night sky, taking a deep breath through his nose, releasing it with an audible sigh out of his mouth, like he was sitting in an open field, relaxing and literally smelling the flowers. “It’s kind of refreshing. I hope those other two stupid fucks surprise me like you have, but I doubt it.” He looked back down at me and winked. “My money is staying on dumb-as-fuck when it comes to those two.”
“What did you do to Mirna?” I asked, my words as shaky as the rest of my body.
“Is that a new thing? Is that what the kids are all doing these days? Ripping people off, then pretending like they give two fucks what happens to them?”
“Please. Tell me. Is she okay?”
He chuckled, like the panic in my voice was amusing to him. He leaned down, his cheek firmly against mine. “I’m. Not. Telling. You. Shit,” he said, squeezing my body hard between his thighs, as if to prove to me that it was all it would take to crush me.
That’s when I saw it.
That thing I’d never forget that made the hair on my arms stand on end and my mouth open with a gasp.
Whenever I thought of someone who was “scary,” I thought of men from movies or books. The overly muscled type with no necks, wearing black clothes with scowls on their faces. Someone like a security guard or bouncer or biker who could warn people away with their large statures and brooding silence. Someone you wouldn’t want to cross in a dark alley, never mind a lit street.
The man on top of me could never be described that way. He was far from a brute with his lean build. And his clothes consisted of pastels and suspenders, not exactly big scary-man attire. In essence, he looked as if he’d stepped out of a page from The Notebook.
Upon first glance, the guy was about as scary as the Easter Bunny.
Until I saw IT.
It was a spark. Just a glint of depravity lurking behind his amber eyes. I saw it in the way he smiled as he held me down. I heard it in the way he told me I was dumb-as-fuck and adorable in the same breath. And when he spoke about his plans for revenge, I felt it in my soul.