Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 71131 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71131 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
An hour later, it’s dark. I see shadows in their windows, and I hear laughter, and I wonder if he’s that funny and pray at the same time it’s the TV.
I want to kill the man I’m supposed to protect, and yet there I stand, looking up, making sure they’re safe to… what? Fuck?
I squeeze my eyes closed.
“Thought you could use this.” Tiffany hands me a shot of tequila.
I scowl. “Could you at least do your job and stop drinking on it?”
“Oh no, this was from some prostitute that thought I’d be down.” She winks. “And I mean, for that kind of tequila…” She laughs. “Just take the shot. I’m completely sober, but you shouldn’t be, and that’s the damn truth.”
“Saw them too?”
She shrugs. “She loves you. She’s doing her job. To do anything else would be, what? Running away? Death? Can’t you see her point of view?”
“Hard to.” I throw the shot back. “When I know how she feels about him.”
Tiffany laughs at me. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I hesitate, then spill. “They were friends before. She used to watch him. I think it was more of a who is this guy sort of infatuation, but it still doesn’t make this hell easier, you know?”
“Man up!” She slaps me on the back and laughs, her dimples making me almost smile despite my need to choke her out. “This isn’t just life. This is business, and the sooner you realize it, accept it, the sooner your life begins.”
Yeah business, my brain says after seeing her head fall back, him kiss down her neck, her legs spread around his body.
Totally business.
I clench my fists because I never gave that to her. I never even tried because the minute I found out who she belonged to, I knew it wasn’t worth my life to mess with things.
But I wanted to.
And then when I found out she was his, I messed up, I slept with Tiffany in an effort to get back at her, not realizing she still loved me, needed me, wanted me, and now I feel fucked because I have no leg to stand on.
“It could be worse,” Tiffany finally says.
I shake my head. “How?”
“You could be dead.”
“Wow, encouraging, thank you.”
“Just try to stay calm,” she says.
God could have given me someone better, right? As a partner in crime?
I shake my head and watch as the lights turn down in their room. “Time to go to work and keep them alive.”
No matter what.
No. Matter. What.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of His fields, But in His ways with men I find Him not. I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.”—King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
King
She’s in the shower, and I don’t join her, and it bothers me that she didn’t ask even though I know why not. At the end of the day, I know this isn’t real, and I have enough shit to think about with my family, starting with, what the ever-loving hell?
I try to text them again.
And nothing.
No group texts.
It’s as if I’ve been kicked out of my own family, and now they’re hunting me. For one brief second, I was like, oh, that makes sense, they want me to have my privacy, but after what Roman said, it feels more like the calm before the storm.
Life before death.
The shower turns off.
I look away because I don’t think I have enough self-control to glance and not continue staring. I can hear her walking around the bathroom, picking up towels; I swear I can feel every single caress of that cloth, and then the bathroom door opens, and like, what the fuck am I supposed to do?
She’s wrapped in a plush white towel. My eyes focus on the weak tie across the front, and it occurs to me how easy it would be to pull it—how much I would enjoy it. Does she even know? Does she get it? What I would do for her? And what mountains I would move if I could? I’m not the type to stay up all night and think about things like this, but it’s hard not to be aggressive and violent and intense when the one woman you’ve always wanted was given to you only to be taken away. I hate that I keep focusing on it when it should be my own life and hers and possibly our future children, but is it so wrong to want just one thing?
ONE.
I tell myself no, but maybe that’s just me playing games in order to survive the world I live in, like a game of Chance or Sorry. Hell, I’d even take Chutes and Ladders at this point.
“What’s so funny?” Del pulls the towel tighter around her, pushing her breasts up against her chest. My tongue goes dry, so I look away. I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, but damn, does she even know how gorgeous she is? How tempting?