Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 939(@200wpm)___ 751(@250wpm)___ 626(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 939(@200wpm)___ 751(@250wpm)___ 626(@300wpm)
“Mrs. Wallace, my ninth-grade Algebra teacher. She was about sixty years old and wore church heels and bifocals, but man, she could deviate the fuck out of some formulas.”
Thorin and Seth snicker.
“I hate you all.”
“Goldilocks…” Khalil turns over and yanks me down the bed until I’m staring up at the twisted canopy, and he’s hovering over me with both hands planted on either side of my head. My hands automatically find his hard pecs, sliding down to his six-pack and feeling his warm skin underneath my palms because I can’t resist touching him. I know Khalil loves it when I do. “Who gives a fuck about the girls who came before? As far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist anymore. There is no before you because there’s only you. Our story starts and ends with you and me.” A throat clears before Khalil rolls his eyes. “And Thorin and Seth too.”
I slide my foot down Khalil’s huge calf muscles, teasing him as I grin up at him. “Good answer, Poverly.”
Since I’m wearing one of his flannels again—which I’d purposely left open—and only a thin pair of panties underneath, Khalil lowers his head and licks my sternum right over the spot where my heart beats. My nipples harden on contact, and I can’t quite catch my breath after that. “And what about you? You still haven’t told us if you fucked your bodyguard yet.”
Feeling like all the air has been sucked out of the room, my foot drops back onto the bed at the reminder of Tyler. “What does it matter?” I ask, voice strangled. “He’s dead.”
“Exactly my thoughts,” Thorin says.
When I turn my head his way, I see that he’s glaring at Khalil. They exchange a look I can’t decipher, and then Khalil rolls off me with a heavy sigh to settle between Seth and me.
I figure Thorin is just pissed at Khalil for upsetting me, which he didn’t, not really. It’s my own fault for bringing up the topic of old flames.
Not that Tyler was an old flame.
He—it’s complicated.
It takes me a few minutes to recover—to push Tyler way down where I’m safe from ever thinking about him again. The guilt is just too crippling to bear without coming to a standstill. In these wilds, where anything could kill me if I let my guard down, it’s too dangerous to risk.
Tyler, Cassie, and all the others are dead because of me, and here I am, trying to move on and steal a slice of happiness for myself as if I deserve any of it.
I should have done the Avery Shaw interview a year ago.
I should have lied to Tania after she told me that I was her idol. I should have smiled prettily and told her that she absolutely has what it takes to be the next me. Instead, I looked into the starry eyes of a dreamer and eclipsed it with the cold, hard truth.
She could never be me.
Because what it took to be me was my soul, and Tania was still new enough to save hers. I didn’t care about that, though, if I’m being sincere. I’m not going to put on a false cape and claim I was only trying to rescue Tania when I spewed my venom.
The truth is, I hated her.
For being everything I never got the chance to be and then rubbing it in my face, I fucking despised her.
And if I’d lied, Tyler and the others would still be alive, and I’d never have met Thorin, Khalil, and Seth. The knowledge only fills me with even more turmoil because I can no longer imagine my existence without my mountain men being a part of it, nor do I want to.
I’d suffer a thousand falls from grace and fiery plane crashes just to find them again and again.
The knowledge and acceptance that I will always be the villain splits me open, leaving me vulnerable as I stare at the twisted branches and fairy lights. The guys are still talking amongst themselves. Meanwhile, it becomes hard for me to breathe, so I sit up with a gasp. I can feel their eyes snap to me when Seth stops mid-sentence. I can feel the soft bedspread underneath me as my fingers dig into it to keep me from floating away.
A moment later, it feels as if the room itself is shrinking until I realize it’s Thorin, Khalil, and Seth pushing in and closing around me, letting me know they are there. I’m safe to process whatever the fuck is happening to me.
After the tearing, stretching, and crumbling are done, after I shed this skin that has never been mine, I become trapped in this new shell that’s hard in places and soft in others—that is both full of color and uncomfortably transparent.
I still panic, even while knowing somehow that it’s only temporary.