Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 68576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Atlas Carter was a protector. He was a police officer, had spent years in the Air Force, spent his entire teen years as a volunteer firefighter.
Being a protector was in his blood.
It was his dream.
So when a woman was in a dangerous situation, it was his every instinct to protect her. To shield her. To watch over her.
Only, that woman had played him.
She’d set him up.
She’d made sure that he only saw her.
Then, when the real woman who should hold his heart, the sister, comes into his life, he doesn’t see past the hatred of her to know that she’s only trying to protect him in return.
He spends the next year terrorizing the woman who’s supposed to be his. When the dust finally settles, and he can see clearly once again, she’s no longer there waiting for him.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PEPPER
Age 15
“Give it back!”
I looked at my little sister, Sage—twelve going on thirty-two—and shook my head. “No, it’s mine.”
“It’s yours, but I want to use it, you fat fucking heifer!” Sage screeched.
Sage had started her period four days ago.
Sage, from then on, had made everyone’s life a living hell.
It was like some switch had flipped.
One day she was a nice kid, and the next she was this… monster.
“I am not giving you my toothbrush,” I said. “If I give it to you, I won’t have one.”
“You don’t need one.” She rolled her eyes.
Then, before I could protect myself, she launched herself at me.
Here was the thing about Sage.
She was bigger than me.
By a couple of inches.
I was a late bloomer, according to my mother.
I still looked like I was twelve, not fifteen.
I was told by the doctor that sometimes things happened this way.
And instead of dwelling on the fact that my sister looked more womanly than me at twelve than I did at fifteen, I just rolled with it.
What I didn’t expect was for her to use the height and weight she had on me to her advantage in beating the ever-loving shit out of me.
I curled into a ball, unable to protect myself from her anger.
And only after her shrieks and my cries for help were answered by my father and brothers, did I finally realize that the old sister, the nice sister—the sister I used to have—was officially gone.
I would never forgive her.
Never.
And I had a scar across the bridge of my nose, from eye to eye, where she’d clawed me with her fingernails to remind me.
Age 17
“What happened?” my mother asked the moment she got to the school.
I was so angry I could cry.
“Well, do you want to know the truth, or would you like to know the lies Sage is passing around school?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Emmanuele and Gladys Solomon had four children. Two boys and two girls.
The first child my parents had was Tarrant, my brother. Then came me. Followed shortly by Everest, the youngest boy. Finally came Sage, the youngest girl.
There were four years difference between Tarrant and Sage.
All of us went to school at Kilgore High School, in Kilgore, Texas.
Tarrant was a senior, I was a junior, Everest a sophomore, and Sage a freshman.
“I would like to know your side of the story,” my mother said expertly.
She never outright called my sister a liar.
That would set her off.
But she knew, just as well as I did, that Sage was a fuckin’ nut job.
She always had been and only seemed to have gotten worse since I’d gotten to high school.
I couldn’t wait until I graduated and could get the hell away from her.
“Well, I got to school this morning and went to soccer class like I always do, but when I went to change, my locker had been ransacked and I had no school clothes to change into,” I said. “So I had to wear my gym clothes, which I got in trouble for because they were too short. But let’s not talk about the fact that Kilgore Athletic Department is the governing body that gave me those clothes in the first place. I digress, though.” I waved my hand at the school at large. “So I get called to the principal’s office, and they tell me I need to change. So I break into Sage’s locker and find my clothes from this morning. Change into them. Only, Sage then complains to the school resource officer that I broke into her locker. I’m then questioned by him, and now here we are, talking to each other.”
“And what is she saying that you did this morning?” my mom asked, pain filling her eyes.
Every day was a new adventure when it came to Sage Solomon.
She was, by far, the nuttiest person I’d ever met.
And that was not said in a good way.
Sage made everyone’s lives a living hell, and not a day went by that we didn’t tread carefully to avoid stepping on her toes.