Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
I was the fixer in this group. It was my job to go, and he needed to understand this.
I was pleading my case this morning by just repeating that I was going because he’d stopped listening about the group dynamics and roles.
My plan of attack was to wear him down, and it was working.
He picked up a tie, putting it around his neck. “You’re not. You have to look at the security photos from Octavia, remember?”
“I have to go. The photos can wait.”
He finished looping the tie through the hole, then tightened it. “That look okay?”
It didn’t. I stepped in, righting it. “So.”
His hands went to my hips. “No.”
“I’m going.”
He moved aside to look in the mirror. “You’re not. Thank you for this.”
He was pulling on his suit jacket, and damn. Very business Mafia dangerous-esque. How did he look so good, and I was the one who got him?
Then I switched back to the mission. “I have to go.”
He checked his phone, responded to a text, and opened our bedroom door, leading the way down the hallway, up the stairs (yes, we were in the basement, but we had a secret exit and it was so cool), and around to the kitchen. There were voices talking. I recognized Jess and Trace, but I followed him, not done. “Are you ignoring me?”
He entered the kitchen. “Morning, you guys.”
Trace and Jess were hunched over a tablet on the far side of the main counter. “Hey.” That was Trace. He frowned at me. I was still in my robe, because who wouldn’t be if they had an option to wear a fuzzy robe that felt like heaven on you? “What’s going on?”
I turned to Ashton. “I have to go. I’m not asking anymore.”
He hit the brew button and turned sharp eyes on me. “Excuse me?”
I flushed but raised my chin up higher. “I’m telling you. Life or death—”
His eyes flashed. “Exactly. I’m not risking you.”
“—if I don’t go. I have to go.” I was aware my argument wasn’t the best.
“Go?” Trace moved closer to us.
Ashton looked his way. “Genius here—”
I smiled.
“—has decided she has to go with Jess today. Jess and her mom.”
“What?” Jess’s head popped back up from the tablet. Her frown was immediate. “No.”
“Yes.” I nodded. Firm.
“No way.”
Trace looked at her, stepping back with his own coffee in hand.
The machine started brewing behind Ashton. “I don’t want you to go. Jess doesn’t want you to go. You’re not going.”
“Trace hasn’t said anything.”
Trace held his hand up. “I don’t want you to go.”
My gut was flaring again, twisting and churning like a tornado with IBS. “I have to go.”
“Why?” That was from Jess.
I shook my head, lifting my shoulders up. “It’s a feeling. I have to go. Like, if I don’t go, I know something bad will happen.”
“Have you gotten amnesia about all the times you were not around me? How many guns have been pointed at you?”
I flushed again. He was sorta correct about that. “It’s a gut feeling, Ashton.”
He sighed, grabbing a coffee cup and pouring coffee into it. He put the pot back, added some creamer to the coffee, then brought it over to me. He held it in front of him, stepping closer. His head inclined toward me, his eyes piercing. His mouth was in a firm line. He dropped his voice low, where I was feeling it in my belly. “I cannot lose you.”
That same gut did a whole three-hundred-and-sixty spin from warmth. We’d come so far from him wanting to use me as bait. I reached for the coffee, but he wouldn’t let it go.
I whispered, looking right back up at him, “Something bad will happen if I don’t go.”
His eyes flared up.
So did mine, and I pulled the coffee mug away from his hands, slowly, but determined. We were having a conversation within a conversation here. “You need to trust me with this one.”
“No.” But he whispered the word.
“Yes,” I whispered back. “I don’t get these feelings often, but when I do, they’re always right.”
“Ashton,” Trace spoke up, a few yards away. “If she’s having this feeling, then . . .”
I closed my eyes, praying Ashton would listen to him.
When I opened them, Ashton hadn’t moved. He was still looking at me.
“I know you need a better reason than my gut, but that’s all I have. I have to go.”
“I don’t want her to go.” Jess’s voice rang out, loud and authoritative.
Ashton closed his eyes now.
I angled my head around Ashton to see her.
She had folded her arms over her chest. “I’m only going because my mom is insisting on me. Trust me, if I could stay in hiding during this time, I would.” Trace quickly looked her way, and she flicked her eyes to him. “I’m not a fan of this, but I know the dangers. I also know that if I ever saw Nicolai Worthing, that prick, in real life, I’d probably shoot him, but all that said, I agree with Ashton.”