Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 207638 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1038(@200wpm)___ 831(@250wpm)___ 692(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207638 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1038(@200wpm)___ 831(@250wpm)___ 692(@300wpm)
Oh God.
Please, Reed. Please, please, please.
I’m not sure what I’m pleading for. Am I pleading for him to leave or to find me or to tell me that whatever I’m thinking, whatever I’ve discovered about my body is false?
Maybe I want him to tell me that it’s not right.
That it can’t be.
There needs to be some other explanation. That it can’t be what my body has been trying to tell me for the past few days.
But he doesn’t do any of that.
He doesn’t find me and tell me that it’s all going to be okay, no.
He leaves.
Just as he’d come, out of the blue, almost jogging up to the fence, he walks away from it. I hear him leave. I hear his footsteps thumping and retreating.
Until I can’t hear them anymore.
Until I open my eyes and fall down to my knees.
Then I throw up on the ground, my heart rebelling over letting him go and my body rebelling over what we did three weeks ago.
He’s the first thing I see as soon as I enter Ballad of the Bards.
I’m not shocked to see him though.
It’s Friday and he knows where I go on Fridays.
Even though I haven’t been here in three weeks, ever since that night. And I would’ve skipped tonight as well but I’ve already worried my friends a lot and I couldn’t skip without telling them something, everything, I don’t know.
But I can’t.
I can’t tell them anything. Not yet.
Not until I figure things out myself. So when they asked, I said yes and I did it with a huge smile on my face to make it look convincing.
But anyway, he knows where to go to find me.
The shock comes from the fact that he wants to find me in the first place. That he wanted to find me last night as well when I hid from him.
When I figured out that…
That I am. I know I am.
My body has been trying to tell me this for days now and I’ve ignored it. I can’t ignore it now.
So I know.
I’ve known it for about twenty-four hours now.
I’ve known it ever since last night when I threw up in the woods. I knew it when I got back to my room and first hugged my pillow to my body because I was so scared — I still am — and then cried in it.
I knew all through breakfast this morning, through trigonometry, geography, history, biology. I knew it when I went to see my guidance counselor and she asked me how my week had been and I told her it was fine. Everything was the same.
Even though it was a lie.
Because everything is not fine. Everything is not the same.
I don’t think it will ever be the same after what I’ve known for the last twenty-four hours.
And now he’s here.
He’s standing at the same spot that he was back when I first saw him after two years. But unlike the last time, he doesn’t have people around him.
He’s alone and it looks like he’s been waiting for me. It looks like he’s been watching the door.
My heart tries to race at the thought.
At him watching the door, waiting for me to show up. But I harden it.
I make it stop.
Because he shouldn’t be waiting for me. He shouldn’t be watching the door for me.
And I shouldn’t want him to.
I do everything in my power to stop my heart from wrecking my ribs, from leaping out of my chest at the sight of him. And I think I’m successful. I think.
But I forgot one thing. Or rather, didn’t take that thing into account.
I didn’t take into account the fact that instead of it all ending that night, something began.
Something took root and I feel it in my body now, and even though I’ve managed to calm down my heart, I can’t calm it down.
The flutters in my abdomen.
A quickening, something pulsing to life, and it’s only getting worse the more I stare into his wolf eyes.
And I have to put a hand on my belly.
My skin feels just as warm and heated as it did last night.
As soon as I do that though, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Because God, his animal eyes — they really never miss anything — drop down to my belly. And his arched cheekbones flood with a flush as if he can feel that warmth himself.
When his lips part slightly as if on an exhale, I snatch my hand off.
His eyes snap up and my own pop wide at the look in them.
All angry and dark. Possessive. Filled with knowledge, somehow.
Of what’s inside of me.
But it can’t be, right?
He can’t know. It took me days to figure it out myself, granted I was distracted but still. He can’t figure it out by just looking at my hand on my stomach.