Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 152(@200wpm)___ 122(@250wpm)___ 101(@300wpm)
“You think I’d let you dance in front of people for money?” I recoil at the thought. “That’s sounds more nightmarish than fun.”
“You won’t let anyone bother me.” She hops off the stool, throwing her arms around my neck. “Come on, let’s go. You’ve been hiding in this house too long, reliving the darkness. Dwelling on it. But there’s a light side to this world, too, Koen.” She sways in my arms, her expression cajoling. “Let me show you.”
I don’t think I’m capable to denying Meg anything, especially when she speaks about it with so much passion. I want to understand what she’s feeling. The truth of what she’s telling me. And perhaps she’s right. I’d been closed up in this house with my unbearable thoughts right up until the minute she showed up on my beach. If I’m going to prevent that darkness from touching her, maybe I need to shed it. If such a thing is possible, she’s the only one who can help me succeed.
“Fine. Just this once.”
My lips move unbidden into a smile when she cheers and proceeds to demonstrate the dance moves she’s going to use while we busk. I don’t know what’s happening to my life, but I’m scared to imagine what would have become of me if she didn’t come crashing in to save me.
Meg
In the days since meeting Koen, my life has been a dream.
Perfect at times, confusing at others. Falling for him has challenged everything I thought I knew about myself. But I’ve fallen, nonetheless. Hard. Irrevocably. He’s woken up a sexuality inside of me that might have gone unnoticed forever, if the right man hadn’t made it come screaming out of me, unearthing my obsession with his own.
I am obsessed. With him.
However, even now, as I sit beside him on an old wooden bench in the train station, the violin resting in his lap, his protective arm around my shoulder, my responsibilities are calling louder and louder from the sidelines. I can’t put them off anymore. I’ve been caught up in what’s happening to me, to Koen, but my siblings are at stake. My father, too. As unreliable as he is, he’s my blood. I can’t continue to be selfish by ignoring what Etta sent me here to do—
The mere act of thinking the name Etta must spook me, because a woman in a sunhat meanders in a distance, before boarding a train. There’s something familiar about her. Something about her posture that harkens back to the woman from my doorstep, but I’m just hyperaware of my deadline. Of my upcoming confession. That’s all it is.
What I crave is one more magical moment…
And then I’ll tell Koen everything. He deserves every bit of my honesty.
“What are you going to play?” I murmur, nuzzling his shoulder with my cheek.
He watches his own fingers intently as they stroke through the strands of my hair. “Something I wrote for you. Something happy.”
I gasp, sit up straighter. “You wrote me a song?” I sputter. “When did you have time to do that?”
“When you left me to clean,” he responds, his disdain for my job obvious. “It wasn’t easy to compose something upbeat when I knew you were on the other side of the wall scrubbing baseboards.”
A flare of alarm streaks through my stomach at the specifics of his statement. Scrubbing baseboards. “I thought I heard a noise. You came into the office?”
He inclines his head, jaw tight.
“What is it?” I ask, rubbing the center of his chest, overwhelmed by so many things at once. The need to climb into his lap and be wrapped in his arms. The need to confess why we met in the first place. The need to run away…even though I’d only make it two steps before sprinting straight back to him. “You can’t be this upset over me cleaning an office.”
“I could. Easily. But…” He studies me closely, as if deciding how much of an explanation I can handle. “I wasn’t going to come into the office. I was going to wait for you in the parking lot. A man arrived, though...”
“A man…” My memory of that night drifts back in freeze frames. “The white car. I saw that white car in the parking lot.”
“It’s been stripped down and compacted now,” he says slowly, gauging my reaction.
“Did it belong to…”
His blue eyes narrow to slits. “Belong to who?”
I take a few breaths and try to relax my pulse, but it continues to race under his intensity. Books and TV shows portray healthy couples as comfortable. Calm. Content. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to feel those things around Koen. What I do feel is alive. Highly aware of every molecule dancing in my body. Poised for anything.
And I can’t help it. I prefer this over comfort.
Mystery. Darkness. The unknown.