Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78487 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“H-how do I give it back?”
“I don’t care how. FedEx it, Uber it, hell, send it via fucking carrier pigeon, I don’t give a fuck, just fucking do it. You’ve got twenty-four hours.”
“Okay, I-I will.”
I looked at the kid. He’d stopped crying, but he was staring at me with those big eyes, and it was the strangest encounter I’d ever had during a hit. Because it wasn’t fear I saw in his eyes, it was sadness. Hell, if I’m real honest, he looked more disappointed in me than anything.
Christ. I must have been losing my mind because I felt that look right through to my bones.
Somewhere inside me a switch was flipped.
I turned back to Graham. “Twenty-four hours. Got it?”
“I u-understand.”
“Good. Now, get in the back seat and comfort your kid.”
We both climbed out, and he did as I instructed. He got his kid out of the car seat and hugged him tightly while I walked away without another glance and disappeared into the shadows.
As I walked, I cleaned my gun for prints, and when I reached the other side of the harbor where my rental car was parked, I threw it as far into the water as possible.
I was done.
I didn’t want to be the bad guy anymore.
Less than twenty-four hours later, eight million dollars stuffed into a leather sports bag landed on the front door of the De Kysa mansion, and I was officially unemployed.
The sound of kids’ laughter brings me back to the present. Across the row of barbecue tables I see Jack with Bronte. He’s rubbing her pregnant belly tenderly as they talk, and you can clearly tell she is the only thing he sees. His world starts and ends with her.
A knot forms in my chest.
Fuck it.
“Where you going?” Paw asks.
“To do what I should’ve done in the first place.”
“What?”
“I’m going to call my girl.”
Except I don’t call her. Instead, I climb on my bike and ride over to her apartment. I won’t lie, I spend most of the ride questioning if I’m doing the right thing. But the moment she opens the door, the violent kick in my heart tells me I am exactly where I want to be and who I want to be with.
I take her in my arms and kiss her long and deep, and she rewards me in all the best ways possible.
RORY
“You never talk about your past,” I say over the sea of bubbles.
When Ares arrived, I’d already drawn a bubble bath. The candles were lit. The bottle of red wine was open. But what was meant to be a solo affair turned into a twosome.
“Because that’s where I like to leave it,” he says.
He’s bigger than big, so there isn’t much room left for me in the bath, and even though we sit at opposite ends, I’m practically sitting on him. If I weren’t basically a pixie, this wouldn’t work.
“Anyway, I thought you liked it that way,” he adds.
“I do, but at the same time, I’m nosy. I’m a Pisces, and we can be terribly fickle. We’re two fish swimming in opposite directions, always changing our minds. What star sign are you?”
“A Scorpio.”
“Oh, the dark, enigmatic sign in the zodiac. How fitting.”
“You’re teasing.”
“Always. Do you believe in star signs?”
“I do.”
That surprises me. “Really?”
“The moon can move tides. We’re about sixty percent water, so it’s not a stretch to think that other celestial entities could affect our personalities and moods if they can control something as big as our oceans.”
“It sounds like you know a lot about it.”
“There was a time in my life when all I did was read, and when you run out of crime thrillers and killer biographies, you have to move on to other stuff. Where I was, the choice was limited.”
“Where was that.”
“Prison.”
His words bite into the air between us.
We stare at each other.
“Prison?” I whisper. “For what?”
He’s very still as he replies, “For murder.”
Despite the warm bath water, my skin pebbles.
“Does that frighten you?” His voice is low.
I don’t move. “Yes.”
His expression falters—almost as if it hurt him to hear me admit it.
“You don’t have to be,” he says. “I didn’t do it.”
I raise an eyebrow.
How many prisons are filled with people who didn’t do it?
“Then how did you get sent away?”
His throat works as he thinks.
“I was an easy scapegoat. The town freak. The mutant everyone was afraid of, so it was easy to pin the crime on me.”
I realize I’ve been holding my breath and let it go. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do you?”
His eyes are warm and dark as he gazes at me from the other end of the tub.
I nod slowly. “Yes.”
He thinks for a moment. His stubble-covered jaw tenses.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I say softly. “You don’t have to explain anything to me if it’s hard for you.”