Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
My finger hovers over the buzzer to Lory's place. It's five a.m. and if she's home, she'll be sleeping. Maybe she has a man inside. The thought makes me fucking crazy with rage.
I press the buzzer, and it lights up, confirming it's working. Then I wait with my heart in my throat. Seconds pass.
Nothing.
I press again and turn, scanning the road. Standing in one place too long will get me caught.
Nothing.
Maybe she's gone already. It was always a risk. Her sister needed help and lived out of state. Maybe she used the money she got to be with us to travel.
“Hello.” Lory's sleep-husky voice travels through the intercom, filling the night air with sweetness.
“Lory. It's me. Open up.”
“What?” she asks, but the door buzzes open, and I'm inside like a flash. In the stairwell, I realize I don't know where I'm going, but locks slide, and a door opens upstairs, and I sprint to where I think she is. “Kinkaid?”
The hope in her voice sends my heart soaring. She's not scared that it's me. She didn't hesitate to let me in. On the second floor, she's there, peeking around her door with dark searching eyes, and for the first time since I went through puberty, tears prick behind my eyes.
“Lory.”
She pushes the door open and runs to me, in a tangle of messy hair and twisted pink pajamas, flying into my arms so hard, she knocks the breath from my lungs. I gasp to breathe her in, all strawberry shampoo and warm femininity. The lingering staleness of the pen fades to nothing.
“How?”
“I don't have long,” I say. “I need to leave the city. Will you come?”
“Yes.” It's said with no hesitation. “I need time to pack.” She glances back and drags me inside. She hasn't even asked me where we're going or if I can wait. “Hyde? Rock?”
“They're still inside. Bring what you can fit into a small suitcase. What you can't live without.”
“Okay.”
She closes the door behind us and throws her arms around me again, tugging at my neck so she can reach for a hard kiss. “I prayed,” she says against my lips. “I don't even know if I believe in God, but I prayed you'd all come for me.” She strokes her hand over my beard, eyes wide and smiling. “This is new. I like it.”
“Pack,” I urge her, grinning like I'm sixteen and drunk. The impulse to sink into her body and show her how much I crave her is fierce, but I won't give in to short-term desires when the chance we have at a future is within our grasp.
“Do you have a car?”
“I bought one when I got out.” She's already stuffing clothes and personal effects into a duffle. “My friend's brother helped me pick something good. I drove to help my sister and then came back, so I know it runs.” She bites her lip and fixes me with her liquid brown eyes. “I came back because I needed to be here where you could find me if you came looking.”
She came back to wait for us. Sweet girl. “I prayed, too,” I confess. “That you'd wait for me. That you'd say yes to being ours.”
“I'm yours.” The words are rushed as she grabs her phone, charger, and what looks like a small album of photos from a shelf, but they still slide inside me and wrap around my heart.
Her apartment is tiny and barren, and once she's packed, it's almost like she never lived here at all. My chest aches when I realize her life before Blackstone was as unsettled and empty as ours. I can make her a home that will be so much more than this. We can both be happy.
But the ghost of Whitaker Evans chooses right now to linger in the shadowed corners of this shitty apartment. Lory doesn't know what we did, and I can't base the life I'd risk everything for on a lie.
I rest my hand on her upper arm, and she stills, staring up at me. “I have to tell you something before we go. Something that might make you change your mind about coming with me.”
“No,” she breathes. “Nothing you tell me will do that.”
“The thing we did for Grady—”
“I know.” She lowers the shirt she was folding, giving me her full attention. “I know what you did.”
I blink in the darkness, so surprised, I take a step back. The floorboards creak beneath my feet. “How?”
“I looked at local news from before the auction. I saw the reports about Grady's niece and…” Lory shakes her head, her expression fierce and tense. “That man deserved what you did and more, Kinkaid.”
She knew about Whitaker, and she still ran into my arms. She knew, and she waited for us to come out so we could be together.