Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“Dammit,” I muttered under my breath, and then turned around.
***
Ghost
It would be my baby girl that broke the camel’s back.
The moment that I saw her car leave, I shucked the shirt.
It was way too fuckin’ hot already, but adding a shirt to the mix made it nearly unbearable, and it was barely eight in the morning. The heat index projected that it’d feel upwards of a hundred and ten by midafternoon.
But I wasn’t going to expose myself to the woman, because it wouldn’t take her but five seconds to see my naked chest and know exactly who I was.
See, I had a very distinctive tattoo. One that Mina knew I had. One that she’d studied up close and personal.
One that was only half there now due to the burns and would be readily visible if my shirt was not on.
The day that I’d become a Dixie Warden, I’d gotten a tattoo of the wraith-like woman that was on the back of The Dixie Wardens cut. It took up half my right side and was beautiful. Was being the operative word.
Beneath that tattoo, I’d gotten another tattoo that was Mina’s. It wasn’t anything too over the top. It was a skeletal hand – depicting me – holding onto a strand of curls – for Mina – in a tight grip that signified I was never letting go. In a swirling cursive font and hidden in the hair, the word ‘Mina’ was entwined through multiple strands of hair.
But during my brush with death, I had suffered severe burns that had melted away half of not only my club tattoo, but also my tattoo for Mina. The burns healed in a curve around my shoulder blade that formed a sort of C shape and cut off the left half of the club tattoo into something unrecognizable, and leaving the curly hair of the Mina tattoo, which made it look like the wraith lady’s face and hair were melting off.
Overall, it was a pretty cool effect, but the loss of Mina’s tattoo, along with my club’s tattoo, left a hole in my soul that felt like it would never mend.
But, to those who knew me, they knew what those tattoos were once. That’d been how I’d been able to convince Silas of exactly who I was.
Sighing long and loud, I turned the corner of my house—now Mina’s house—and started walking away from the driveway and the entrance to the street.
I’d just reached the end of the yard and had maneuvered the mower back around to go back the way I’d just came, when I stopped dead in my tracks.
My hands let go of the lever that kept the mower running, and I stared in shock at Mina’s car that was in the middle of the street, still running.
Where was Mina?
She was standing in the middle of the street, her hands falling limply at her sides, with tears running uncontrollably down her cheeks.
She knew.
I knew she knew.
There was no doubt now that she knew exactly what was going on. Who I was. Who I once was.
I saw the moment she compartmentalized it. Saw the moment that she decided that she couldn’t do it.
She walked into the house, came back out moments later, still crying might I add, and walked back to her car. All the while I watched her, a sick knot in my stomach that was on the verge of pain.
She got into her car, stared at me for a few more long moments, and then backed down the road, turned it sharply like she was in a hurry to leave, and peeled out before speeding down the road.
I watched her go, knowing that everything had changed.
Everything.
Chapter 16
Anybody that doesn’t agree with leggings being pants can physically fight me. And I will win because I have superior range of motion.
-Meme
Ghost
I didn’t bother to shower. Didn’t bother to change. Instead, I rode after her, even going as far as to forget my cut, which I never forgot.
I caught up to her at the police station where she dropped Sienna off with the papers that she’d taken from the house—the ones that had brought her back when she was supposed to be at work.
Then, I followed her, not to her work, but to a spot that I hadn’t realized she’d known existed.
When I pulled up, she was already out of the car, and walking down the long, overgrown path, deeper and deeper into the woods until we came to a house.
“I Googled this place,” she said softly. “I had suspicions.”
I grunted.
“They told me your last name was Lane. Ghost Lane.” She laughed, but there wasn’t a single ounce of humor in her voice. “I Googled property here, and found this place.”
I looked at the house. It was a fixer-upper that really needed some attention.
The reason I’d bought it?