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)
“Eeep!” I screeched. “Tunnel, you shit.”
I turned my most fearsome glare on him, and he did nothing but laugh.
“Your hair tie is still in,” he said without apology.
I continued to glare.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was going to come out before I got into the shower.”
He shrugged, then reached for my hair.
I bent my head forward, and came face to face with his scars once again, and sadness poured through me.
“I wish I could’ve been there for you,” I whispered as I raised my hand and ran it down the length of his chest. “I hate that you had to suffer alone.”
“I don’t wish you were there,” he replied. “I wish that you were never subjected to my life. If it wasn’t for my selfishness of taking you all those years ago, you would’ve been a whole lot safer. And you and our daughter wouldn’t be in the middle of my shit tornado.”
I bent forward and placed my lips on one scar in particular. “This one looks terrible. What happened here?”
I could tell he didn’t want to tell me by the way his body locked, but I looked at him with a ‘you better tell me or else’ look, and his mouth twitched.
“You sure?”
My stomach knotted.
“Yes,” I murmured almost soundlessly.
He pushed me under the water, and I closed my eyes as he started to wet my hair down.
“It’s not a happy story,” he hesitated.
I opened my eyes and immediately got an eyeful of water.
“Keep ‘em closed, darlin’,” he ordered, then reached for the shampoo.
That was another thing. My shampoo had already been here when I’d arrived. And the same exact brand of soap that I used.
“Should’ve realized the moment I arrived and there was sensitive skin soap everywhere that there was more to this than I realized,” I murmured almost to myself.
His soft chuckle echoed off the tile walls, then he cleared his throat.
“I tried to escape when I was about four weeks post op for my lung transplant,” he said.
I stopped him. “You’re on anti-rejection medications, right?”
He looked at me.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Though, it was hard to explain why I needed them to my doctor. I told him that I had a lung transplant in a foreign country.”
I shook my head.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I never thought about that. Keep going. I’ll try not to interrupt this time.”
His fingers were doing wonderful things to my head as he worked the shampoo through my thick locks.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear you say you wanted to cut this, either,” he growled. “I’d be devastated. I know you cut it all off after I died, but no more of that.”
I smacked his chest and he took the hint.
“My burns were still pretty bad, and I could hardly move without pain exploding through every nerve ending.”
My eyes opened as worry filled them.
Before I could say anything, though, he maneuvered my head by tugging on my hair, and forced me to rinse.
“When I tried to escape,” he started, causing me to gasp in horror. “Exactly. They caught me before I could even step foot out the door. But I was delirious and not thinking straight. All I could think about was you and getting back to you before you got too scared.”
This man…always thinking about everyone but himself.
Leaning forward, I placed my wet face against his chest, and urged him to continue by squeezing his waist lightly with my arms.
“They sliced part of my healthy skin off with a butcher knife to let me know how serious they were about me behaving,” he muttered.
Bile rose in my throat.
“I didn’t try to escape again for another six weeks. And when I got caught, again, they sliced the same piece of healing tissue off.”
I didn’t want to hear anymore.
His parents, wherever they were, better enjoy their last few days of freedom. Because, if I ever got a hold of them, I was going to do everything in my power to make them hurt as much as they hurt Tunnel.
Before I could say anything else, though, Ghost started in on the conditioner as I reached for the soap.
I ran it down over his chest and abs, taking extra special care of the parts that still looked angry, despite having healing scar tissue there. I wanted to take away all of his hurts, and all of his pain, but I knew even if I could do that, Tunnel wouldn’t let me.
As he worked his fingers through my wet tresses, I realized that I’d also missed this.
I’d forgotten how much I liked him playing with my hair, even if all he was doing was working his fingers through the long tresses and loosening my curls.
My hand went lower, purposefully avoiding the appendage that I could feel against my lower belly, and I rubbed the soap into a lather around said appendage.