Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
As these thoughts raced through my mind, I understood how my mother had fallen for my father. Stayed with him. Because she was looking for the latter type of man. All that violent energy… She’d hoped that he’d expend it outward to keep her safe, not inward to keep her tortured, captive.
Despite Knox’s hold on my body, I felt anything but captive. I was freer than I’d ever been in my life.
And on that thought, I fell into a deep sleep.
Epilogue
“It’s your birthday.”
Knox handed me a coffee that he’d taken to making in the espresso machine, the one new addition to the apartment since he’d moved in. That and the easel in the sunroom—the jewel of the apartment. Such a rare find in a city of studio apartments with barely any windows, let alone a whole room of them, bathing in morning sunlight.
We’d created a ritual of sorts. He started the morning by fucking me. Always. Unless I was sick or overly tired or not in the mood, which was incredibly rare. On those occasions, though, he did not sulk or punish me for rejecting him; he didn’t change an iota of his behavior. He respected my boundaries, which I had few of with him. That made him all the more sexy and more emotionally mature than 99 percent of the male population. Respect for boundaries. Hotter than any six pack. Though he had one of those too.
He cooked for me—another thing that he always did. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. That was unless I was in the mood to cook too, which again was rare since he was incredibly good at it, and I liked being taken care of in that way by him. He repeatedly said he was bad and wrong and would destroy me, yet he did small, everyday things that a run-of-the-mill, suburban husband with a ‘normal’ upbringing failed to do to his wife daily.
He nurtured me.
After fucking, food and coffee, I ran.
He’d trail behind me, unseen if he sensed I needed the alone time, other times running with me. We’d had a small argument about whether the shadowing was necessary.
“I ran alone in the woods in the middle of nowhere,” I reminded him that first morning, my body yearning for the crunch of detritus underneath my shoes, the smell of pine and even the scent of the cabin. Old, musty.
Brackets of lines framed his eyes with the deepness of his frown, his mouth pulled into a thin line. “Yes, and the worst you could encounter there was bears,” he replied in a clipped tone. “Which you had spray for. The worst you can encounter here is a man. There’s no spray for that. There’s me for that.”
And that was his argument. Which I couldn’t counter, beyond him being over the top protective and possessive. Which he was. He was obsessed with my safety, nearly ripped the face off any man who looked at me too long. Life in the city was unravelling him a little. He was used to living in the shadows, killing people, only interacting with criminals in the underworld. Now that I’d brought him into the light, into Whole Foods, out to dinners with friends— he was struggling with his new identity.
Not that he’d ever admit to that.
But there were growing pains.
I could see that.
And I was too. Struggling, that was.
I’d slotted back into the life I’d made to fit me so precisely. The apartment, the job that somehow welcomed me back with few questions, and the friends who had a bit more questions about how I’d taken off for a walk across Spain with no warning and came home with a menacing, deadly-attractive, menacing boyfriend who barely said boo to anyone and scowled his way through dinner, twirling my hair between his fingers instead of answering questions.
I found that I was a convincing liar.
I discovered that I had become a new shape that didn’t fit into the life I’d so valued.
The city was too loud. Too crowded. Yet I still loved it. The chaos. The vibrancy. The shine had come off, though. After relishing the freshness of the mountains, the pristine nature of the woods. The quiet.
I felt caught, stretched between two worlds. Though I loved my job, going back to a place where I cared for toddlers was … uncomfortable, given the fact that I was a killer. I’d seen people die. I’d killed someone.
It didn’t quite haunt me the way I thought it would. I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat, shaking off nightmares. No panic attacks, flashbacks. I just felt … colder. Like I’d opened up a gaping canyon in me I was afraid of. Sometimes, in the middle of finger painting, my hands covered in paint, I remembered when it had been blood. Yes, that was difficult but not impossible to handle.