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)
“Are you trying to find a silver lining in all of this?” I asked, agape. I hadn’t put much thought into what outside parties might make of … this situation, considering I’d been actively trying not to think of it that way. But deep down I’d been ashamed, scared of my wrongness, depravity, still uncomfortable with my shadows. And yet my sunshine sister didn’t so much as blanch at them.
She smiled. “You always have to find the silver lining, Sis.” She reached out to squeeze my hand. “I like this for you.”
Shock tugged at my brows. “You like me falling for the mafioso who was supposed to break me?”
Her eyes glimmered with tears. “If he’s the only one who can protect you from all the darkness you’ve bundled up and hidden inside of yourself.”
The words hit me like bricks.
“I know you’ve spent your life absorbing every blow that might’ve hit me, taking all the ugliness on. You’ve gone through so much, Piper, and you’ve refused to let me shoulder the burden because you don’t think I’m strong enough.” She nodded to the cabin. “I’m thinking me shooting him, and him barely even flinching proves he’s strong enough. And although I may not like him—on account of the near strangling and the ease of violence he seeps out from his very pores—I love that he did it in protection of my sister.”
My vision blurred from tears of my own, ones I choked down. “You don’t think he’s like…?”
“Daddy?” she finished for me. She shook her head. “Daddy hurt us because he took pleasure in it. Because he didn’t know how to love. He was a weak and broken man.” She glanced to the cabin again, suddenly seeming too wise for her years. “He may be broken, but he’s not weak.”
I considered her words. Knox hadn’t shown me violence, not true violence until he laid his hands on Daisy. That was not something to dismiss. It was a giant red flag, waving in my face.
Then there was my father. Beating my mother without remorse as she begged. While his small daughters watched in horror, crying and screaming.
A man capable of violence against women was my line. Always. How had that line become blurry? How could I know that Knox wouldn’t do that to me, or worse, to Daisy?
My heart told me he wouldn’t. Never. But my heart couldn’t be trusted. No one’s could. My mother’s heart believed my father when he begged, when he promised it was the last time, when he poured out all the vodka.
I picked at a hangnail.
“Will you promise to be safe?” I asked my sister instead of addressing the enormity of the situation. “Keep your head down. Pretend with Joey a little longer.”
Her eyes darted to the side, and her posture slumped, as if curling into herself would hide her secrets. “I’m not pretending. Not entirely.”
I nodded. “I know.”
How was it that both of us, different in so many ways, found ourselves in similar situations, tangled up with dangerously wrong men and unable to wrangle ourselves from their clutches? We were our mother’s daughters... That chilled me. You couldn’t escape your genetics. And apparently, genetics had doomed us to love wicked men.
The silence of the forest took over until a light giggle penetrated it. Daisy.
Who else would it be?
She giggled some more, genuine and light. “I really did it this time, didn’t I?”
It was then that I understood her light giggle was covering something heavy, dark and thorny. Her guilt.
I cupped her cheek. “This is not your fault, Daisy. We don’t lay the sins of men at our feet. We leave them where they belong.” I infused my tone with iron.
She pursed her lips, nodding.
“We’ll get through this,” I promised. Even though it wasn’t a promise I could make.
Daisy would get through this. That was nonnegotiable. Me on the other hand? That remained to be seen.
But I’d die for my sister.
In a heartbeat.
Thirteen
Piper
“How will we know that she made it back safely?” I asked Knox, staring at the woods, long silent from the crunch of the car tires.
“We won’t,” Knox replied in a level tone, not bothering to try to placate me.
I stared up at him. He cut such a harsh figure against the green of the woods. “Can’t you call someone to check?”
He hadn’t been looking down the empty road, his gaze was on me. I sensed it had been for a very long time. His mask was back in place.
“Me calling someone and ‘checking’ not only risks a trace on a call but also could blow any kind of cover that Daisy had. The call would put her in even more danger than she already put herself in. And that’s saying something.”
His jaw was rock hard, his posture tight, words clipped. It was not hard to deduce that he was pissed. At Daisy.