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)
I’d already looked at what was inside the bag. I’d inspected each of the butts, understood that she’d collected and kept them from what I’d smoked, the bullet. This was the bullet her sister shot me with. The one she dug from my skin.
And The Devil.
Kept with things that were mine. It boasted what she thought of me.
That I was evil.
And she wasn’t wrong.
Piper
It didn’t bother me like it should’ve when he revealed he’d gone through my things. That he didn’t think it was wrong because he considered me his. And that I had no privacy with him.
Things that should have inherently unsettled and angered me about him and warned of the dynamics of a relationship that was already doomed.
Yet like any and all other behavior that should’ve and would’ve served as a red flag with anyone else, it only served to wrap me tighter in a feeling of safety.
“The Devil is a misunderstood card,” I told him, taking the card and looking at the illustration. My gaze went upward to where Knox was watching me with an iron jaw.
“It signifies feelings of obsession,” I whispered. “Also entrapment.” My fingers trailed along the edges of the card. “In the entire deck, The Devil is one of the few cards with two people on it.” My fingers ran along the figures on the card. “I believe it means those people are energetically linked. For better or for worse. It’s up to us. And if you want to get astrological, which I’m sure you’re going to turn your nose up at, The Devil is connected to Capricorn. Which I’m betting you are.”
Knox’s face remained impassive, neither agreeing nor denying. He probably didn’t even know his sign.
I’d ask for his birthday at a later date.
“Capricorns are perfectionists. Can be cold. Can give off a … daddy energy, for lack of a better term.”
My cheeks warmed as I said that, not entirely intending on it. But I wasn’t wrong, was I? Knox was ultimate daddy energy.
Knox’s brow lifted just a hair, and I swore I saw his mouth twitch.
“I may have daddy issues,” I blurted. “A lot of them. But I don’t mean it in that sense. I mean it in the sexual sense. I’m just going to stop talking now.”
I hadn’t intended on rambling for so long about a subject that many people rolled their eyes at and dismissed. Someone so rooted in logic and control didn’t likely take stock in Tarot.
“It’s silly—"
“Nothing about you is silly.” Knox circled my hand holding the card. “Nothing you hold dear. Nothing important to you.” He looked down at the card then back at me. “It’s you, Petal. You can’t just see a Devil card. You make it more.” He paused, dragging his thumb along the thick veins in my wrist. “You make me more. And that scares the fuck out of me.”
It was as if I’d been punched in the stomach, all the air bursting from me. I knew what an admission that was for him.
Knox.
Afraid. Of me.
“You’re not going to break my heart, are you?” I asked, fear of my own clawing up my throat with barbed talons.
“I want to say no.” Knox regarded me with a calculating gaze. “But I can’t. My nature is to destroy things. Bury things. I’ll promise you that if I do break anything in you, I’ll be the one to put it back together.”
I sucked in a deep, ragged breath.
No promises.
He could hurt me. More completely than any man would or could.
But I’d risk the prospect of being broken, ruined by him, for the complicated joy of being his. Of him being mine.
Knox and I were a couple.
The ground shifted from underneath me. The air changed around me. My heart seemed to beat at a different rhythm.
Knox was a force of nature. He had the power to destroy. That much was evident right off the bat. Just glancing at him on the street, you’d get the inkling he had that power.
But he also had the ability to make things grow.
Make me grow.
His presence had always been intense, but the weight of it had become something else. Every inch of my skin felt Knox’s attention. He watched me in a different way. As if a hole in the ground might open at any moment to swallow me up.
His hands were almost always on me. Possessive to the point of pain. Not just bordering on toxic.
I knew his attention might’ve stifled and suffocated anyone else, but not me. I liked it.
We were in a bubble. Stretched to its limit. I could feel it. The tautness of every moment, balancing on a sword, wondering what would puncture it. I could feel the tick of the metaphorical clock that was counting down our time there.
A whole other world was thriving below us. One that included Stone, my sister—who I worried about constantly and who I considered myself having betrayed for being so happy.