Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 227(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45414 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 227(@200wpm)___ 182(@250wpm)___ 151(@300wpm)
“Are you sure you want to hear this now?” he asks.
I nod and then shake my head. Stepping back, I throw my hands up. “Yes, no, I don’t know. All I know is I won’t be able to think about anything else unless you tell me what the heck is going on. So yes, yes, I need to know.”
He sighs, running a hand through his steely hair. “Since leaving the camp – since becoming obsessed with you – Jerry has become a junior member of the Irish mob. And when I say junior, I mean junior.”
“But it means he still has connections, right? It means that when he comes back for me, he might not be alone?”
Zack nods and something seizes in my chest. I walk over to the bed and drop down, squeezing onto my legs as though that will relieve some of the tension moving through me. The fear of Jerry popping back into my life is bad enough, but the fear of Jerry backed by a bunch of mobsters sends panic screeching through me.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” Zack growls, sitting next to me on the bed and moving to put his arm around me.
I find myself flinching away even when I know it’s not his fault, even when I know he’s just trying to help me.
But the anger moving through me doesn’t want to hear any of that. It bounces around crazily in my head until it can settle on a target, and then finally it forces words out of my mouth I don’t even mean.
“How? How are you going to help me, Zack? I don’t know anything about you. I’ve told you all about myself. I’ve told you about my parents and the accident and what Jerry did to me and…”
He leans back, his blue eyes staring coldly. “Zoey, I’ve told you about my parents too.”
“What about your time in the SEALs?” I yell, leaping to my feet.
Zack stands and moves over to me, his hands raised.
A distant part of me screams at me to stop, tells me I’m making a fool of myself and I need to calm down. But that part is buried beneath layers of fear and anger and pain, pain that’s years to fester and boil through me.
Jerry, fucking Jerry.
And now he has backup.
“What about my time in the SEALs?” he growls, narrowing his eyes at me like I’ve gone crazy.
Maybe I have. I can’t stop thinking about Jerry crashing through the door with a dozen armed goons at his back, all of them leering, their expressions filled with all the vicious things they’re going to do to me.
I hate the way the anxiety and pain of the moment blares through me, moving like a force of nature until I can’t pick my way through the mess of my thoughts to find anything coherent, to find anything that makes sense.
All I can think about is Jerry and the way he danced around that studio, taunting me with that sick grin on his face…
And now he’s going to charge into my life and ruin it when the best thing that’s ever happened to me is only just beginning.
I don’t want to be weak, but I can’t stop the tears from springing to my eyes and sliding down my cheeks, making hot and vicious lines down my face. I drop onto the bed and bury my face in my hands.
“I’m sorry,” I moan through the heartache. “I don’t know what came over me. Zack… please, I’m so sorry.”
Chapter Sixteen
Zack
I want to find Jerry and twist his scrawny neck off his steroid-bloated body, twist and twist until he can’t fight anymore until there’s nothing left in him to give. The thought of him causing my woman so much heartache sends me into a near-feral frenzy, but somehow I contain it as I sit down on the bed next to Zoey and wrap my arm around her.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, pulling her into an embrace. “You don’t have to be sorry. It’s a lot to take on.”
She lets out a croaking sob and turns to me, burying her face in my chest and making a heart-rending noise of pure sadness, a noise that awakes the predator in me and makes me want – need – to go hunting for this Jerry motherfucker.
But I remember what she said about not wanting me to go to prison. I’m not sure I’d be able to restrain myself if I ever came face to face with this bastard.
“I’m not angry with you,” she says, her voice muffled against my chest. “I don’t know why I exploded like that.”
“Hush.”
I run my fingers through her hair, finding it far easier to comfort her this time than I did before. It turns out that when it comes to my woman, I’m a quick learner.