Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 128801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Adding up to a sum I couldn’t endure.
“How did you buy this house?” I stammered.
Guilt struck through his expression. “It was my mother’s house, Dakota. I had to—”
I choked, cutting him off. “My restaurant? The money you lent me? The money you said came from a life insurance policy of your mother’s that you hadn’t known about?”
Shame blasted from his conscience. So palpable that I could feel it coating my fingertips that were wound in his shirt.
No.
“Dakota.” My name was a plea.
A confession. “Please tell me you didn’t give me drug money to start my restaurant, Ryder. Please tell me everything I built isn’t tainted. Please.”
His jaw clenched, and disgrace rushed from his pores.
The betrayal smacked me across the face.
The truth of what he’d done.
Of what he’d made me an unknowing accomplice in.
He tightened his hold. “Dakota.”
I’d thought I could handle it. Anything he was holding. But how could he ask me to hold this?
Sickness churned in my guts. “Let go of me.”
“Dakota, please.”
“Let go!” I screamed it, and he dropped his hands.
I stumbled back, hugging my middle. Nausea spun, and the burn of bile lifted in my throat.
Tears coated my face. “How could you? How could you?”
My back hit the door, and the fear and disbelief broke, sending a shockwave of horror through my being.
It crashed through my spirit and annihilated my heart. A frenzy lit, and I turned and ran from the bathroom and into the bedroom where my things were, even though I hadn’t slept in there in almost a week. I grabbed a duffel bag and started to shove whatever I could into it.
I felt him emerge in the doorway behind me. “Dakota.”
“Don’t. Stay right there. Don’t come near me.” I barely gasped out the words, my sight so bleary I couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
The only thing I could feel was the betrayal.
The agony.
It was too much. Too much of him to ask of me.
I slipped my feet into flats, and I pushed out around him and raced into Kayden’s room. I didn’t slow. I went directly to his crib and scooped him out of it, praying he’d remain asleep.
Ryder was right there. “Dakota, please, listen to me.”
“I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say, Ryder.” I elbowed out around him, my flats clacking on the floor as I rushed back down the hall and hit the stairs. I hugged Kayden to my chest as I took the stairs as fast as I could. I grabbed my purse from the entry table before I whipped out the door, never slowing as I ran across the porch and down the pathway.
Ryder followed, gritting his teeth against the pain.
His presence big.
Profound.
Horrible.
Perfect.
My love.
My demise.
Revulsion slammed with it all. My restaurant. What I’d built. And it’d been built on this.
And Ryder…how could he remain involved in something so horrible? How could he? Did I know him at all?
Because he felt like a stranger right then. Someone I couldn’t recognize. All while that familiarity tugged through the connection.
I fumbled to get my keys so I could unlock the doors, barely able to get my trembling hands to cooperate as I buckled Kayden.
Kayden who murmured, “Mommy,” in his disrupted sleep.
“It’s okay, sweet boy. It’s okay.”
The whole time Ryder kept begging me from behind, “Dakota, please don’t do this. Come inside. I need to know you’re safe.”
I choked over an incredulous laugh as I shut Kayden’s door and scrambled to mine. “Yeah, well I don’t feel safe here.”
Jumping into the driver’s seat, I slammed the door and locked it, gasping as I pushed the button to start the engine. Ryder pressed his palms to the window. “Dakota! Please!”
I threw the car into reverse and flew backward down his drive. I rammed on the brakes when I hit the road.
The man stood in the spray of the headlights staring at me.
Broken.
Grieved.
Midnight.
Darkness I’d allowed to cover me. To take me whole. Possess me.
I put the car in drive, refusing the lure that called me back as I gunned it and flew down the street. I swiped at the tears that kept streaming from my eyes as I made it to the stop sign, and I carefully eased out onto Manchester, trying to keep from throwing up as I passed by Time River Market & Café.
I couldn’t go there.
Couldn’t go home.
Couldn’t go to my mother’s.
So I went to the one place where someone would truly understand. Driving under the blanket of stars thirty miles outside of town on the desolate two-lane road.
I slowed when I got to the turn-off to Hutchins Ranch, and I took the dirt road over the pastures that led to the main area of the property.
My lights cut through the darkness, brightening against the front of the mansion where I came to a stop in the circular drive.