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)
What it meant.
I held my breath as I opened the door and stepped out into the cover of night. I’d done it so many times before, slinked around the edge of the house and quietly raced down the path to the edge of the woods to the tree beneath the star-speckled skies.
Drawn because I’d always been able to feel when he was there.
Intrinsically pulled his direction in his time of need.
Meet me in the place of the forgotten.
It was overgrown now, unused, but I could never forget the path.
One that had always led me to the man who’d be waiting on our branch.
Tonight, his black hair rustled with the breeze, his energy so thick that I always felt it as the rumbling of the ground.
It trembled then, this foundation that hadn’t had the time to set.
Held, I stayed there for a long moment. My pulse thundered so wildly that it echoed through the cool air, and my breaths were shallow and hard.
Finally, he shifted to look at me from over his shoulder.
Darkness rained around him.
Midnight.
His pain was so stark and intense that it was difficult to walk through the surge of it.
But I did because I finally could see what that mixture had become on the other side.
And it was so much sweeter than I ever could have imagined.
I approached, moving through the night until I was climbing onto the branch so I could sit at his side. In the same place where we’d fallen in love, even though it had taken so long to truly understand what that really meant.
Our obstacles had been so great, they should have been insurmountable.
But this love was greater than that.
We both faced forward, staring into the darkness that weaved through the woods.
The connection hummed between us.
Wrapped and soothed.
It’d been a week since everything had happened, but I’d felt him out here, every night.
I had known he was waiting. Waiting on me to make the choice.
“The number of times I’ve sat on this branch,” he finally mumbled in that low, deep voice.
It covered me in chills.
“For all those years after I’d ruined my chance with you.”
Self-deprecating laughter rolled from him, and he rubbed his hands together like he could squash the tension that strained between us. “You weren’t even living here at your mom’s any longer, and I’d still come, just because I ached to be close to you. So I could get lost in the memories of you.”
Pain lancinated through my chest. “And I couldn’t come because it hurt too bad to sit here in the amount of love I felt for you and know you didn’t love me back.”
Regret left him on a slow sigh. “I don’t know how I even forced out that lie, but hurting you that way? Seeing the evidence of what I inflicted on your face? It was the moment that fully broke me. The moment I marked on myself as a reminder of what I had lost. Standing at my door, having to break both of our hearts.”
He fisted a hand over the spot where the broken clock sat on his chest.
Its fractured hands unable to move.
I’d never asked him what the broken clock on his chest had meant, sure I’d already known its meaning.
Now, my spirit toiled with its truth.
Those hands were an affliction.
They were his chains.
They were his lost hopes.
They were me.
Grief clouded his voice. “He killed Amelia, Dakota. Killed her as a warning of what would happen to those I loved if I tried to break away from him. And I knew I couldn’t have you a part of that life. So I tried to stay away from you. Tried to put as much distance between us as I could.”
I’d known about Amelia. Ezra had told me when he’d come to check on me the next day after I’d been released from the hospital. He’d given me the barest insight, more ingredients to process into the convoluted mix.
It was sickening, knowing what that monster had done to her. What he had done to Ryder. What he had done to us.
His chuckle was hollow. “Seems I’m not so good about staying away from you, though, am I? And when I’d heard you’d had a son, I came crawling back, thinking if I could just have that small part of you, I would be satisfied. Thought it wouldn’t hurt so fucking bad if I at least had you as a small part of my life. But it was never enough, was it? I wanted more and more of you when I never should have asked for it.”
His hand shook as he roughed it over the top of his head. “I’m fucking sorry, Dakota. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for lying to you. I’m sorry for betraying your trust. For giving you that money without you knowing where it came from. For dragging you into something that wasn’t yours.”