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)
He pulled out the two baggies.
It wasn’t much.
But it was enough to have Dakota whimpering and Ezra wheezing, “Fuck, Ryder,” under his breath.
It was bad enough there was an asshole with a smashed face unconscious off to his side, and in the distance, the shout of another siren echoed through the air.
A minute later, an ambulance and another sheriff’s patrol pulled into the lot.
Ryder was dragged onto his feet and turned, and his gaze tangled with Dakota’s.
Cinnamon eyes were wide and full of fear. Terror and disbelief. Shock rolled through her body. The girl shaking so hard you’d think she’d been rescued out of a frozen lake.
A paramedic wrapped a blanket around her while the others tended to the fucker who was currently moaning on the opposite side of the lot.
Ezra was the one who guided Ryder to the back of the SUV and forced him into the backseat. “What the fuck were you thinking, Ryder?” Remorse leached into his tone, and he kept his voice low so only Ryder could hear. “You know I can’t cover for this.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.” He would never get him involved in his mess. His attention skated to where Dakota numbly nodded at whatever the paramedic was saying.
His chest pulled tight.
Heavy with that feeling.
And for the first time, he recognized what it really meant.
“Even if it means you just landed your ass behind bars?” Ezra pressed.
“She’s worth it.”
Dakota - Nineteen Years Old
Dakota slipped from her house under the cover of night. She clutched the plastic container to her chest as she quietly edged down the steps. She kept low as she crept along the side of the house, before she increased her pace when she hit the once worn path that had now become overgrown.
Darkness hung low, strewn with stars that speckled the sky.
She trudged through the high grasses, and she slowed when she came to the edge of the woods. It was quiet save for the babbling of the stream and the drone of the bugs that hummed from the trees.
Her heart crashed against her ribs when she saw the shape of the silhouette sitting on their favorite branch.
Black hair waved in the slight breeze that whispered through, and she gathered her nerves and weaved farther down the path.
How she knew he would be there, she didn’t know.
It’d been years.
Years since he’d met her there, but she’d been unable to fall asleep, her body alive with an awareness that had kept her tossing in bed.
A lure that had pulled at her.
Tugged at that place that had always been reserved for him.
She ducked under the low-hanging branch, and he didn’t flinch or acknowledge her presence as she began to climb.
She felt his acknowledgement, though.
Felt the shiver that crackled through the air and caressed her flesh like a forbidden embrace.
The branch swayed a little as she settled down in the deep notch that made for the perfect seat, and she stared out at the same nothingness as Ryder did.
That same awareness hummed between them. A safety she had sought for so long, though now, it was riddled with danger and velocity.
“I brought you something.” She mumbled it into the dense stillness that echoed around them, and she popped off the lid.
Ryder choked a disbelieving sound, though there was the softest tug at the corner of his lips. “Of course, you did.”
Inside were chocolate brownies with a thick chocolate bar melted in the middle.
Ryder reached in and took one. He groaned as he took a bite.
Dakota couldn’t do anything but watch him chew. Eyes tracing the rough contours of his jaw, the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed.
How powerful and broken he looked.
He ate another and she turned and forced herself to look ahead while they floated in the unsettled silence.
How much time had passed while they sat like that, she didn’t know, the two of them drifting on the night, like they were suspended on a cloud, lifted above all the pain and circumstances and questions littered below them while Ryder ate half the brownies in the container like he was never going to get the chance to taste one again.
Except Ryder wasn’t removed from the torment, and his grumbly, low voice cut into their solitude. “I’m not sorry, Dakota.”
Her attention remained focused ahead while she felt the weight of his gaze burning into the side of her face. “I’m not sorry for what I did last night.”
She finally gathered the courage to look at him.
And it was like she was looking at midnight.
Falling into it.
Getting lost in it.
A storm raged through his expression, and he scraped the back of his hand over his mouth like he was wiping away a bad taste. “I won’t apologize for hurting him when he hurt you.”
His teeth ground. “I would have ended him if that’s what it required. Gladly.” Then he blew a puff of air through his nose as he admitted, “Hell, it took everything in me not to hunt him down and do exactly that after Cody bailed me out this morning, asshole thinking he could touch you when you didn’t want him to.”