Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115468 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 577(@200wpm)___ 462(@250wpm)___ 385(@300wpm)
I felt Romeo’s considering gaze on me but didn’t look his way. “What are you looking for, Rory?”
What are you looking for? I glanced over at him. I knew he meant it as a general question. He was asking why I was always searching and never finding. He wanted to know where that pull I talked about might be coming from. He was suggesting that I was never satisfied because I was blindly reaching for something I couldn’t define. And he was right. “I don’t know,” I admitted. Myself, maybe.
Romeo turned and raised his chin as he gazed out at the sky, the stars milky and faded in the midst of the streetlamps. He let out a sigh. “Well, can we agree, at least, that it’s probably not in Claremont Landing?”
I let out a quiet laugh. “It doesn’t seem to be, does it?”
He flashed me that staggeringly beautiful smile of his. “No, it doesn’t seem to be.”
“Come on,” I said, pushing off the wooden rail and yanking on his shirt. “Your groupies are likely suffering from withdrawal as we speak. Last time they rushed me on this dock, I got a splinter in my ass.”
He laughed. “Storyteller,” he said, turning and walking with me across the street.
“Is that a nice way to call me a liar?”
He winked, and I grinned before I filled my lungs with a deep inhale of the briny air I’d been breathing all my life and then pulled open the door to the bar. My customers would all be banging their tables for another round soon enough, and at least that was one call that I knew how to answer.
CHAPTER THREE
Gage
The guys’ weekend was already a complete catastrophe. The four of us, completely drenched, stood in front of a sign that read: Mud Gulch, Population three thousand, seven hundred.
It’d taken us twenty miserable minutes to walk here after Trent’s car had blown a tire on the dark back road we’d found ourselves on after taking the wrong exit.
No spare.
No cell service.
Not a single car had driven by since we’d stopped.
In unison, our heads pivoted in the direction of the arrow pointing toward the coast. “I’ve heard of Mud Gulch,” I said. “It’s a fishing town.”
“I just hope someone there has a phone,” Trent said.
“What fishing town doesn’t have a phone?” Grant asked. “Of course they’ll have a phone. They’re situated on the water, not under it.”
God, despite his genius-level IQ, Trent could be a dope. A dope who had used his spare tire weeks ago and hadn’t replaced it before a road trip.
I heaved a deep breath and turned toward the road that disappeared through thick trees. At least the rain had let up slightly. Not that it mattered—all four of us were soaked to the bone.
It took us about forty-five minutes to make it down the road that wound through the trees, finally emerging on a cliff that overlooked the shore. There was a lighthouse on a small island to our right, the top of which disappeared into the fog, its pale light cutting through the mist and guiding the fishing boats home. There were residences scattered here and there, but from where we stood, the only lights of public establishments that I could see were far down by the docks.
“That’s a ways down,” Aidan noted, obviously looking in the same direction as me.
I stretched my stiff neck from side to side. I wasn’t necessarily up for more walking in the rain either, even if the lights down below likely had food. I was starving. “Let’s save ourselves the walk. There are some houses over there.” I pointed at a road to my left where porch lights glowed. “We can ask to use their phone and call a—”
My feet were sucked down and the ground fell out from under me.
I clawed at empty air, flying downward in a torrent of slick mud, grabbing at roots that slipped through my fingers, completely at the mercy of nature.
“Shittttt,” someone yelled from behind me—we were all being flung down the hill in a massive mudslide.
We were all going to die. This is it.
I was turned sideways and backward, bumping over rocks and plants and who knew what else as I grunted and swore and finally landed hard on my ass in a puddle that engulfed me up to my shoulders. “Holy fuck!” I barely had time to register the fact that three grown men were hurtling my way but moved just in the nick of time not to be buried beneath them before they hit the water in three loud smacks.
We sat there, stupefied, breathing hard, looking around in shock at what had just happened and the fact that we were still living. “Is everyone okay?” I asked, testing my own extremities to make sure nothing had broken. They all mumbled in the affirmative and we pulled ourselves up and stepped out of the deep ass puddle onto the road. Directly in front of us was a sign that pointed to the docks where the lights were that we’d seen from above.