Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71348 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71348 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I had been dreaming, but then there was a sound. I heard a door close and footsteps. Even in my dream, I had known something was wrong.
I sat up in bed. I could have simply dreamed the sound, but as my eyes opened, the footsteps were still there. Weren’t they? I’d heard something. Was I panicking again for nothing? No. I was sure I’d heard it.
I moved the covers back before grabbing my phone. Then, I heard them again. Footsteps. They were soft, but I was sure I’d heard them. There were a few stairs that creaked, and I knew that sound. Someone was here. This wasn’t me overreacting this time.
I pressed Saxon’s number, then ended the call. He was hours away from me. Possibly even back in Florida, or … had he come back here? Had he decided after meeting his dad in Nashville that he should come back to me? Surely, he would have texted or called, but then he might have worried about waking me up.
My phone said it was after three.
Tiptoeing to the bedroom door, I stepped out to peek over the balcony overlooking the living room and kitchen. I dialed 911 and held my finger over the Call button, waiting before pressing it in case Saxon had returned. I moved closer to the railing and held my breath, for fear of being heard. There was no one down there, but the light over the stove was off, and I had left it on. My eyes swung to the living room, which I could already tell was dark. I’d left the lamp on in there too.
“Put the phone down,” a deep voice said behind me.
A scream tore from my throat, and my phone fell to the ground as I spun around. Huck was standing a few feet away at the top of the stairs. I gasped and covered my mouth to keep from screaming again. My adrenaline was pumping so hard that I felt like I might expire right here.
But it was Huck. I knew him. I had once trusted him. He wasn’t here to kill me. I was almost positive he wasn’t. Maybe he was. Maybe my knowing about Blaise killing my dad and brother had put me on their kill list. Assuming they had one of those. Why hadn’t I thought about that already? Saxon would have warned me, wouldn’t he?
“For fuck’s sake, Maddy, stop backing up. If you fall over that damn railing, then Blaise will put a bullet in me,” he drawled, then held up an unlit cigarette. “Mind if I smoke this?”
I stared at him, but said nothing. Why was he here? If Blaise didn’t want me to fall from the balcony, then he didn’t want me dead. Yet Huck was here, in this cabin, miles away from Ocala, in the middle of the night. I was confused.
Huck shrugged when I didn’t answer and lit the cigarette between his lips and took a long pull from it. “Go back to bed,” he said with a grunt.
“What are you doing?” I asked him instead.
He raised his eyebrows, as if that was a dumb question. It wasn’t. It was a legitimate question.
“Did you honestly think you were up here in the fucking mountains alone, without protection?”
Yes, I had thought that. Clearly. I had hidden in a pantry with a knife for almost an hour today.
“Fuck,” he drawled and took another pull from the cigarette. “You’re a naive one. Go back to bed. I’m just headed to my room.”
Wait, what? His room?
Frowning, I asked, “Your room?”
He pointed his cigarette toward the room to his left. “Yeah.”
I shook my head then. There was no way I was letting him sleep in this house with me. He wasn’t Saxon. I trusted the Houstons—well, as much as I could. They were still in the family, but so far, they hadn’t done anything but help me. They had gone out of their way to get me somewhere to stay. Huck, however, did what Blaise told him to do. He killed for Blaise. Huck was not a good man.
“No, you can’t sleep here.”
He chuckled. “Maddy, honey, I’ve been sleeping here since you arrived. Apparently, you’re a light sleeper when you think you’re alone.”
“You’ve been here the whole time?” I asked, then added, “Did Saxon know?”
He couldn’t have known. Saxon was honest. He wouldn’t have kept that from me.
Huck smirked at me. “Yeah, he knew. We take care of our own. You might be pissed about how things were handled, but that doesn’t change shit.”
My confusion and doubts did an odd thing. They slowly began to churn inside me, and within seconds, they transformed into full-blown anger. Huck was standing there, acting as if my family’s deaths weren’t a big deal and I was overreacting. How dare he?! I had lost people I loved, the only home I had truly ever had.