Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 103918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103918 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Visually impaired… Yeah, right. You're fucking blind, Lex.
"How are you feeling?" The question was standard and safe, but I wasn't interested in either of those things. I wasn't interested in anything other than getting away from the strange man who now knew something about me that my own family didn't. Well, most of my family.
"Where am I?" I asked.
"My place."
I didn't mean to be an asshole, I really didn't. But when I was raw and couldn't follow my first instinct to flee, I had a tendency to try and get the person I was with to be the one to walk away. Every relationship I'd had with a man since I'd been in my early twenties had been that way. And every single guy had walked.
Every. Single. One.
Okay, so that wasn’t quite true. There had been one guy who hadn’t walked away, though I wished he had.
"And your place is?" I prodded.
"A few miles from the cabins you're renting," the man responded. I heard the emphasis on the word cabins, but I ignored it. "I'm Gideon, by the way," he added.
Gideon.
I automatically found myself wondering if he looked like a Gideon. The polite thing to do would've been to introduce myself or at least thank him for what he’d done. But instead I asked, "What am I doing here?"
I knew my rudeness had hit its mark when Gideon’s next words came out clipped. "I brought you here so I could keep an eye on you. The cabin wasn't exactly a good place to recover from your close call."
The reminder of something I already knew only served to irritate me further. "I'm ready to return to the cabin," I said as I eased the dog, Brewer, off my lap and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My head spun as soon as I did it, but I pushed through the feeling of being off balance and tried to stand.
That was when I realized I didn't have any pants on.
What the—
"Not just an asshole but a stubborn one too," Gideon muttered.
For some reason, his comment stung, even though it was exactly the perception of me I wanted him to have. It would help me to keep him at arm’s length. "Where are they?" I asked as I ran a hand across my chest. The material was way too soft and thick to be the dress shirt I'd been wearing.
I was greeted with nothing but silence. It was all I could do not to call out and ask him if he was still there. But I wouldn't show him that kind of weakness. He'd already seen way too much of that. If I'd learned anything from my brothers when we'd been kids growing up in the foster care system, it was to never show your enemies any weakness.
No, Gideon might not have been an enemy in the traditional sense, but I didn't know the man, just as I didn't know what his motive was for helping me. Until I figured that out, he was, in fact, my enemy.
"They're in the dryer."
I didn't miss the anger in his voice. I hated the sliver of longing that went through me when I remembered how gentle his voice had been when he'd been urging me to drink the orange juice. "Would you mind getting them for me?"
"Yeah, I would," Gideon responded. I heard what sounded like wood scraping against the floor and I wondered if he was sitting down. The room went absolutely silent, which I abhorred. There was no way I could tell where Gideon was or if he was still even in the room. That fact made me feel vulnerable and helpless. I tried looking around the room to see if I could make out his shape, but there were too many variations of light and dark to make out much of anything. Add in the blind spots I had in each eye and it was impossible to pick out any distinct shape. My breathing began to tick up the longer the room was quiet. The only sound I could make out was the light breathing of the dog lying next to me on the bed. I took a gamble that Gideon had left.
My legs felt shaky as I stood. They also felt cold. At least I still had my underwear on. The sweatshirt I was wearing brushed against my thighs. Since it wasn't my shirt, I had to assume it was Gideon's, which meant that the man was at least a few inches taller than me. He was also more heavily built if the roomy fabric was anything to go by. I wasn't keen on walking around in my underwear, but I was even less keen on being stuck in a place with a complete stranger. I put my hands up in front of me and began taking baby steps. My hope was to find a wall which I could then follow to the door. I had no clue what I would do after that, but if I was lucky, I could figure out a way to get my clothes back. That, at least, would maybe put me on a more even playing field with the mysterious man.