Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
I looked down at my pantless state, and then frowned, reaching for the afghan that was on the couch.
Before I could get it up, Evander was there, shrugging off his shirt and then pulling it on over my tank top, smoothing it until it covered me from mid-forearm to right above my knees.
“What are you doing awake?” he snapped.
I blinked.
Evander snapping—at me or even just in general—was foreign to me. I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually seen him angry.
But this man, the one standing in front of me right this very moment, wasn’t the same man I was used to. This man was angry, vindictive. This man was unforgiving.
“I woke up, and you weren’t there,” I whispered, tears automatically forming in my eyes.
And just like that, all the anger and annoyance drained out of Evander. In its place was a man who looked practically defeated.
“Head back to the bedroom. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I would’ve argued. Really, I would have. But the look on Evander’s face brooked no room for argument from me. At all.
I could tell that with just one glance in his eyes.
“Okay,” I finally murmured. “I’ll just go do that.”
Then I started backing away, watching as Evander watched me, until I hit the mouth of the hall.
The moment that I was out of sight, I turned and walked back down the hallway.
The murmuring didn’t start up again, and that was either due to them going outside so I couldn’t accidentally overhear their conversation again or the departure of Mr. Mysterious, the all-black-wearing, midnight visitor.
But while I waited, I quickly realized that something was very, very wrong here.
Evander was worried.
And I only had to listen to him twenty minutes later as he explained why, exactly, he should be.
Once he was through explaining everything to me, I was worried, too.
***
Evander
I saluted my former squad member—the man who had my back when Gertie wasn’t there to do it—and closed the door quietly.
I shouldn’t have bothered.
I knew that she was still awake, and likely on the edge of her seat waiting for her answers.
Answers that I didn’t want to give—not yet at least, and, if I had my choice, not ever.
But I was a man who knew when his woman wasn’t going to be appeased by some bullshit explanation.
I knew that she wouldn’t stop until she got the answers she sought.
So I chose to share the details with her on the man who we’d gotten the repossession notice for earlier at the club.
I wasn’t surprised to find her wide awake and waiting for me as I walked through her bedroom door.
I also wasn’t surprised to see Gertie in the bed with her, legs sprawled out and his face in her lap. Kennedy’s dog was also in the bed with them, stretched out by her feet and chewing on a piece of rawhide.
If anything good had come from all of the shit that happened and that was now my life, it was what I had in this woman.
Would I have met her had I not gone to prison? Would I be standing here, staring at her in this bed as she was petting my dog, if the nightmare I went through had not happened?
No, I didn’t think so.
And it was tearing me apart inside.
On one hand, I wanted vengeance. I wanted Balthazar and the chief of police to fucking suffer. I wanted them to die, and I wanted them to die slowly. Painfully. Agonizingly.
I wanted them to feel it, every single second, as they died.
I wanted them to realize that I was not someone they could shit on and not give a second thought to. I was an opponent who was going to just roll over and let them play their stupid fucking games.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she whispered.
Instead of sitting on the bed, I took the chair that she had piles of clothes sitting in, shoving them backwards so I was on the edge of the seat.
“Do you know who that was?” I asked.
She had to have seen him around town.
This wasn’t a big town. Plus, I’d mentioned him while we were at the meeting today, and the types of places that he liked to frequent.
She nodded.
“Rafe?”
I confirmed with a nod of my head. “The one and only.”
“Okay,” she hesitated. “Then why was he here in the middle of the night, and what was he refusing to help you with?”
I paused, considering my words very carefully.
“The job that Travis gave us before he left today. I was asking Rafe for the help and offering him the job if he wanted it.”
“And did he take it?”
I shrugged. “Yes, for a while, anyway.”
“Then what was the problem?”
“He didn’t want to help me catch Balthazar.” I refused to keep her in the dark about what I was going to do in the next week. She deserved to know that I might fuck this up—just like Rafe said. “He wasn’t refusing to help do the job as much as he was refusing to help me do the job.”