Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
But never with me.
I hate this thought. I hate the way it interrupts all that feels right and good, and I tear my mouth from his, still clinging to him, unable to make myself let go. “What happened to not touching me, to being afraid we’ll lifebond without a blood exchange?”
“The knowledge that in one instant you could be taken from me forever.” Emotion cuts deep in his tone.
It’s what I want to hear from him, so why is there an empty, gnawing feeling inside me? Confused, so confused. My hands settle on the hard wall of his chest, self-preservation kicking in. “But you’re going to leave me again?” Then stronger. “No.” I shake my head. “No, don’t answer. I don’t want to know the answer.”
“Addie,” he breathes heavily. “I want you. I want you so damn much. But there are things about me you don’t know.”
Those words are blades cutting right to my soul. “So, you’ll just leave me again so I never find out?”
“Things…I don’t want you to know.”
“I can’t do this, Creed. I can’t. So, I’m to be dumped in Sunrise City, and you just leave again?”
“This isn’t the time for this conversation. Julian doesn’t even need a Tracker to find you here. We need to leave.”
“Are you not even going to ask if I got the hard drive?”
“I know you got the hard drive. You did good, baby.”
The endearment is another blade, this one stabbing me in the heart. It’s all fake. It’s all temporary. And truly, I’m so angry, I’m about to explode. I want to shout at him to stop playing tug of war with my emotions.
I’m about to say as much when a sudden rush of nausea seems to merge with my emotions in a punishing collision, and my knees wobble with the impact.
Instantly, Creed is there, his arm wrapping around my waist. “Addie.” He scoops me up, carries me to my oversized, comfy blue couch, and lays me down. He’s on a knee beside me, studying me, his attention probing. “The lifebond illness.”
“Don’t read into it. I’ve been sick, but sometimes sick is just sick.”
The look on his face is shaken, and he pulls me close, pressing his forehead to mine. “Addie—”
My hand presses to his face. “It’s not that. I’m stressed and exhausted.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Addie.”
He never meant to hurt me. He thinks bonding to me is hurting me. I keep forgetting his distance is about self-hate, not me. And that’s kind of selfish of me. “You’re not hurting me, Creed.” I ease back to meet his stare. “You save me over and over. You know that, right?”
“I think it’s the opposite.”
“Maybe we save each other,” I suggest, trailing my fingers over his lips. I love his lips. Love kissing him. So, I do. I press my lips to his and then ease back and slide the hard drive from my pocket.
He arches a brow, and I smile. “I knew if he tried to get it from my person, you’d kill him. I was kind of hoping he’d try. Care to do the honors while I pack?”
He accepts the hard drive from me. “Pack light. We’ll be traveling by motorcycle through Sunrise Canyon. You’ll be able to get anything you need there.”
Fifteen minutes later, with a small bag packed, I’ve changed into jeans and sneakers and returned to the living room to find Creed sitting on my couch with my laptop open. “Any luck?”
“Encrypted,” he says with frustration, shutting the lid on the computer. “We need Jensen’s hacking skills. He’s meeting us on our way out of town to pick up the drive. He’ll have it decoded by the time we get to Sunrise City.”
A moment of trepidation flutters through me at the lack of control that offers me. I know Julian is after Red Dart. I know the Renegades doubt my father, but they won’t be once I prove he was not against them. That hard drive might be the answer to doing that.
Either way, he’s right. We need Jensen. The sooner that data is decoded, the sooner we can all work together.
Chapter Fifteen
Creed
We exit Addie’s condo, and I pull her close, sheltering her from the onslaught of an attack with my body. The need to do so is a reminder that lifebonding will sustain her in many ways and weaken her in others.
She won’t die easily.
But she will die if I die.
The stifling early evening heat wraps around us, the smell of rain touching the air. A distant rumble of thunder promises the trip through the canyon will be a wet one.
Reaching out to the wind for any warnings, I listen to the whispers only I can understand and then order it to seek out trouble.
Glancing at Addie, I incline my head toward the side of the building, to a row of parking meters that face another building and more meters. “I’m over here,” I say, leading her toward the less-than-discreet spot I’d parked the Ford F-150 I’m driving, scanning the perimeter with feigned nonchalance and noting four vacant cars across the street. A fifth car sits empty two spaces in front of the truck.