Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Cody pulled back and cupped both hands around the sides of my face. “Fuck that, Hailey. You’re right where you belong. With me.”
“I won’t be responsible for you getting hurt any more than you already have been.”
Cody gave me the slightest shake of his head. “It’s too late for me, darlin’.”
He kept staring down at me, both thumbs brushing my cheeks.
Energy thrummed.
Pulsing and compelling.
That connection writhed in the space.
Demanding to be acknowledged.
“It’s too late,” he repeated. “I’m already gone. Already done for. Already yours.”
“Cody.” His name shuddered off my tongue.
Begging him to stop.
To see reason.
His thumbs swept over the moisture that wouldn’t stop falling, voice rough when he murmured, “I’m in love with you, Hailey. So in love with you that there isn’t a piece of me left that doesn’t belong to you.”
My lips parted on a shattered exhalation.
Cody just held me tighter, his nose dropping close to mine. “I’ve made a million mistakes in my life, but standing here, with you? For you? That’s not one of them. Because when you love someone the way I love you? You don’t bail when things get rough. You stand closer to them in their battles. You pick them up when they fall. You carry them when they can’t run. You love them with all you’ve got because they are the very meaning of time. Because you and Maddie are the reason I’m living it. You are the sun setting and the sun rising. Every minute. Every second. Every fucking beat.”
I swayed beneath the power of his words.
Beneath the power of his touch.
His hand slipped down to the side of my neck, his words harsh and sweet. “You got me, Hailey. You’ve got all of me.”
“Cody.” I rasped over his name.
The emotion I’d been trying to hold back burst free.
Got loose of the sacred place I’d tried to keep it shored.
Where guilt had lived.
But it couldn’t thrive there anymore.
“I love you, Cody. I love you so much, and there is a piece of me that always has. I tried not to, to deny it, to ignore what I always felt, but I don’t think there was a way to stop myself from falling in love with you.”
Playfulness kicked up at the edge of his mouth. “Well, I’m pretty impossible not to love.”
I choked over a soggy laugh, and my chest squeezed as I gazed up at his rough, masculine beauty.
At his battered face and his flawless heart.
“You’re right. It’s impossible. It’s impossible not to love you.”
His expression intensified. “You’re it for me.”
I gulped around the love that rushed. “Good because I won’t let you go.”
Because of it, I knew what I had to do. I was terrified of it, but I couldn’t let Pruitt get away with his cruelty. Couldn’t let him continue spreading his wickedness in the world.
He needed to be stopped.
And it was time we were free.
“Now that we got that cleared up.” Mischief played across Cody’s face, sparks flickering like greed in those gold-flecked eyes, right before he crushed his mouth against mine.
This kiss was searing.
A mark.
A brand.
A claiming.
I wanted it.
I wanted him written all over me.
On every inch of my body and in every recess of my heart.
But I was also brutally aware that he had almost died today.
“We can’t,” I urged against the force of his kiss.
Cody pulled back, still holding onto both sides of my face, mouth cocked in that smirk.
“Oh, but we can.”
FORTY-FIVE
CODY
There was no amount of pain that would keep me from her right then. No agony that would stop me from touching her because the true agony would be not getting to spend this life with her.
I’d thought I was going to lose that today. Thought my past had finally caught up to me, and my time had ended. I’d thought I wasn’t going to get to ever kiss her again. Touch her again.
Hold her until morning the way she liked me to do. The way she’d curl up in my arms and whisper her need for me in her sleep.
I’d thought she’d never get to hear it—that she’d never know just how goddamned much I loved her. How this heart now beat for her. And I’d almost never gotten to hear her say it back.
Confess those words that had washed through me like a cleansing.
Purifying all the wrongs I’d ever committed.
I love you.
I love you.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Concern weaved through her brow, but I could taste the way her need filled the air. Her fingers digging into my shirt. Heat licking in a slow dance between us.
“The only thing that could hurt me right now is not getting to have you, though you might have to be the one who’s doing all the work.” I let the tease play into the words.
Let them wind as seduction.
Hailey nibbled on her upper lip like she was envisioning all the ways she could make that happen.