Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“Let’s run away.”
“Run away?” She stepped back when he stood.
Ian zipped and buttoned his jeans. “Just for another hour or so.”
“I’m listening …” Jersey’s lips twisted to the side.
He snagged two blankets off the velvet bench along the wall adjacent to the bed and slid open the window. “Side of the house, no one’s out here. We slip out and make a run for it.”
Before her brain had a chance to play the WWKD (What Would a Killer Do) game, Jersey followed Ian out the window. He closed it, grabbed her hand, and they took off running.
The cold air nipped at her face and made her teeth ache, but she didn’t stop grinning and running, and she never let go of his hand. The cracking branches and crunchy, cold earth beneath their pounding feet replaced the music and hum of the party as the lights from the house vanished the farther they ventured into the woods.
“Why are we running?” Jersey laughed.
Ian slowed his pace, and they stopped next to a large fallen tree amongst dead brush. “I suggested we run away. Had we walked, it would have been considered walking away.” He dropped one blanket onto the ground, plopped down onto it with his back against the fallen tree trunk, and pulled her onto his lap, facing him with her knees straddling his legs.
She giggled when he completely covered them with the other blanket like a fort. Ian rubbed her arms, building friction to warm them up. Then he kissed her because they weren’t done with that—it felt impossible to get their fill of each other. The sex was good, but the kissing blew her mind. Sexual predators were visual; they liked to watch, stalk, touch, record, and masturbate. Sometimes, they liked to force their dicks down young girls’ throats.
But kissing … Jersey could count on one hand the number of times she’d been kissed on the mouth, and it was never inappropriate. The sick, awful, morally deranged monsters who abused her never even tried to kiss her on the lips.
“G used to build forts. She was really good at it,” Jersey whispered as Ian kissed her neck.
“Oh yeah?” he murmured over her collarbone. Ian’s right hand slid up her shirt, tugging up her bra to release her breasts. The pad of his thumb teased her nipple.
“Yeah …” she replied through a gasp. Her hips rocked against him, her contribution to the warming friction. Denim on denim was a long shot at best, but she couldn’t stop trying to find that pleasure again. “In the basement, she’d build elaborate forts over old boxes and storage containers … sort of a maze. And when he came for us …”
Ian stilled at her words. “Jersey …” he whispered like it pained him to imagine what came next.
Jersey stilled her body as well, except her hands—they stroked his hair. “G let him take her first. We’d wait our turn in the dark. It felt like hours sometimes, but I know it was minutes … maybe ten … maybe twenty. The stairs would creak beneath his weight. G never cried in front of us. Never said more than a few words. Hazel, she was three years older than me, and always went second. Looking back, I think G and Hazel thought Fisher went easier on me because he exhausted himself with them.”
“Jersey …” Ian’s voice cracked.
She wondered if Ian held unshed emotion in his eyes on the other side of the darkness between them. Maybe that’s why G built the forts in the windowless basement … so no one would see her cry.
Truth didn’t live in the light; it hid in the dark, dancing with demons, afraid to be set free, afraid to be seen by judgmental eyes.
Maybe someday Ian would find his own safety in the darkness and tell Jersey everything.
Maybe he wouldn’t.
She didn’t share that moment with him to get anything in return … and that scared her more than a million Mr. Fishers because it meant she trusted Ian Cooper with a part of her that used to house her soul.
Jersey blindly searched for his mouth, kissing his eyebrow, his cheek, bumping his nose, and finally finding those lips. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could scrounge enough spare change to get a hotel room? Ya got anything in your guitar case, Coop?”
Ian chuckled, his breath a mix of beer and mint. “I might be able to swing something.” He started to lift her from his lap.
“Wait,” she whispered, letting her fingertips slide from his head to his face, tracing every angle. “Just … can we wait for a few more minutes? Because …” She closed her eyes.
“Because?” he whispered back against the brush of her fingers over his lips.
“Because I feel safe.”
“You are safe.”
She wasn’t, but for a few minutes, Jersey laid down her weapons in the dark, surrendered her defenses, and allowed herself to be a twenty-four-year-old woman completely enamored with a rock star, under a blanket in the early morning hours.