Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 51832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 51832 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 259(@200wpm)___ 207(@250wpm)___ 173(@300wpm)
And Lord, help me, that’s what I did. Too often, too many times, until one day, until—until some bad shit happened. The kind of shit a man struggles to come back from. I wasn’t sure I’d ever like the man in the mirror again. But Ana did, and that was all I needed. After I killed Kasey, I didn’t think she could like that man again. And so, I left. Or maybe I ran.
She saved me and I haven’t done near enough to save her.
I forget about Kurt, and exit the room, leaving him behind, and seeking out Ana, because while she can do anything on her own, when I asked her to be my wife and she said yes, we made a pact. We said we were better off together and I believed that then, just as I do now. She needed me in the past. She’s always needed me, even after I became the man who killed her brother.
I round the corner and enter the kitchen to find Ana standing there, and I stop short, certain she’s heard everything that happened between me and Kurt. I’m sure she did. She had to have. I’m not sure what I expect to find in her reaction, but what I do discover is uncertainty in her and a sense of awkwardness that shreds me. Because I know where those feelings come from. I know how it feels to have your world pulled out from under you, to have everything you thought you knew, no longer be true. Because that’s how I felt that day at the funeral, when I showed up for Ana, even after she shot me—and back then I thought she meant to shoot me—and she still hated me.
I belonged nowhere.
And right now, she thinks she belongs nowhere.
She doesn’t even know she belongs with me.
My hands come down on her upper arms, and drag her to me, her soft curves flush with my body when I say just that. “You belong with me, Ana, and you have from the moment we met. And I belong with you.” I kiss her hard and fast or that’s my intent.
I seem to have hit on exactly what she needed to hear and feel right now.
Because she melts into me, her arms hooking under my shoulders, her breasts pressed to my chest, and her mouth against mine, a desperation that bleeds into me, feeds more of the same in me. I cup her head, deepening the kiss, drink her in, and feel the pull of hunger inside and between us that defies our circumstances because it’s about loss. And there’s just too much fucking loss in our lives right now. I swear I’d carry her someplace private and bury myself inside her if it weren’t for one icy reality. Kurt might be a distraction, with an attack to follow.
With agonizing effort, I tear my lips from hers, and say, “The security system.”
“It’s on. We’re all clear.”
Any relief I feel from this news is my certainty none of this ends until things get bloody. All the more reason I need to be right with Ana. “Then we need to go somewhere we can be alone, baby.”
She nods and pushes out of my arms, wetting her lips with her delicate little tongue, before she rotates and is already moving toward the stairs that lead to the master bedroom.
Chapter Five
Luke
I pursue Ana with a sense of momentary comfort with the safety of our surroundings.
The security system is on, Kurt is tied up and guarded by two trusted, skilled friends, and our enemies, at least some of them, have given us three more days to deliver the package. A package I don’t have. That’s a mountain I must climb, a problem I must dissect, but for now, Ana is my focus.
Ana is everything.
With her shoulders back, she charges ahead, and I decide that despite all the things I could say to her, about the past and the future, wanting a future with her, it all comes back to actions, being present, being by her side, understanding what she needs from me. I can’t know what that means if I don’t show up, and I don’t ask. But I’m here now, and it felt as if we were headed toward the light at the end of the dark tunnel.
Until now.
Until Kurt’s return.
He’s shifted the mood, and with his presence, there’s a distinct uncertainty in the air, about our lives and our futures. Because if nothing was as it seems, how can we possibly know what is real?
I feel that. Ana has to be feeling it magnified by a hundred.
And while I know I should be happy for Ana’s reconnection with Kurt, nothing about his presence feels right. It’s as if the ground opened up and a sword rose from the deepest depths of the ground, waiting for us to fall upon it and die.