Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
This woman? She was everything that I wasn’t.
Full of life. Happy. Healthy. Young. Good.
I wasn’t full of life. There were days where I wondered what I was fighting for. I wasn’t happy, and I hadn’t ever been happy. My health, while okay, still wasn’t the greatest. I’d lived a hard life before I came to be where I was, and I sure as fuck wasn’t good like her.
But, as cliché as it sounded, she made me want to be a better person. She made me want to try to live life the way she lived it. She made me want to smile when all I used to want to do was frown. She made me happy. She made my day interesting. And mostly, I was falling in love with her.
She was making me feel things that no other woman had ever made me feel—things that I just wasn’t altogether ready to admit to yet. Feelings that would get my ass kicked by her mentor—Loki.
I hadn’t forgotten about that.
After learning her devotion went deep with Loki, I knew things would never be the same.
At least, that was what I’d been thinking.
How could someone that cared that much for someone love the person that hurt them? How could she ever look at me and think that I was a good human being?
Because I wasn’t.
I was bad.
There was no denying that.
I’d done some horrible things in my life. Still had my own nightmares to deal with in the early morning hours.
I still felt Bryce’s blood on my hands. Felt him sag to his knees while I watched. Watched impassively as he started to bleed from his throat.
Then felt ten times the coward as I ran away while I could’ve been helping him.
“Parker?”
I blinked and immediately realized that I was making a mistake.
I pushed her up off me.
“Go to the bathroom.”
She stood up and turned.
“What’s wrong?”
I swallowed at the concern in her voice.
“Have you forgotten what kind of person that I am?” I asked.
She stared at me.
“No.”
“And you are still here?” I laughed. “I’m a bad person, Kayla. I can’t do this to you.”
She stared at me for so long that I wondered if she was finding her answers.
Maybe if she found some, she’d share them with me. Because I was so goddamn clueless that half the time I was fumbling around through my life wondering what in the hell I was supposed to do next.
I kept waiting for the day that a police officer would come to my door and charge me for the attempted murder of Bryce Rector. Even though I knew that’d never come.
Bryce had known the price of leaving the gang just like I had.
Neither one of us had spoken about it, mostly because we knew that the gang, The Crimson Horde, were still active in Florida to this day. If we talked, we’d die.
Simple as that.
But, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t still hate me…or that I couldn’t still hate myself.
“You’re not a bad person.”
I snorted and skirted around my chair, my hands going to my overly long finger-length hair. “Bryce wasn’t the only person that I nearly killed.”
She made a sound in her throat, and I turned around.
“What?”
“Are you talking about the little boy now?”
I looked away.
“Or the men you killed while you were a SEAL?”
I didn’t say anything to that, either.
All of it.
All of it weighed heavily on my soul.
Sometimes, I couldn’t even take a breath deep enough because all that worry felt like a lead weight on my chest.
“You think you’re a bad person?” she asked.
I didn’t think—I knew.
“What about that man you tracked down and—though he was a little worse for wear once you were through with him—found after he killed Jett and his classmates?”
I swallowed as a sick sort of dread started to twist in my guts.
“I also know about how you roughed up a few more men—and one woman—who thought nothing of shooting innocent children.” She paused. “The woman being the most recent.”
The woman was the one who’d brought me to Hostel—and to Kayla—in the first place.
“I know how they gave you an ultimatum. Either resign or be fired…and let me tell you something. I would’ve done the exact same thing you did when it came to the people you investigated,” she replied hotly. “You’re not a bad person. Bad people don’t make sure that families have closure. Something that you’ve done on over twelve cases that you were in charge of.”
In the years since Jett’s death, I’d investigated twelve cases, the twelfth being the one that I was given the ultimatum of quit or be fired. And surprisingly, it wasn’t my conduct that had gotten me that ultimatum. It’d been the fact that I was burned out, and they could tell. My boss could tell.
He’d seen the signs in me. He’d also known the type of man that I’d been when he hired me. My conduct hadn’t been in question when he hired me.