Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
“No, no baby, don’t do that. I’ll show you. Come here.” He took me over to the bed and pulled me down beside him before taking out his phone. “Before I show you this, a lot has happened in the last few days since you left L.A.”
“I know you told me about Scott and the contract and all that, but what else is going on? Are we in some kind of danger?”
“Not exactly, no.” What does that even mean? I almost let him off the hook when it became obvious that he was having a hard time opening up to me about whatever it was that was going on.
I actually started to panic a little, thinking that someone was hurt, but then he started talking. “That’s it? That’s why you’re so anxious and nervous. Because of Rachel?”
***
*Ryder*
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t show her the edited recording of Janie and all the things she’d said to the cameras. We’d edited out most of it because, of course, if we left it as it was, it would’ve opened up the conversation about the trafficking, and that was something I wasn’t ready to tell her about. Not until it was absolutely necessary.
Not because I feel like I have anything to hide, but because it would hurt her. Knowing her, she won’t sleep until we find every last one of those girls and might even try to help. I have no doubt that she’d go to bat against Mary and the others if she learned about this now because if there’s one thing I know about Elena, she hates injustice of any kind.
It’s one of the reasons I always felt in the past that I didn’t deserve her. She’s just so damn real and so nice, with a genuine heart for people that I have never seen in anyone else, including myself. It was her heart that I was trying to spare and, in doing so, had chosen to share with her the lesser of two evils.
I see now why Lyon and his guys were adamant about keeping certain things away from their women and children. It was odd feeling this deeply for another human being, to the point that you want to spare them all the ugliness the world has to offer.
I never felt this way before, not even when we were together the first time. Maybe I was too young and naïve, or maybe I took what we had for granted. But now, all these years later, I’m glad I get to do it over again with her and get it right this time.
I’m glad I get to feel as if I’m finally coming into my own, and it’s with her by my side. I would’ve hated myself if I had given Janie a better part of me than I had the woman of my heart. I see that now. How awful would it have been for Elena if, after all, that she had done for me, all that she had endured, I shared a better version of myself with someone else?
That was one of the eye-opening conversations I’d had with Lyon that made me hate myself. But my one saving grace is that I never gave Janie shit. I’d come to learn about some of the lies she’d told in the last five years, things that I knew nothing about. And I knew I had to go back through my own social media accounts, things that had been deleted on my end but had been assured I could get back to see what all they had used my name to do to her. From the little I’d seen so far, it was bad, so if they’d deleted the rest from my phone, it must’ve been brutal.
I’ve had nothing but time to think alone in bed at night since she left, and with my mind becoming clearer day by day due to the exercises and shit Lyon had forced on me, not just physical but mental as well, more and more things have been coming back to me.
One thing scares me more than anything else, and that’s the fact that I don’t think I deserve a second chance. That’s how fucking amazing she is, that even I, the man who now knows what he’d almost lost, didn’t think he was worthy of her respect and love.
When I told Lyon that in all humility, his answer had been that since she still loved me, I should be the best man I could be for her, not just for a day or two, but for a lifetime. He warned me that if I didn’t think I could do it, I should walk away now because if I hurt her again, he’d let the nieces have my ass. I’m not ashamed to say that although I don’t need one, that was more than enough incentive for me to get my shit together.