Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
I backed up and sank down onto the chair at my kitchen table. “Is that it?” I asked.
“No.”
I braced myself. I wasn’t sure how much of this honesty I could take.
“I’m in love with you.”
He was in love with me. He was telling me that now? After he just admitted to stalking me for two months. My head was swimming. The thoughts of him watching me. The things he had seen.
“I need you to leave. I need to be alone and think,” I told him.
“Don’t do this.” The pain in his voice felt like a hot iron slicing open my chest.
“Leave, Oz. Take the camera and leave the key. Then go.”
“Winslet.”
“Go.”
He walked toward me, and I shook my head.
“No. Don’t.” My words were verging on a shout.
His nostrils flared as he stared at me. I dropped my eyes to the floor. I couldn’t look at him. The pleading and panic on his face were unbearable to see.
“I know that I call you mine. But it’s you who owns me. Don’t shut me out.”
The cracks that had already begun to spider out over my heart were almost on the brink, where it would shatter completely.
“Then, you won’t ignore me the way Alec did when I ask you to please leave.”
My hands fisted at my sides. I could not lift my head and look at him. When his boots moved, it wasn’t toward me. It was away. I listened as he took the cube from the wall and the tiny clang of the key as it dropped to the counter.
When the door opened, I could feel the sob rising in my chest.
“I’ve seen you when no one else has. I know you better than anyone. You don’t have a flaw. But I have many.”
I sucked in a breath silently. The part of me that wanted to jump up and run after him was powerful. But just because I loved him and letting go of him felt impossible, I still needed time to work through all he had told me. I was raw right now. My emotions were so unsure that the edges were frayed. This had been too much. All of it.
The door clicked closed, and I buried my face in my hands. I let the tears fall, holding on to my sob until I was sure he was far enough away that he wouldn’t hear me.
Thirty-Five
Winslet
There was a hollowness inside my chest. I went through the motions. Wishing I had an answer. A way to make it all fit in a way that I could accept or understand. My fear that he didn’t love me at all but that I was an obsession that had spurred unbalanced choices in him had become the thing that haunted me the most. There was no question if I loved him. This had revealed just how deeply I felt for Oz. Because the idea of living without him seemed unbearable. It was my brain that was telling me that big black flag meant a future heartache that I might not survive.
I stared down at my phone and read through the texts he had sent since I had made him leave Saturday night. Every day since, he had texted me in the morning, in the afternoon, and before I went to sleep. Nothing long. No begging forgiveness, no rationalizing his behavior.
Oz
I love you.
Oz
You’re all that I think about.
Oz
I’d give anything to hear your laugh.
Oz
It’s hard to face the day without you.
With each text, my heart twisted painfully in my chest. Yet I reread them. Several times a day. I’d fallen asleep last night with my phone in my hand and my eyes locked on the words. It was the only way I could get any sleep. My mental stability was in question because when I did get in bed, there was an overwhelming sadness akin to grief because I knew he wouldn’t come inside and watch me sleep. Who thought that way? What was wrong with me?
The needing to seek therapy thing wasn’t a joke. I had fantasized about this man after he abducted me and put me in a basement. There was no one else that appealed to me when I had alone time with my vibrator. Just Oz- his face, his smirk, the way his body moved and flexed so effortlessly. As if he had been created for the viewing pleasure of heterosexual women everywhere.
He’d seen me do it too. That damn camera. He had invaded my privacy. Read my texts. Followed me to places. Watched me unknowingly God knew how any times. And yet he had said I had no flaws. I knew I did, but why hadn’t he seen them? Even if he loved me, wouldn’t he see those? I loved him, and I saw his flaws. The giant, massive, disturbingly dark, and twisted ones.