Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74794 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“I…it’s…it’s more complicated than that….”
“Fuck!” She winces, but she literally can’t take it sitting down. Instead, she leaps up, wrings her hands, and starts stalking across the room, but she’s hampered by the sheet, so she has to take short, shuffling strides. “My dad was right to be overprotective. He knew that someone might want to use me against him one day or that I’d be in danger just because I was his daughter. I always thought he was kind of nutty about it, but he knew. He knew that people don’t always deserve the benefit of the doubt.”
“I never would have used you to do anything like that.”
I will her to believe me, but Ayana doesn’t give me a second thought, a second glance, a second chance, a second anything. She tears from the room, and when I try and follow her, Bunny Man steps in front of the doorway and blocks it with his tree trunk arms crossed over his leather vest, which he’s wearing without a shirt on underneath. At least the thing is done up, even though I can still see a forest’s worth of chest hair coming out the top. Ugh, I can’t believe I was just on top of this guy, pinning him to the ground. Good god, man, chest hair is the least of your worries right now. His armpit hairs are also sticking out from under his arms; they’re that bushy and long. Uhhhh…nope. Still not your main concern.
Ayana storms back into the room a few minutes later. She’s now fully dressed since her clothes were shed in the living room earlier, and cloaked on top of that is a heavy shield of righteous indignation. “Let’s go,” she commands Bunny Man, who grunts at her like a Neanderthal.
I still try and follow them, but he puts out a big hand and shoves it straight into the middle of my chest. I’m also shirtless. In boxers. And his hand is slightly clammy. Now that the adrenaline is wearing thin, my other senses are starting to come back, and I realize he smells like motor oil, sweat, and maple syrup. It’s not a good combo, and it makes me wonder how this guy prefers his pancakes. Maybe he likes them fluffy with nuts and bolts baked in because it puts hairs on the chest, which would explain a lot.
“No,” he grunts at me, going all caveman again. “No follow.” Yeah. Okay. We’ve been reduced to a few words and bad grammar. “You get out of town. Do it fast. Permanently. Good thing.” Yup, totally not worthy of complete sentences over here.
“I can’t leave permanently,” I start to say, but then Ayana spins around, clamps her hand on Bunny Man’s big, hairy, slightly greasy, really tanned, very muscly, and very veiny arm, and shakes her head.
He thinks she’s shaking it at him, as in, don’t pulverize him; he’s not worth your time or the mess it would cause to pound him into oblivion, but I know she’s really shaking it at me. As in, shut the shit up about why you can’t leave. I need to think about everything and how to handle this.
So I stay. I stay where I am, even after I hear the front door open and close.
I can’t be hopeful about that head shake. That could easily have been her shaking her head to indicate that I’m cut off from her and how, since I lied to her, I fucked this all up before we could even get a good start, which means I’ve lost any right I had to be in her or my child’s life.
But after everything she said earlier, this woman who is living, breathing goodness itself, the best woman I have ever met, I can’t see her doing that. Or maybe she straight-up hates me. I’d deserve it, but I didn’t get that vibe. Maybe I’m just being stupidly hopeful since hope is all I have left at this point. Even if I’m not usually an optimist, I have to be now because clinging to that shred is what’s going to keep me sane.
Stupidly hopeful, stupidly desperate, or just stupidly stupid. It really doesn’t matter right now. I know what I have to do, and right now, that means sending a—SOS shitfuck. We’re fucking busted. We better all have a meeting ASAfuckingP and come up with a plan—text off to my Granny and brothers.
CHAPTER 9
Ransom
“Ransom, we have something to show you.”
Okay, so maybe going for a drive for an hour to clear my head after that big ball-busting, gut-hustling, heart-smashing showdown in my bedroom earlier wasn’t a good idea because now my brothers are at my house. All of them. Well, all of them except Alden because he’s back in Canada living the good, semi-normal, semi-retired from our line of work life. Also not present are the men that Granny employs. You know, the big burly type that people like to call goons. They’re typically the voice of reason when it comes to my brothers, so the fact that my brothers didn’t let them in on whatever it is they’ve done is nothing short of hair-raising scary. I know I sent out that text, and I expected Granny to be here with them, but my god, I certainly never thought they’d do something terribly, awfully, exceptionally stupid this fast.