Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 101348 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101348 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 507(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 338(@300wpm)
“Let’s go upstairs,” Audrey purrs.
What?
My stomach bottoms out.
I glance around frantically as footsteps echo up the staircase, drawing closer by the second.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
What is she doing here? Why is Landon with her?
Without any other options, I close the door to his closet and burrow behind his hanging clothes. All I can do is pray they don’t open it.
A second later, his bedroom door shuts, and I slap a hand over my mouth as Audrey starts talking. They are in his room together.
“Mmm… you like this, don’t you? You’re such a dirty, hot bloodsucker. I want you to sink your teeth into me while you fuck me hard.”
A deep masculine groan follows, and I nearly collapse against the wall. I don’t want to believe it. Landon wouldn’t do this. Not right after…
“Give me that cock.”
Something unzips and rustles before falling to the floor. The slurred words that follow are indistinguishable. But the sounds that come next aren’t. For a full minute, I’m too paralyzed to move as her familiar slurping pierces my ears.
She’s sucking his dick, and I think I might vomit.
He was just inside me. I gave myself to him.
I was the only one.
And now I’m not.
For an eternity, I lean into the wall for support, unable to breathe or think or move. All I can do is listen to the rumbles of masculine pleasure, and then, skin slapping against skin when he starts to fuck her. Audrey tells him over and over how good he makes her feel. How much she loves him inside her. I feel like I’m going to die. And then she mortally wounds me with one final blow.
“Yes, Killian! God yes. Bite my neck. Claim me.”
Killian.
There’s no denying it’s him on the other side of that door. I always knew he was going to destroy me. I just didn’t think it would be on the same day I finally realized I’m in love with him.
I sink to the floor and cry silent tears until it’s over. Until the last shuddering breath heaves from their lips, and the room goes silent.
They don’t move for a long time, so I can’t either. I’m trapped in hell, listening to my heart shatter in a million pieces. I curl my forehead into my knees and try to imagine another time, another place, another world. But there aren’t any where he doesn’t exist. I don’t know how this pain will ever end.
Landon was right about one thing.
We’re over, and we never even had a chance to begin.
21
Landon
“Landon?” Alana calls out for me just as I’m slipping into my Porsche, hoping for a quick getaway.
“Hey.” I barely glance at her.
“You haven’t been over in days,” she says. “I was getting worried.”
It’s strange how long I’ve waited to hear those words from somebody. Nobody has ever really said them and meant them. In the past, I learned the hard way people didn’t want to be a friend because they actually cared or genuinely liked me. They’d come into my life for a while, help me through some rough times, and then one day, I’d wake up to find a story in a magazine about it. Funny, those stories always painted them as the do-gooder saint and me as the misguided recipient of their charitable love. The public ate that shit up. Little did they know once the Samaritans got their media payout, I’d never hear from those assholes again.
Admittedly, I expected the same when Alana first started inviting me over for dinner. I figured she was one of those rich housewives with nothing better to do than take on a charity project like me. I went because I was curious, but I knew it was just a matter of time until the headline would break. When it didn’t, I thought maybe she was biding her time. She’d ask me for something eventually. But she never did. She genuinely gives a fuck about me, and I can’t figure out why. She makes me cookies and fusses over what I eat. She checks in to make sure I’m doing my homework and asks if I ever need help around the house. She wants what’s best for me and talks to me the way I imagine a mother is supposed to. And now I’ll have to forget her too.
“Sorry.” I adjust my sunglasses and slide the key fob between my fingers. “I’ve been busy.”
“Well, where are you off to now?” she asks hopefully. “I have a taco bar that’s just about ready and a ton of food. Why don’t you join us.”
“I can’t,” I lie. “I have to go visit a friend. He’s waiting on my notes from school.”
She frowns, and I can tell she wants to ask more, but she never pushes me too far. The truth is, if she knew all the things that had gone down between her daughter and me, she wouldn’t want me anywhere near her house. It was only a matter of time. Once Kail tells her my mother hit her, Alana won’t care what happens to me anymore. If it isn’t that, it will be whatever story Kail decides to sell to the media. It was always bound to get fucked up. People like me don’t get to have a family, and that’s just the way it is.