Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 803(@200wpm)___ 642(@250wpm)___ 535(@300wpm)
That side I see from her every now and then bubbles to the surface when her eyes land on mine, but the alarm of the elevator door opening distracts us.
Swinging my chair around, Moose buttons up his suit and jerks his head toward the exit. Everyone gawks at the stranger in the room, but it’s Luna that lingers on him the longest. She remembers him.
Good.
“Moose is my driver.” I’ve caused enough bullshit tonight. Everyone probably should have left me to get drunk in my hole.
Vaden laughs under his breath. “That’s one way to put him.”
“—and as you all may know, his father once worked for Dad.” I turn back to him. “What’s wrong?”
“Can’t get hold of your parents.” He adjusts his suit. “Any of them.” There’s shuffling around the table before I dismiss Moose out of the room. His head dips between his shoulders, his eyes find Luna at the last second. He warms. “Hello, kiddo.”
Tapping on my dad’s number, the phone rings but doesn’t connect. The same thing on Mom’s.
“What is it?” Halen asks, and I look up in time to catch the lines in the middle of her brows deepen. “Priest!”
“I don’t know.” My feet carry me to the other side of the room as I wait for the elevator to light. Moose stands beside quiet, almost at my height and with shoulders as large.
“This isn’t like them to not answer.” His voice is low.
“I know,” I grumble, stepping into the elevator. It’s not until we’re back outside and when Halen pulls away in her Skyline that I notice the white MC20. Flared and dropped, it’s what I would own if I was to roll in Euro.
Luna’s blonde hair catches in the wind, her steps directed right toward the waxen weapon.
“I wondered why my Amex had a charge to Maserati.”
The innocence in her eyes widens up at me as she pops the door open, but the corner of her mouth curls a little. “Hmmm. And I worried you maybe didn’t see it, you know, past all that red hair.” Her subtle reference to the girl from the house party earlier that week isn’t so subtle.
“Jealous?”
Her stare holds me in place. “Not sure.”
My smirk slips. Luna has always been if anything, honest, which is why she hasn’t been so forthcoming about where she’s been for four years is unsettling.
War and Vaden sit opposite when I slip into the back of the city car, closing the door and ready for the questions.
“Why’d you keep this from me?” War wastes no time.
“Simple.” I follow the line of trees as we drive. Without the lights beaming up the castle, it’s a stranger instead of the walls that raised me. All things that are empty inside are simply that, unlivable. “It wasn’t something you needed to know at the time.”
“And now?” The balance in his voice is why he is who he is, because he’s unproblematic. “What about now? Why are you telling me now?”
“Beside that for whatever reason, that same man who took her that night has decided he still wants her, it’s simply time. You forget, I was following orders back then, and now I give them. You won’t be kept in the dark again.”
War rests his head back against the chair, waiting for the puzzle to slip into place.
Vaden bends his neck until it cracks. “You think what she said was the truth?”
“Why would he want Luna?” War keeps his eyes on the ceiling. “Why would he agree to take her back then? She was barely an anyone.” I ignore the way his words trigger the twitch in my left eye.
Vaden sighs. He’s bored. “Because she was already his wife, War. Click on.”
War looks back at me. “And are we forgetting why this is a bad idea? Are we forgetting about the very reason why this is a bad idea? And yes, I know I said that twice, but I need to, because, Priest…”
I block him out, and his words fade into the existence of nothingness.
Of complete…nothingness.
Chapter Nineteen
luna
Isit in the farthest corner of the room. If my mind wasn’t racing a mile a minute, I’d be able to figure out what happened last night. Why does he keep punishing me as if I was the one who started this in the first place? I didn’t ask to be taken to his house of horrors or be locked away from society for four years, nor did I ask for him to chase me out of his life as fast as I ran into it.
Alcohol warms my lips as a shadow stops beside me. I don’t have to look to know who it is. The music continues to play in a loop, with the clock in front of me forever at twelve. It melts off the wall in a way that questions its design, but it fits. Everything in this place…fits.