Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Dread.
Desperation.
He burst out the back door and into the night.
His footsteps pounded.
The water glittered like black ice.
Milo plunged into the freezing cold.
It swallowed him whole.
An abyss.
A chasm.
Darkness. Darkness.
He sank to the bottom where it reigned for eternity.
Where his life was left without light.
A roar erupted from my soul, so loud it battered the walls and shook the panes of the windows.
A reverberation that curled through the darkened cabin like the call of the forsaken.
The lost.
The abandoned.
The desolate.
Air heaved on tormented shockwaves from my lungs, and my shoulders jutted in spastic quakes as the room spun.
Agony crawled across my flesh like tiny demons searching for a home, infiltrating the fissures that were torn open wide, pain squeezing my ribs in a fist so tight I was sure I was being crushed.
Night after night.
It gathered like dust and dirt.
A heaped grave at my feet.
I sat upright in my bed, half disoriented and half seeing too clearly.
Each time the nightmare came to collect, I felt like I’d been dragged in front of a mirror that replayed every hope I’d dared to dream on a distorted loop.
Round and round and round.
All while forcing me to stare at the one responsible for destroying it.
I inhaled through the pain, fuckin’ desperate to reel it back in, but it was only getting deformed and contorted when I felt the shift in the dense, dark air.
That was one second before I heard the creak of the floorboards.
My chest squeezed in a fist when there was a light tapping against the door.
The sound crawled through the atmosphere and wrapped me like solace.
A blanket of comfort that I didn’t deserve.
“Milo?” Her voice was a timid call, a whisper that panged against my heart.
Despair gusted from the depths.
“I’m fine, Tessa.” The lie lashed from my tongue.
Seconds raced, and I swore that I could hear her heartbeat thundering from the other side of the door.
“I don’t think you are,” she finally whispered through the wood. Her voice a crutch.
A lure.
Peace.
“Can I…come in?”
I needed to tell her to go. Hell, I needed to tell her that this whole thing had been a bad idea from the start. After the way I’d reacted this afternoon when she’d asked me about Autumn? I needed to end this before it was too late.
But it was my fool mouth that was muttering, “Yeah, Tessa, you can come in.”
EIGHT
TESSA
My hand trembled as hard as my heart as I slowly twisted the knob to his bedroom door. The latch clicked and gave, and I drew in a steeling breath before I barely opened it an inch so I could peer through the crack.
My pulse still sprinted and clanged from the shout that had hammered through the cabin like the heavy carnage of a bomb.
Guttural.
Anguished.
My eyes narrowed as my sight tried to adjust.
Milo’s room was shrouded in shadows, dark and grim. Within it, I could almost make out the shape of the ghosts that howled and whipped and haunted the space.
His huge silhouette vibrated in the middle of it where he sat upright on his massive bed.
Somehow, he still managed to overpower it with his sheer size.
Every muscle in his body was rigid.
Coiled.
Ready to strike.
My spirit clutched.
All afternoon and night while he’d been at work, I’d reeled from the severity of the interaction we’d shared earlier in the day.
He’d been filled with a rage that hadn’t been directed at me.
A torrent of grief so great it’d erupted from his mouth and fired from his tongue.
Now, his aura danced in a glow of flames. Red and orange hues that lapped and simmered and seethed, as if the man were being burned alive where he sat struggling for control in the middle of his bed.
Carefully, I eased the door open farther and took a tentative step inside. In an instant, I was pummeled by the energy that ricocheted chaotically throughout the room.
“Hey.” The word was held in caution.
It would be rude to ask him if he was okay when he clearly was not.
His bed sat horizontally across the room, the headboard against the wall to my right.
Warily, he turned his focus toward me. “What are you doing in here, Tessa?”
There was no anger behind it. It was just another of those warnings that I shouldn’t try to get inside his head.
A warning that I couldn’t handle it or maybe that I couldn’t understand. Maybe I was ignorant to disagree. But his pain had jolted me from my own agonized, fitful sleep, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe we could be there for each other.
“I heard you,” was all that I said.
Energy swelled.
Whispered and blew and compelled.
The attraction I’d always felt for him was different this time.
Bolder and darker.
It was the kind that made you fearful to step into it because you knew your infatuation had turned dangerous.
It wasn’t light or frivolous.