Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
The now very real possibility that JJ had gotten hurt somewhere along the trail had me turning around so I could scour it. In the process, my eyes caught on something.
The back door of the cabin was wide open.
I’d closed it behind me when JJ and I had left to go on our walk.
I sprinted to the cabin and rushed inside, fully expecting to find a pain-ridden JJ lying on the floor in one of the rooms.
He was in one of the rooms. The living room, to be specific. And he most definitely wasn’t on the floor.
JJ was standing calmly next to the now open wall safe. He had my gun in his hand and, just like the day he’d confronted me on the canyon road, he had it aimed directly at me. But he wasn’t the same as he’d been that day. He wasn’t afraid now. He wasn’t going off an adrenaline rush.
Despite the sweat dotting his brow and the slight tremble in his free hand, JJ kept the gun pointed at me. I knew he had to be in terrible pain, but he refused to let it show.
“My birthday,” JJ said with disgust as he motioned toward the safe. “Not your birthday, not your grandmother’s, not your mother’s, not even the day you got your fucking car. You used my birthday as the code.” He laughed dryly. “You did say it would be in the files.”
“JJ—”
“JJ what?” he barked. “JJ, I can explain. JJ, it’s not what it looks like. JJ, I’m sorry.” His voice cracked a bit at the end, but he didn’t break.
“Whose idea was it?” he snapped as he reached into the safe with his free hand and pulled out the satellite phone. “To follow me. Whose idea was it? Yours or my brother’s?”
I didn’t want to lie to him, but I couldn’t throw Sully under the bus.
“JJ—”
“Stop saying my fucking name!” JJ yelled. He hurled the satellite phone at me. I only caught it out of pure instinct.
“Let’s get my big brother on the phone,” he continued, his voice cold.
I dropped the phone on the floor. Frustration, fear, anger, and pain swirled inside of me, building upon itself like a tornado. I couldn’t keep myself from striding forward, but I abruptly stopped when JJ put the gun to his own head.
“It’s a different game now, Cass,” JJ said softly. His hand was shaking more now. “You know I won’t shoot you, but you’re not so sure about this, are you?”
I was too afraid to open my mouth to respond. If I made even the slightest wrong move…
“Are you?” JJ demanded.
“No,” I admitted.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted vengeance. You wanted to fuck with my head. You wanted—”
“I wanted you!” I shouted without thought. Thankfully, the finger he had resting against the trigger didn’t jump. It would take next to nothing for the gun to go off. “I wanted you, JJ! I wanted you back. I—”
All the days I’d been locked in the room where no one could or would hear me bled together until this ugly darkness rose up inside me. “No one fucking told me, okay?” I raged. “Two days,” I ground out. “Two days of not knowing if you were alive or dead. Two days of staring at the only thing I had left of you… your blood beneath one of my fingernails. Your fucking blood. I couldn’t stop it. No one came when I screamed for help. No one came.”
I sucked in a much-needed breath as I tried to tamp down my fury. “I watched you die, JJ. I saw it when you were walking toward me one second and then crumpling to the ground the next. I saw it when your eyes slid shut as I held you in my arms and begged… fucking begged you not to close them. I saw it when the cops slapped cuffs on me and dragged me away from your lifeless body. The last fucking image I had of you that night was watching the paramedics doing CPR on you. I tried to get back to you but there were too many of them. The cops shoved me into one of the police cars and that was it. They just drove off and I never saw you again. You died in my arms, JJ, and no one told me any different for two fucking days!”
My entire body was shaking violently as everything went cold inside of me. “Sully didn’t come. My grandmother didn’t come. My father didn’t come. Not one of the all-so-important Ashbys came. I had to hear that you were alive from that fucking excuse of a lawyer they assigned to defend me! I would have traded a thousand lifetimes in prison for those two days.”
I was panting like I’d just run a marathon, and at some point, I’d unknowingly dropped my eyes to the floor. I jerked my head up. The rush of relief when I saw that JJ had lowered the gun to his side nearly sent me to my knees. I ran my fingers through my hair in an effort to gain control of my runaway mouth.