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 only thing behind me had been a lifeless cabin.
I’d known from the moment Cass had desperately kissed me for the last time that I’d made yet another mistake. There were a lot of amazing actors in LA, but none could have rivaled his pain in that moment. That kind of agony couldn’t be faked. All the shit I’d said in the heat of the moment about Cass manipulating me for his own gain had been bullshit. He may have manipulated me in some ways, but none of them had been for his personal gain. Him wanting to find the proof of his innocence wasn’t something he’d wanted for himself; he’d wanted it for us.
I’d thrown that and more back in his face.
Missing Cass wasn’t the only thing that had me standing on the precipice of losing myself to the depths of my mind forever. The knowledge that Cass had needed me two years ago when he’d learned I was alive was like acid being dripped onto all the parts of me that were already raw and exposed. Maybe I couldn’t have gone to him right away, but I should have been fighting to free him from the moment Sully had told me that he had been arrested and convicted for the triple homicide and my own shooting. I might not have been able to remember that night or the weeks and months before his return from the military, but I should have instinctively known that Cass would never have hurt me, much less killed three innocent people.
Instead, I’d crushed my trust of Cass between my fingers until it had all bled out and there’d been nothing left to hold on to. Doing that had given me the freedom to create a new world for myself. It had given me the much-needed reprieve from all the nagging questions that had been swimming around in my brain.
Karma had finally found me and made me her bitch. There would be no outrunning her this time.
All I had now was a different set of questions that kept playing on a loop in my mind as I heard Cass’s screams in the background. When he’d been tossed into prison, had he mentally been screaming out to me to come and save him? Had there been actual screams for me when he’d been abandoned in solitary? Had he screamed for my brother or his own grandmother?
I knew in my gut that the internal scars Cass had mockingly described during my “interrogation” of him at the cabin had been a thousand times worse than he’d let on.
Cass had said he’d been given an hour outside every day, but I hadn’t believed him then and I didn’t believe it now. He had been convicted of shooting both a federal agent and a cop. The more sadistic prison guards who liked the power they wielded over their prisoners would have tortured Cass using the veil of vengeance for their brothers in blue as an excuse. They wouldn’t have even needed to touch him to do it.
How often had they left him without food, or even the presence of another human being? Had he even seen the sun after he was put in solitary? Even if he had been occasionally allowed to wander the prison yard by himself, would it have been enough for him to track the number of days that had come and gone? He’d asked me if I had any idea what it felt like to live without knowing what time it was. I might have lost time myself, but it wasn’t nearly the same thing. How many people took for granted something as simple as being able to check the time of day?
I dropped my head and pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets as the pain behind my right eye grew.
As angry as I was with Sully, I needed him.
In truth, I needed Cass more. Cass knew how to help me. He knew how to make the pain go away. I hadn’t even told Sully about my condition yet.
Since I doubted Boone had simply left after dropping me off at the nondescript motel, it would be easy enough to signal him to see if he had any pain medication or could get me some, but I didn’t want to move. I deserved the pain. I’d earned it.
A familiar sound broke through the sensation of someone cutting my head open with a chain saw. Brakes squealed as the rumble of my brother’s truck announced his arrival. I’d propped the door open as soon as I’d entered the room because I’d known that a locked door would do nothing to stop my brother from getting in. If anything, he would’ve broken the thing down.
Even though I knew it was Sully entering the room, I still couldn’t stop myself from whispering, “Cass?”