Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
I walk away before he does something stupid like ask why she’s with me in the first place.
I know that whatever he and Ayla have has only grown in the months they’ve been together.
I’m fairly certain they’re trying their hand at being normal even though how they met a year or so ago was nothing but normal. Going through what they did seems to have strengthened something between them. There’s no doubt it’s some form of trauma bond, but I’m not in the business of telling people how to live their life.
I feel no freer than I did before pulling onto Nash’s property.
I should feel a hundred pounds lighter for offloading Alani to her sister, but my boots seem heavier than before, that voice in the back of my head warning me that I might be doing something wrong.
I’m trying to convince myself it’s this addiction to her I can’t seem to kick and not a warning that I’m making a mistake. This is exactly how addiction works. It convinces you that survival is impossible without the object of your obsession.
The passenger side door opens at the same time I climb into the driver’s side door.
“Are you fucking serious right now?” she snaps, settling back into the seat.
“Get the fuck out of my truck,” I snap.
“I can’t be around them and their fucked-up relationship.” She sounds a little broken, but all of her emotion is in her voice because her face is angry.
It does nothing to detract from her beauty.
“I know how it got started, and it just fucking disgusts me.”
I scoff before I can stop myself.
“Are you for real?” I point out the windshield toward the front porch where Nash has his arm around Ayla as they stare in our direction.
The urge to put the truck in reverse and haul ass out of there is because Nash is standing there with a fucking bedsheet wrapped around his waist as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I hate the idea of Alani around a naked man, but I don’t think Nash would try anything with her. He’s pretty obsessed with her sister right now.
I turn some in my seat to face her, hating the way her eyes scan my body, pausing on the tattoo-covered scars on my right arm before moving to my face.
“You don’t get to judge them.”
“You’re sure as hell quick to judge me. You have no right to yank me up and tell me what I’m going to do and what I’m not allowed to do.”
“You’re right,” I quickly agree. “And it stops now. Get out of my fucking truck.”
“No. You brought me here, you can damn well take me back to my fucking dorm.”
I can’t really argue with her reasoning.
“Just look at them,” she says, disgust on her face as she watches her sister and Nash. “So gross.”
I put the truck in reverse, throwing up dust from the gravel as I turn us around and drive back down the driveway.
“You sure have a lot of judgment in your tone for someone who got fucked raw on the side of the road last night after getting high and putting your own life in danger on Sixth Street.”
I peer over at her once we are at the end of the driveway, waiting for her to say something.
She doesn’t open her mouth. She doesn’t make threats about turning me in for killing that guy last night. Hell, from the way she’s acting, she may not even remember it.
She keeps her mouth clamped closed. It may possibly be the first time she hasn’t wasted her energy arguing with me.
I hate the silence, but it’s just one more contradiction battling in my head. I know if she were talking, I’d want her to fucking shut up, too.
The drive is silent, and it’s quite possibly the longest fucking five hours of my life.
She’s pulling on the door handle before the tires stop rolling in front of her dorm building.
She doesn’t look back over her shoulder before disappearing inside.
This has to be the last time. I can’t keep pulling her out of danger, only for her to do it over and over again. I’ve made my mistakes in life. I’ve suffered more than nearly every other person walking the earth.
I couldn’t save Maya, and the only reason I felt like I should’ve was because I put her in danger. She never asked for what happened to her.
Alani is begging for it, and there’s nothing I’ve said or done that has made her stop. She knows more than most what kind of evil exists in the world, and yet she still seems hell-bent to travel down this path of destruction.
The girl will get herself killed, and I just have to be okay with her blood being spilled. At least this time it won’t be my fault.