Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
And because Karma was hell-bent on destroying me, Thea knew it too.
“Where’s the gum?”
“What?”
She pointed to the trash can. “Where’s the gum I gave you last night?”
Chewed up and flushed down the toilet, every goddamn piece. “I don’t fucking know. Maybe Nora took the trash out.”
A slow, victorious smile crept across her plump lips. “Insult me. Lie to me. Try to paint me as a crazy woman. I don’t give a shit how you have to spin this in your head to make yourself feel better.” She prowled toward me like a lion hunting its prey. Stopping only inches away, she craned her head back and peered up at me. “You don’t have to love me, Ramsey. But just so you know, I do love you. I always have and I always will. But right now, I really just want my best friend back.” She tapped my pec. “He’s in there. I know he is. And you are seriously underestimating me if you think your petty lies are going to stop me.”
My throat closed and a tidal wave of heat roared through me as she trailed her finger down my chest, stopping above the button on my jeans.
“We’ll worry about the rest later.” She walked to the door, calling out over her shoulder, “So…breakfast?”
Yeah, I’d been right to be scared of running into Thea in the hall. Less than twenty-four hours after release and I was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Eight years earlier…
“Hey, you,” I whispered, wrapping Nora in my arms.
She buried her face in my chest, a sob shaking her shoulders.
My stomach knotted as my mind raced, frantically trying to figure out what the hell had her so upset. She’d cried a lot the first two years. Pretty much every time I saw her, she spent the entire visit in tears. I smiled and reassured her that I was fine. She never believed me, which only proved she was as smart as I thought she was. At year three, she only cried when she hugged me. And as of six months ago, we’d made it through almost all the bi-monthly visits without tears.
So when she promptly burst into tears as she walked through the door, I knew something was seriously wrong.
And it was the worst kind of wrong, because I could feel it in my soul that it had something to do with Thea.
It had been ten weeks since she’d mailed me a letter. I didn’t read them. I wouldn’t allow myself that kind of reprieve. My life was already hard enough without being reminded of what I was missing—who I was missing. But it had been radio silence recently.
Nora loved to torture me with all things Thea. We didn’t go a single visitation without her filling my ears with some kind of bullshit, which I pretended to ignore while staring at the table and drinking in every syllable about my Sparrow.
Not anymore though. Nora hadn’t brought her up in the last two months. It was crazy. She lived with the Hulls, so how was it possible that she never had anything to say about Thea?
She had to have been dating someone and Nora didn’t want to tell me. I would have been happy for Thea. God knew it had taken long enough for her to finally give up on me. Fuck, why did it feel like I’d been filleted open to think she’d given up on me?
It was what I’d wanted.
It was what I’d told her to do.
It was the inevitable.
But what if something else had happened?
“What’s going on?” I whispered into the top of her hair.
“That’s enough, lover boy. Break it up,” the guard overseeing visitation droned from his perch in the corner.
I gritted my teeth. “She’s my sister.”
He cocked his head to the side with a challenge. “I don’t care if she’s Mother Teresa. I said break it up.”
A low growl rumbled in my chest. I wanted to punch that motherfucker in his throat, but it only would have bought me more time. I had no interest in spending even one second longer than I had to in that hellhole. I minded my Ps and Qs. Kept my head down. And avoided trouble like I was Keanu Reeves in the Matrix.
But this guy—this asshole—had it coming. It would have given me great pleasure to turn his ass in for the amount of contraband he smuggled in. Everything from heroin to women’s dirty panties, this fucker had it. But being a good person in lockup was a lot like being a bad one on the outside. And I did not have the time or desire to watch my back for getting the unit’s main supplier canned.
I glared at him as I continued to hold Nora. Toeing the line did not mean being a pushover. My sister was sobbing. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone for me to have an extra ten damn seconds to console her.