Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 148238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Finally, he looked up. “You want to know what set me off? What makes me so fucking terrified that you’re telling the truth? That all of this is real, even though it’s so hard to believe?”
I nodded.
I gasped as his fingers traced the pattern inked into my skin. “It’s here. After all this time, I never thought—”
Tensing my stomach muscles, I tried to sit up to see what he did. But he kept a hand splayed on my rib cage, keeping me down.
Then he began to talk.
“You were thirteen. I’d been helping you with your homework every night since you flunked math. I’d always thought of you as my baby sister or an annoying tagalong, but something changed that night.” His voice was wistful, full of aching longing. “You were the one who kissed me. You threw your workbook to the side and launched yourself into my arms. We fell off the couch, crashed against the coffee table, sent paper flying. Thank God your parents weren’t home, because you put up a fight when I tried to stop you.
“We rolled around, you trying to kiss me, me trying to avoid it. But you won.” A smile graced his face. “Nothing would stop you from getting what you wanted. And for some inexplicable reason, you wanted me.”
His eyes met mine. “You tasted of cola and sugar, and you fucking drugged me that night. I wasn’t supposed to want you. I was almost four years older and already had a girlfriend. Not only was I making out with my father’s best friend’s daughter, but cheating on the girl I’d agreed to be exclusive with.”
My heart hurt. I didn’t remember his girlfriend and a fire churned in my belly to think of him loving another.
He smiled, tracing the frown on my forehead. “Still jealous, after all this time.” His eyes clouded, carting him back into the past. “You didn’t allow our age to get between us and you didn’t accept my no as an answer. You dragged me from loving you as a little sister to loving you like a man should never love a young woman. Especially you being his daughter.”
“I made you fall in love with me?”
He chuckled. “Cleo, you made me fucking dedicate my world to you.”
Cleo.
Cleo.
My world fractured and I fell through the cracks.
“Cleo, baby, we’re having a dinner for the other members tonight. Go put on your best jeans and come and help with the decorations.” My mother’s bright red hair shone beneath the kitchen spotlights.
Memories twisted and collided.
“Ah, so you want me to call you Cleo now? What happens if I want to continue calling you Buttercup?” My father poked me in the ribs, trying to make me laugh but only annoying me further.
“I’m not a kid anymore, Dad. Call me Cleo.”
I swirled deeper and deeper into my hidden past.
“Cleo Price, I love you with all my heart and soul. You’re my Sagittarius and I’ll always be your Libran.” Art stole my cheeks in his warm hands and kissed me with sweetness, adoration, and most of all, the soul mate kind of love that’d blossomed from a lifetime of learning about each other.
Tears trickled down my cheeks.
My name is Cleo…
I blinked, slamming back into the present. “I’m Cleo Price. My father’s name was Paul ‘Thorn’ Price, my mother Sandra Price. I don’t have any brothers or sisters. You were my entire childhood. You were my first and only crush. You were my reason for living and I’ve found you.”
The wall barring my family broke away, washing like a broken dam through the valley of my thoughts, sweeping away the blackness.
I remember them!
I couldn’t contain my shiver of happiness.
Kill sat frozen. He didn’t breathe or blink.
Sitting up, I wrapped my arms around him. “Speak to me.”
He took a very long minute to thaw but finally his back sagged and his arms wrapped around me in the tightest embrace. “I’ve lived the last eight years believing you were dead. I’m struggling to come to terms with everything I’ve done—how I treated you—how I fucked you with no emotion. Fuck, it’s doing my head in to think how I used you. Shit!”
He trembled in my arms and I nuzzled into his neck. “You didn’t know. We’ve both lived with enough torture. Let the past stay where it belongs.”
“No, see, that’s the thing. The moment I saw you, I hated you. You looked so much like her but I convinced myself it couldn’t be. I couldn’t see how it would be possible you were still alive after all this time. So many times in the past, I’ve looked at women and seen you there. Seen you hiding in their eyes. It fucking ripped my heart out every time—so to see you… looking so like—”
He grabbed his hair. “Ugh, this hurts to get straight. I’m repeating myself yet it doesn’t make it any easier.”