Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“You’re making decisions to protect me, Damion.”
“Hell yes, I am, but I’m no fool Alana. You need to trust me to handle this. I wouldn’t be with you right now, if I didn’t plan to decisively end him.”
“How?”
“I don’t want you getting in the middle of this shit, any more than you already are.”
“So that’s how it is? You do. I behave?”
“Oh come on, Alana. I don’t deserve that. I’ve never been that guy.”
“You have that side to you, Damion. You know you do.”
His energy spikes in the air. “Because I’m like my father?”
“Do not twist my words. I did not say that or suggest that. You’re still the future king and we both know that requires dominance and arrogance, but I will never kneel to you. I’m not everyone else.”
“You don’t see what is happening right now. I’m kneeling for you, and I do it with everything I am, but I will never let you walk in the flames of the fire I’m supposed to protect you from. Never, Alana.”
Emotions are officially sitting heavily in my chest with his vow to kneel for me, but there is a cloaked goodbye in that declaration, too. I can feel him one step closer to goodbye again, and it terrifies me. It also drives me to keep pushing. “I have bodyguards for a reason, Damion,” I say, my voice softer now. “I think I can figure it out. You’ve all but told me the man has killed people and pulled you into it. I know, okay? I know. Can we get that out there right now, and be done with it?”
“You don’t fucking know, Alana. People disappear when they cross him, and I made a few of the calls to Caleb to make it happen.”
“So you implied. I get it. I already said I get it.”
“You’re doing what I did. You’re pretending it doesn’t really matter. You're pretending it’s not what you think. I pretended being the messenger didn’t matter, but it did.” He presses his hand to his face and drops it, a bitter laugh sliding from his lips. “Ironically, it was the guy who I helped him drive to suicide that finally woke me up. He fucking did it in front of me, shot himself, and I blinked and his blood was all over me. I couldn’t pretend that wasn’t real. Fuck. I need to go out for a while.” He turns, offering me his back, his shoulders knotted beneath his tee.
At this point, everything he’s spoken in the last two minutes is exploding in my mind in mini little blasts of information, but none of it shocks me. His father is a brutal monster and Damion had already warned me this was coming. He faces me, lets me see the suffering in his eyes. “I’ll be back later.” He starts walking.
I’m gutted by the level of pain I see in his eyes, the soul-deep pain tearing at him and now me, but it’s that very reaction that tells me he’s the same man I fell in love with years ago. Who I still love now, but I’m also furious with him. He’s walking away. He’s leaving. Damn him. “I thought you weren’t doing this again, Damion,” I shout after him. “Every time you just walk away. That’s what’s tearing us apart. I told you I wouldn’t move in with you if you were going to do this, and yet, here we are, one night in, and you're leaving again.”
He whirls on me, not as far away as I’d thought, his emotions dark, and suffocating in their intensity. “What part of you’re better off without me do you not get? I tried to leave you alone, Alana. I stayed away. You should have fucking married someone else.”
I recoil and hug myself. “Okay. Yes. Okay.” Tears prickle in my eyes and I hurt. I hurt so very badly, the way only he can hurt me.
He curses and then he’s in front of me, pulling me to him, and his touch is fire, the friction between us flames. “That’s not what I want,” he says, his voice a gravelly, rough baritone. “It’s not what I have ever wanted, but did you not hear what I told you? I’m not a good person, Alana. Why the hell are you not the one walking to the door?”
“Because I love you and I don’t think love is logical. I also know you’re not your father. You want to make things right, so do it. Make things right. And stop walking away, damn it. Just stop!” The words are all but ripped from my throat by way of my emotions.
His hands come down on my face and he tilts my gaze to his. “I’m standing right here. I’m right here, Alana.”
“But you wanted to walk away.”
“I didn’t want to look in your eyes after I told you what I’ve done. I didn’t want to see the rejection.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I’m not the boy next door anymore.”