Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 129408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 431(@300wpm)
Despite my frantic attempts, it caught me. And I collapsed under the weight of it. Right into Luke’s chest, my hot cheek resting against the cool metal of his badge.
He stroked the top of my head, clutching me to him, rubbing my back.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured.
And he did. For who knew how long, he held me, right there on the side of the road, let me sob into his chest, weathered the first wave of my grief with me.
Stopped me from seeking out the men who had killed my friend.
Saved me from the same fate.
Because I would’ve died that night. Some intuitive part of me knew it when I’d started driving. But I was blind. Maybe I didn’t care.
Maybe I wanted to. In that horrible time between immediate and unexpected horror and lucidity at accepting that you have to continue to live despite it, I was touched with almost suicidal insanity.
Whatever it was, Luke saved me.
No one ever knew.
That night, Luke stopped the club from digging a second grave.
Ensured my broken heart was his forever.
And no one would ever know.
Present Day
This time, the doorway was different.
I didn’t have the luxury of falling back on anyone. Especially not Luke. He was done saving me.
I made sure of that.
But this time I had seen more. Death was a begrudging friend rather than a terrifying monster, snatching away everything I loved.
I was stronger now.
Or maybe there was less of me to break.
So I sucked in a breath and moved my feet forward, into the room that stank of death and pain.
It was familiar.
Keltan was leaned over the bed, murmuring quietly. Everything in me exhaled. He was murmuring not to himself, not to the world for taking something away.
But to someone else.
Lucy.
Her husky tones murmured back.
So I wasn’t getting another part of me chipped off today.
Thank fuck.
“I don’t care what kind of sweet nothings you’re murmuring,” I near-yelled, puncturing their private moment. I stomped into the room with my usual bravado, wearing my previous persona like a costume that someone else had stretched out. “This is my best friend, who almost died.” My breath hitched on that part, a mental stutter of the reality of it all. Though I managed to recover before anyone noticed. “I’m getting my own sweet nothings.”
I reached the bed, eyes flickering to Keltan, who was smirking at me. But like me, he was wearing a mask of his own. Stretching it over his face so the woman in that hospital bed didn’t see the horrible scar that the grip of death had left on him.
I focused on Lucy and congratulated myself for not visibly flinching. The bed almost swallowed her, sucking her into its fatal embrace.
Almost.
She’d always been pale, my best friend. But now her skin wasn’t that milky white tone that even Snow White couldn’t mimic. No, it was a sickly gray, almost translucent. Somehow, her hair managed to look like it was fresh out of a shampoo ad, midnight locks tumbling down her head, doing even more to emphasize the pallor of her skin.
Her eyes were too big, sunken in, filled with something that I hated having to see in them. Something like what Keltan was trying to hide, but worse.
I swallowed.
“Bitch, I go away for a hot minute and you get stabbed,” I snapped, going for jaunty blasé but failing as a tremor hit my voice.
I was horrified to see my hand was shaking as I snatched Lucy’s free palm, lying weakly atop the polyester of the hospital sheets.
Something more than the shadow of Hades flickered in her beautiful face. Something welcome. “Hot minute?” she snapped. “Try almost a year.”
I flinched inwardly again, seeing beyond the anger in her voice to the hurt that lingered beneath it.
I had been doing it for her.
No, who was I kidding? I’d been doing it for myself. I was selfish, running from my problems, deserted everyone who cared about me without a word.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy punched me.
Though she’d probably have to get Keltan to do it, since she was otherwise engaged with recovering from a stab wound.
I flinched inwardly again.
My best friend had been stabbed.
And I wasn’t there.
“I needed a hiatus,” I said truthfully. Nice euphemism for cowardice.
“From what?” she demanded.
I blinked at her in her hospital bed. Then it wasn’t her—it was Laurie. Her corpse all shriveled up, decaying, empty eyes staring at me in horrifying focus. Another blink and it was Skid, half his head gone, blood all over my white dress. Then it was me, pulling the trigger, ending a life. More blood.
Then it was him. Pulling another trigger. Ending not just one person’s life but two. His own included.
I yanked myself out of my waking nightmare, hoping my panic didn’t show on my face. “Death,” I said, unable to utter anything else.
She scoured my face, seeming to see through everything I was masking it with. Best friends, after all, knew when a dress, guy or expression didn’t fit you.