Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 108563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
I offer her a tight smile, feeling so far out of my league that I don’t know where to go from here, but I suppose, being the adult in the room, I have no choice but to try and wing it.
I swallow over the lump in my throat and immediately regret it. The burn in my raspy throat is already proving to be a bigger pain in my ass than Reaper. Then, reminding myself that I’m not a wuss and that this beautiful, selfless child did something so incredibly brave, I step into the room and walk right into her, throwing my arms around her petite body.
She stiffens in my hold, and her awkwardness suggests that she’s never been hugged for even a second in her short life. “Thank you,” I tell her, holding her tighter and refusing to let go. “You saved my life, Shadow. You were so incredibly brave, and while it was reckless and dangerous to risk your own life for mine, I will always be grateful.”
“I . . . uhhh. I was just doing what anyone else would have done in my situation,” she says, slowly beginning to relax as she lifts her arms and awkwardly wraps them around me.
“No, Shadow. Nobody would have done what you did in there,” I tell her. “They would have stood back in fear and listened until my screaming stopped. You ran in and risked your own life just for the chance of saving mine. There’s no way I could ever thank you enough.”
Shadow holds me just a little bit tighter, and when she buries her face into my shoulder, I realize just how deprived this child has been of affection. “Nobody has ever cooked me dinner before,” she says, her words muffled by my shoulder. “You and Reaper . . . You’re both nice to me for no reason other than because you want to be, and I . . . I’ve never had anybody care about me like that.”
My hand shifts from her back to her hair, and I hold her there for just a moment longer, not daring to move until she’s the one to pull away. And when she does, it doesn’t go unnoticed just how close she remains to me. “Look,” I start, placing my hand on her shoulder and holding her blue stare as I realize that Reaper’s hovering in the open doorway behind me. “I can’t pretend to know how the next two weeks are going to play out. I can’t promise that someone isn’t going to get the drop on me or that I’m going to be here right until the very end, but what I can guarantee is that I’m not going to walk away until someone physically takes me out. I need you to survive, Shadow, even if it means ending both mine and Reaper’s lives. I can’t fathom the idea of one of these assholes hurting you, of someone like Gasoline doing to you what she did to me, and while I have so many questions about how you came to be here in the first place, just know that all I want is to protect you.”
Shadows nods and lets her gaze fall toward Reaper behind me. “But I don’t want to kill you . . . either of you.”
“I’m sorry,” Reaper says, stepping into the bedroom that somehow seems so much smaller with him inside of it. “But that’s the nature of the game. The three of us can have each other’s backs and eliminate the other contenders. We can face this as a team if we must, but there will come a time when you will have to take our lives. There’s no other way out of this.”
“And if I don’t?”
I offer her a sad smile. “Then Reaper and I are going to have no other choice but to pull some of that fucked up Romeo and Juliet bullshit and take ourselves out. You not walking out of this alive is not an option.”
“Why can’t we all walk out of here alive? How would they ever know?”
“They’ll know,” Reaper says, his gaze shifting to mine, a question I can’t quite decipher lingering within his lethal gaze. “And when they figure out that they’ve been played, the bounty on our heads would be astronomical. We wouldn’t be able to shake it.”
Shadow lets out a heavy sigh before nodding her head again. “Okay, so that’s the game plan,” she says. “We take out the final five contenders, and when the time comes . . .”
Reaper steps into my side, his fingers brushing against mine. “We lay our lives down and allow you the chance at having a real childhood, only ten million dollars richer.”
22
REAPER
I’m not going to lie, these past few days, the heaviness weighing on me has become almost insufferable. I’ve never spent days at a time with people, especially people I care about, and with every passing minute, it becomes abundantly clear that I can’t stomach the idea of losing them.