Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
That thing had to weigh… a lot. Hundreds of pounds? It was a big fucking tree, and he’d pushed it over like it was a twig.
I’d wanted to ask him why he didn’t lift it, but as I watched, it made sense. If it looked like it had been dragged, there would be less questions than if it was carried. How the hell would you explain that without a crane? Then I’d kept watching as he picked up a few massive branches and dropped them beside the downed trunk in the middle of the yard. I picked up a couple too but got out of breath almost immediately, then got dizzy, and that’s when he’d looked over, gave me dirty look number three hundred and fifty, and I stopped.
When he must have been content with his good deed, I’d followed him back to the house, thinking a lot about stuff. Especially the question I’d dropped on him that had suddenly turned his mute button on. When I wasn’t pondering that, I was trying not to dread the future. The danger we were still in.
The danger I was going to be in until… who the hell knew when.
It felt so real now when before it had been more like E.coli. Something I knew could happen, that could kill me, but chances were, it never would.
Realistically, there wasn’t a whole lot to be worried over. He could hear who was coming, smell them too. If someone approached that wasn’t trusted, he would know well in advance, and we’d be able to get away.
What he had just done with that tree….
Maybe he wasn’t back to 100 percent, but he was closer than he’d been a month ago.
And I couldn’t stop thinking about that when we got back to the house. All that power, that strength. Could you imagine?
I ended up playing solitaire a little while with a deck of cards that were sitting on the coffee table but kept glancing out the window. After that, I set up shop where I currently was, on the couch, with a magazine. I’d poked around the cabin while Alexander had pretended to rest on the biggest of the two couches.
It was a really nice house, about the same size as most of the ones I’d lived in. It was cozy and cleaner than the last place had been, not that I was complaining. I’d felt his eyes on me while I’d picked through the cabinets in the kitchen and the bathroom.
I’d gotten this strange feeling going through the single, small bedroom, opening the closet and finding men’s clothes and a couple pairs of boots and worn sneakers inside. Part of me had been tempted to take another shower, but once I saw that neither bathroom had a tub, I decided I could wait.
He didn’t tell me not to snoop, but I could have almost felt his urge to tell me to sit down when I’d squatted by a bookshelf to read the titles on the spines. There were a lot of hardbacks on Roman history and a few thrillers with titles that had been adapted into movies. There had been a big stack of National Geographic magazines and paperbacks on cinema history and screenwriting. It was a magazine that I’d sat with while he ignored me.
He was really good at it too.
And it was when my stomach growled again, hours after we’d already eaten, that I started to think about how much money I should send the owners to make up for the food and utilities we were stealing.
Which then made me freak out because I didn’t know how I was going to get access to my money.
How the hell did you even get an ID when you had no proof that you’d existed in the first place?
That was exactly when he asked about me being nervous.
Not that I’d wanted to admit it, and that’s why I looked at him and tried to give the crabby man a blank expression before I lied. “I’m fine.”
“I can hear your heartbeat, liar.”
Dammit. “I’m just nervous about what’s going to happen.” I tapped my finger against the page I’d been trying to read. “About the future.” I was shaking my foot, and I hadn’t noticed. I stopped. Forming my hand into a fist, I lifted my chin. “Okay, part of me keeps expecting the cartel to show up, and I’m worried.”
At some point, his head had drooped to one side, and I’d swear one of his eyes got squinty.
“I’m sorry, am I boring you?”
“Yes.”
I scoffed, but his head lifted, and he gave me another long look with that elegant face.
“You know I’ll be able to hear someone coming,” he said, his voice flat.
“I know, but I still don’t trust it.”
His face….
“Don’t take it personally. I have trust issues. It has nothing to do with you.”