Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105506 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
It was then, right then, every ounce of oxygen in my body froze. My lungs seized.
It felt like I was having a stroke.
Instead, I was realizing with that simple hand squeeze—and a fuck of a lot of shit that came before it that wasn’t simple at all—that I loved Colby. That I was in love with Colby.
And I was certain, if there was a way for me to launch myself off this bike and run into the desert, I would’ve done it. Except I didn’t quite have that option. There was absolutely no escape. Worse, we were heading to the one place in the world I thought I’d truly escaped from.
But like that warehouse, I was never really going to escape Silverhead, Utah.
My nerves were shot as the bike parked outside my childhood home. It looked more or less the same as it had when I left it. Small but well maintained. The shutters had been freshly painted a dark blue. The flowers in the window boxes were blooming. The grass was green and freshly clipped.
My mother’s dependable Toyota was in the driveway as was my father’s pickup. Both were routinely serviced, and the tanks were always full. Though there was never a lot of money around in my household, my parents worked tirelessly to keep what they had sparkling and in good condition. Which made me feel all the more uncomfortable throughout my childhood. I was always spilling, smudging, dirtying their pristine, little life.
And here I was to do it all over again in a spectacular way.
“You’d think having survived a serial killer, I would be able to face up to my parents without fear,” I joked weakly, standing at the front gate.
Colby’s hand slipped into mine. My heart grew to an uncomfortable size. Like the fucking Grinch. I wasn’t built to feel this. Well, maybe I had been, before I’d been disfigured so completely.
“I still haven’t been able to go home,” he admitted. “So I think you’re impressive as fuck.”
I looked at him with a smile, warmth blooming inside of me.
“I’ll come with you,” I promised. “When or if you decide to go home. I’ll be at your side.”
It was a reckless and dangerous promise to make. Hadn’t I already made plans to detonate this relationship once we got back to Garnett? Surely I had. It was clear to me we couldn’t last. That I would only bring him more pain. Yet there I was, making promises. I was leaving carnage wherever I walked.
Colby pulled me to him, and our lips crashed together in a kiss that was not appropriate on a small-town street in a conservative town, especially not in front of my childhood home.
I kissed him back anyway.
“Gonna hold you to that promise, poppet.”
Fuck. I’d gone and done it now.
But on the plus side, some of my anxiety shifted from the present to the future. So I barely noticed that Colby had walked us to the gate and toward the front door. It sank in about halfway there. I was going to be seeing my parents for the first time in years. Experience told me that this would not be a happy reunion. Not because I was turning up with a biker in an MC cut—though that wouldn’t help—but because of all the reasons I left. I didn’t doubt my parents had wanted me to come home for some time. But they wanted me to come as the daughter they’d always wanted. They wanted me to come home scarred from the world and all of its sins, ready to accept their lifestyle and ready to accept my place in their world.
I was scarred from the world and all of its sins. Just not in the way they would expect.
I might’ve ran if it weren’t for Colby at my side. No, I definitely would’ve ran if Colby hadn’t been at my side. I never would have made it to the state, let alone inside town limits.
As it was, I still considered running and dragging him along with me. My upper body strength was shit, and I hadn’t exactly been hitting the gym these past two years. And it was too late. We didn’t even get to knock—or run—because the door opened.
My mother was likely drawn by the sound of the motorcycle and then saw two strange looking people walking up her walkway.
Her face was pinched, ready to get rid of us, stressed about what the neighbors were thinking. She probably had the cordless in her hand, fingers poised to dial 911.
My mother cared a lot about what people thought.
Evidenced by her outfit on a Saturday afternoon. She wasn’t going anywhere. My parents didn’t go out on the weekends—except for church. Saturday was for cleaning the house, top to bottom. I could still smell the lemon and vinegar that fragranced my weekends.