Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
I was so distracted by those thoughts that I didn’t really register the car that came up behind me.
It wasn’t until I heard it rev that something in my gut tightened.
There was plenty of room to go around me.
There was no reason to come up on my ass and rev your engine.
Unless…
Before the thought could even fully form in my head, I felt the air change, sensed the impact just a split second before the car rammed the back of my bike, sending it shooting forward, going end-over-end, as I was flung through the night sky, weightless for a long, horrifying moment.
And then, the inevitable impact.
I’d never been in a bike wreck before.
Sure, I’d totaled more than a few cars in my day, but there’d always been at least a small sense of safety. Airbags, seatbelts, shit that kept you from shooting through windshields and skidding across the pavement.
There were no protections on a bike. Save for the helmet.
But that did nothing to stop the impact, the crunch, the way my body felt flayed as the road burned across my exposed skin, ripping my clothes, and doing more damage beneath.
Pain seared through every inch of my body, stealing my breath, my thoughts. I couldn’t focus on anything for what felt like hours.
But it may only have been seconds.
Because then I heard it.
More revving.
My gut twisted as I tried to push up, to move, but my body just refused to do anything at all.
This was it.
This was how I was going to die.
On some backroad, run over like a stray dog.
I couldn’t seem to do anything but brace for more impact, more pain, and then, maybe, nothing at all.
But then I heard something else. Something other than the revving. And the harsh hissing of my own breath.
Screaming.
There was someone screaming.
No.
Two someones.
Female someones.
CHAPTER TWO
Maeve
“I feel like my life isn’t enough like a soap opera,” Triss declared as she fell—quite dramatically—and, yes, very much like a soap opera heroine, over the arm of the couch, her delicate arm draped over her forehead.
Triss always had a flair for the dramatic. It was probably what I loved most about her.
She was all the things that I wasn’t. Extroverted, confident, boisterous, and, yes, dramatic.
“I mean, it has been a full three days since something exciting has happened in my life. Three days! Can you believe it?” she asked, turning her head to pin me with her bright, sky-blue eyes.
“I cannot,” I confirmed. It was hard for exciting things not to happen to Triss. I couldn’t tell if she was just a magnet, and all of that was simply attracted to her, or if she was just crazy and willing to put herself out there and, as such, exciting things were a part of her daily life.
The most exciting thing that had happened to me all summer was that I’d won a free smoothie bowl at the shop near my house. And, honestly, I still wasn’t completely convinced that the employees hadn’t rigged that contest just to give me a free one since I was in there so much.
“We are too young and too goddamned beautiful to not have mafia men killing people over us,” she decided with a long-suffering sigh.
“I really think Gram did you a disservice letting you watch General Hospital with her all the time,” I declared, shaking my head.
“Or did she do me the greatest service of all?” Triss shot back, folding up on the floral sofa, her long blonde hair falling picture-perfect around her pretty, heart-shaped face.
“How’s that?” I asked, reminding myself for the billionth time that it was wrong to be envious of all of her pretty.
“Well, I will never settle for anything less than life-shattering, soul-crushing, can’t-breathe-without-you love, for one.”
“I think that is the textbook definition of toxic, Triss,” I said.
“Uhm, puh-please, Miss Maeve. Like Gram wasn’t always passing you all her bodice-rippers. And you weren’t swooning over all the gallant knights and bosom-heaving damsels in distress.”
Okay.
She had me there.
While Gram and Triss watched their soaps, I read my Gram’s romance novels.
And did I maybe want to live in those worlds? Where the bad guys were horribly scarred, so you knew them when you met them, and the good men were strong, yet gentle, and the sweet, soft, shy women were the heroines that had everyone swooning?
Yes, I mean… of course.
It wasn’t long, though, before I realized that, in the real world, shy, sweet, soft women were typically overlooked and forgotten. And brassy, ballsy, confident women like Triss got all the attention.
So, yeah, I liked my books.
I liked them enough that I was trying to write my own.
You know… for the past five years.
I wasn’t suffering from writer’s block. Just absolutely debilitating Imposter Syndrome.
So I start, I get going, I get insecure, then I start over again.
Shower, rinse, repeat.
I was starting to worry it was never going to happen.