Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“Luke—”
“Lucifer. I told you to call me Lucifer. Everyone does now. I’m not the man I once was, Ana. I’m the man you made me.”
She pales. “Don’t say that. Don’t—”
“Speak the truth? Why? I thought that’s what you wanted. The truth. You were screaming that, or something to that affect, before you fucking shot me. I never lied to you. Not then. Not about your brother. And not now. I was destroyed when I killed him. Even more so knowing how badly it would hurt you. But obviously, you wanted me to let him kill me. It was me you wanted to die out there that day. And I get it. He was blood. I was just someone you fucked.” I turn away from her and start walking toward the bathroom.
Once I’m at the door, I stop, and I don’t know why. I just feel her back there. I hesitate, and I know damn well it’s because I want her to tell me I’m wrong. But she doesn’t. I open the damn bathroom door and go inside, shutting it and locking it. I drag my hand through my hair and resist punching the steel door. Instead, I lean on it, pressing my hands to it, and take a deep breath. I’m trained to endure the most intense of situations, but nothing I’ve ever done made me ready for her. I never should have kissed her, not now, and not that first night I met her. She was right. I wasn’t her kind of guy, yet, I proposed, and she said yes.
My cellphone rings, and I snag my phone from my pocket to find Blake’s number. I sigh and steel myself for the inevitable. “Hey, boss.”
“Why the fuck are you not in Breckenridge?”
“You only know that because you’re tracking my phone like I’m a damn school kid. Stop already. This isn’t a Walker job.”
“What the hell, Lucifer? We face these things together. You have no idea what you’re even into right now. I’m sending Savage and Adam to you.”
“Don’t. I’ll tell you what I told Ana: it’s one thing for them to help save her life with a clock ticking. It’s another for me to drag them into some shit from my past that isn’t even really my shit. It’s her brother’s.”
“I thought you didn’t know what this was about?”
“I have an idea.”
“Talk.”
“No. Fuck no. I’ll go to Breckinridge after I go find Jake’s body and give him a proper burial. And if you don’t promise to keep Adam and Savage and anyone else away, for now, I swear to you, Blake, I’ll throw this phone in the trash.”
“You’ve got a hard head.”
“I thought that was a prerequisite for working for Walker?”
“No, but it is a disease that afflicts most of you assholes, thus why my life is hell.”
“Maybe because you’re looking in the mirror.”
“Yeah, well you need to stop talking to my wife. As for Adam and Savage, I’ll hold them back, but give me something to work with. What do you think this is?”
“Not yet,” I say and disconnect.
When I exit the bathroom, the women’s door is open. I curse and hurry around the corner to find the car still sitting where I left it, but Ana isn’t inside. Adrenaline is rushing through me, my stupidity at leaving her alone grinding through me. I enter the store, to find Ana standing at the Slurpee machine with her back to me, and my breath gushes from my lips. Thank fuck she’s here. She didn’t leave. I’m not sure what that says about where we’re at together, but it does say, not as far apart as I thought, at least not on the current situation.
I start walking toward her, but some dude down the aisle to my left is yelling at his girlfriend. Men who treat women like shit grind on my nerves, but I remind myself it’s not my business. Not when there are assassins on the loose, looking for me and Ana. Ana turns and faces me, with a Slurpee in her hand, her blonde hair a tousled mess, her make-up smudged under her eyes. Fuck me, she’s still so damn beautiful it’s killing me.
“Two hotdogs or three?” she asks, when I stop in front of her. “I know how you love your convenience store hotdogs.”
The woman down the aisle yelps as if she’s just been hit by the asshole who was yelling at her, and I’m at my limit. “Hold that thought,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
I step away from her and bring the aisle into view and the piece of shit asshole is holding the woman’s hair in his hand. I’m beside him in an instant, catching his hand and twisting it in that special way, the only way you twist an asshole’s hand. He yelps like a little girl and goes to his knees. “What the hell, man?! What the hell?! Let me go.”