Total pages in book: 170
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
That I know better than to be with someone like Declan and my greatest fear now is that it’s no longer my choice if I’m with him or not.
With that spike of fear, I consider pulling off the contraptions monitoring my vitals and running. Going anywhere but here. It’s all too much and not what I signed up for. My throat goes dry at the thought.
Go where? My inner voice sneers, They’ll find you. They’ll kill you and he would never forgive you if they didn’t end your life.
Despite everything that’s happened, I trust Declan. More than that, I fucking love a piece of him even if other pieces of him terrify me. But he did say, the only way anyone would ever put their hands on me again is if I left him. As the implications of what that truly means get the better of me, a chill runs through every inch of me right down to my bones. I try turning in the bed as if I can get away from it all, as if I could simply stop the reality from weighing on me like it is.
What the fuck have I done?
My thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door and my heart races yet again reflecting in the rapid beeps of the monitor. A voice I don’t recognize calls out, “Ms. Lennox?”
“Yes. Come in,” I answer and attempt to calm myself.
An older man with glasses and white hair, clad in a white lab coat and name tag reading Dr. Jacobson, walks in. His gaze immediately zeroes in on the machine beeping far too quickly. His thin lips press into a firm line and then he gives me a smile when he looks back at me, a clipboard in his hand and a sympathetic look in his eyes. He might not know the details, but I’m certain he knows this room is for the Cross brothers and that there’s more than one thing that ails me.
“Let’s see how I can help you, Ms. Lennox.”
DECLAN
“She’s not pregnant, right?” Carter questions as I walk into the small room in the back of the hall. From outside it would seem like a utility closet; in fact, that’s what it used to be before we took over this place.
“No, asshole.” I answer him firmly but with the same smirk he wears, although, to be fair, it would make everything so much easier if she were. If she was pregnant and we got married, she couldn’t testify and she wouldn’t want to leave me.
“No judgment,” he comments with a smirk.
“They rushed the blood work,” I tell him and pass him a stack of papers that all boil down to one simple fact: it’s just a cold.
“Not pregnant and everything else is in normal ranges.” Guilt still washes over me. The stress and temperature extremes from the bath obviously caused it. She’s not well because of them … because I allowed them to take her. My tone drops as I tell him, “She’s sick, but she’ll be fine.”
I watch her from a few rooms away where the closed-circuit monitors are stationed. The doctor fusses about her, asking her questions while physically examining her. Dread and guilt stir in my chest as she tells him she got locked out of her friend’s house in the cold rain a few days ago.
“Want to sit?” Carter asks as he takes a seat himself and I join him, attempting to hide how on edge I am.
The small room is much less comfortable, with only three chairs, a long desk that takes up the length of the room and four monitors that display the camera footage from the exam room.
“Is it recording?” I question.
“We can if you’d like. This is your show,” he tells me.
“No need,” I answer him, feeling nerves prick the back of my neck as the tension gets the best of me. It’s only the two of us; no one else even knows this is happening. Just in case she says or does something she shouldn’t.
“So it’s just a cold, that’s a good thing.”
“I would never forgive myself if it had been anything serious,” I tell him without thinking much of it as the doctor leaves and she’s alone in the room.
“You have strong feelings for her.”
“I like her, Carter, I told you that.”
His gaze doesn’t waver but I turn my attention back to the screen, even though I can feel him willing me to look at him.
“Any idea why she threw up?” he questions and his tone is more … concerned than expected. It’s hard to know what he makes of her. I think whatever happens today will add to his judgment either way.
“She said she was just thinking about what happened. Just a queasy stomach over … everything that happened.” I swallow down the bitter knowledge.