Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96957 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96957 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Emotion contorted my face as I fought back the new round of tears. “Who are you?” I whispered in a thick voice. “Kill me? You can’t love me and kill me, Wylder.”
“I said I wouldn’t hurt you. I’m just telling you … this is it. You put me at risk, so I have to leave.”
“You have to disappear because I know?”
“I have to disappear because you don’t know. You don’t know what to do with this new information. And I can’t wait around for you to figure it out.”
My mouth opened as I shook my head. “I … I’m …”
“You’re what? Not going to say anything? Not going to tell your friends? Not going to have a weak moment when your conscience gets the best of you? It’s a lot, Liv.” He brushed past me to his closet, pulling out a leather bag and shoving clothes into it. “I don’t expect you to carry this in silence. We shouldn’t have …”
That reckless thing in my chest started to ache. “We shouldn’t have what?”
“Any of it. All of it.” He kept stuffing clothes into his bag. Regret poured out of every jerky move he made. He regretted us. He regretted me.
I didn’t know how I felt. The intensity of the pain began to numb my body and my mind. “My phone.”
He unzipped the side pocket to his duffle and pulled out a wad of hundreds, tossing them across the bed toward me. There must have been a thousand dollars waiting for me to take it.
“I don’t need a new phone. I just—”
“New phones. New numbers.”
Plural.
He was talking about both of us. New everything. New being defined as without Slade Wylder.
“Your school.”
“Not your concern.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
Minutes earlier I feared for my life, yet there he was letting me walk away.
He killed people for a living. His fate likely involved life in prison or execution. The bullet wound. He was on the receiving end of someone who refused to die so easily. I had no business being with him.
Not wanting to explain to my dad why I needed a new phone again, I scooped up the cash while more emotions bled from my eyes. My heavy feet took slow steps out of his bedroom and down the stairs.
“Jericho …” I kneeled by his bed and hugged him, swallowing my silent sobs. “Love you.” Unable to take one more second of the firehouse and the terrible things that happened to people who spent time under its roof, I made a straight line to the back door and ran to my Jeep.
“NOOO!” I hammered my hands against the steering wheel as emotions wracked my body. The last time my chest hurt that badly, I was saying goodbye to my mom as she was being lowered into the ground. “Ouch …” I pressed my bruised hands to my chest as if I could keep my heart from crumbling into a pile of dust, complete wreckage from Wylder the earthquake.
I started the Jeep and put it in reverse, like backing off a cliff. If I left, there was no going back. No second chances. He would disappear forever. Nothing more than another ghost in the firehouse—a gaping hole in my chest. Months of memories that would haunt me forever.
For … ever.
I hit the brakes a few feet before the street and gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched, closing my eyes. “Mom … tell me what to do.”
“… you can’t judge someone by the culmination of their actions. The right person will see your soul in a way no one else can see it. I fell in love with your dad’s soul and it branded me in a way that made it impossible for me to not love him with all my heart.”
Forever was too long. I’d been in the Jeep for less than ten minutes trying to leave, and my lungs couldn’t breathe without him. Shoving it into Park, I picked up the pieces of my vulnerable …
Frightened …
Suicidal …
Stupid, crazy, impulsive heart.
And I ran inside the firehouse just as he carried two bags down the stairs. He stopped on the bottom step, hands clenching the handles of the bags giving me ample vein porn. I panted, my heart outside of my chest on full display. Swallowing past the thick emotions choking me, bottom lip quivering as I tried to hold it together, I glanced at my watch and whispered, “Ten minutes.” My gaze lifted to his. “It took me ten minutes to come back.” On a slow blink, I lost the battle with my tears. “My brain told me to leave…” I batted at the tears “…but my heart never made it out the door. So if you need to save the world, I won’t tell a soul. I just want to love you.”