Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 148238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148238 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 741(@200wpm)___ 593(@250wpm)___ 494(@300wpm)
Bought? I was already sold?
The world fell away. The corridor spun sickeningly. Kill told the truth when he left.
I never want to see you again. We’re through.
Shit! I’d been prepared to leave because of Kill’s horrible silent treatment, but that was before I’d seen the truth glowing in his eyes. He was just so used to being hurt, so used to nursing his grief and living with a broken heart. He hated me because I represented hope. That would scare anyone who loved someone as much as he did.
“I’ll answer your questions, only if you answer one for me.” Please, know the answer. Please, be close enough to Kill that he told you. “What was his dead girlfriend’s name?”
Grasshopper froze, and his fingers bit into my flesh. “How do you know about her? Damn, you’re good. No wonder he’s been so fucking screwed up the past few days. If it were me, I would’ve killed you for bringing all that back.”
“Bringing what back? Please—I need to know!”
He threw me away, running both hands through his hair, messing up the perfection of his mohawk. “Fine! You want to know? Kill was sentenced to life imprison—”
Life?
“I know—he told me he was in jail when she died.”
He shook his head, smiling cruelly. “Not when she died. He was in jail because she died.” He crowded me against the wall. “Don’t you get it? He was done for murder! He killed her.”
My heart didn’t know if it should give up or explode. “That can’t be true! He told me she died in surgery—”
“Injuries that he gave her.”
My mind turned into a vortex, swirling faster and faster with horror.
Flames.
The smoke disorientated me, skipping my mind back to my birthday two weeks ago.
I’d turned fourteen. My parents hosted a barbeque for the entire Chapter. Men in leather jackets, women wearing their lover’s patches, and children all raised in the lifestyle came to celebrate my day.
We’d been a family. A happy, tight-knit family.
But now I crawled along the carpet that was drenched in blood. I scurried from flames hotter than any barbeque and the right side of my body became as char-grilled as any hamburger.
The pain.
It was excruciating, but then… it disappeared.
Shock, gave me energy to keep crawling and choking and reliving the horror of seeing who’d poured gasoline through my family’s home.
I saw who struck the match.
I knew.
I had no choice but to survive so they would pay.
“Anyone in there?” The voice crackled with flames.
My throat was parched, my eyes blind from fumes. I couldn’t answer.
I crawled…
I dragged my burning body…
I… crawled…
I went blank.
Grasshopper shook me. My neck bounced on my spine like a rag doll as I blinked the horrible flashback away.
“He set fire to my house?” I whispered, terror squeezing my lungs.
My soul fractured into a billion pieces. The boy with the green eyes tried to murder me?
I scrambled at Grasshopper’s jacket, hating the skull and raining coins embroidered into the thick leather. Something about it looked wrong… terribly, terribly wrong.
“Why?” I begged. “Why did he try to kill me? We loved each other!”
Grasshopper stepped back, trying to push me off him. “Get a fucking grip, bitch. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do! Tell me. You have to tell me.”
Every muscle in my body trembled, my stomach hurled, and the corridor walls closed in—faster and faster, crushing me like a tin can until the pressure in my head grew too much. Way, way too much.
I screamed, tugging on my hair, willing the memories to unlock and grant me relief. But the pressure just kept increasing, building, building until every hair follicle hurt my skull, until my eyes felt too big, until my tongue felt too swollen.
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. Only the chugging crazed beat of my freaking-out heart echoed in my ears.
“Plea—” I slurred.
The crash of everything from my past consumed me and I couldn’t bear it any longer.
I let go of sanity.
I succumbed to the silently screeching dark.
Fuzz and cotton wool and clouds were my welcome-back-to-life party.
I smacked my lips, grimacing at the horrible taste in my mouth. My nose was blocked and my head bellowed with pain.
I moaned as feeling came back to my body; I winced as I touched my ribs.
He kicked me.
Hot tears came to my eyes as I recalled what had happened. He’d been nasty since I’d arrived, but that kick… It spoke volumes.
I doubted he knew how much he’d shown me in that brief moment. His anger had been uncurbed, unrestrained. He’d kicked me. Not the bed or the chair. Me.
Because I was the one hurting him. I was the one forcing him to face things I could only guess at. He carried so much inside he looked like he was drowning every second.
The kick shocked me, not because it’d been a horrible betrayal of violence, but because it was a cry for help.