Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 303(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 303(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 202(@300wpm)
Dammit.
“I fucked up, but I’m goin’ to figure this out,” Spike mutters, his fists clenched.
“The only way is to let him think you were just in town for a night. You have to go, Spike, he has to see me alone or he’s not going to come back.”
“There is no fuckin’ way I’m leaving you alone.”
“You don’t get a choice,” I say, carefully. “He will not come around if he suspects you’re here.”
“That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”
I step closer, putting a hand on his chest. “Please, just trust me on this. Go stay at my parents’ house, so you’ll be close by. You can keep eyes on me, but he needs to see me coming and going from the dorm and campus alone. If anything happens, anything at all, I’ll call you.”
“I’ll discuss it with Jacks, but this is givin’ me a bad fuckin’ feeling.”
Him and I both.
“I know,” I say, swallowing. “But you have to trust me on this.”
“If anything happens to you, Tom Cat,” he murmurs, tipping my face back so he can bring his lips down to mine.
I kiss him, long and deep.
Pulling back, I stare up at him. “It’s going to be okay.”
I sound confident, but I don’t feel it.
I feel as though the answers are right in front of me and if I don’t find them soon, something bad is going to happen.
I’ll spend the night going through Cheyenne’s things and praying that I’ll get some kind of answer.
If I don’t, I’m back to square one.
And this fucker gets one step closer to his goal.
I can’t let that happen.
“WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE looking for,” Addison asks, tearing open another box and pulling out the items inside.
“Something that might indicate who Cheyenne was seeing. A diary, old pictures, anything from before Spike.”
I hate going through her things, mostly because I have never touched a single item of hers since she died. Partly because I haven’t wanted to face how it feels without her here, but also because I’m scared of coming across something from Spike to her that will hurt. It’s so hard. Even though I’ve accepted that for a time, she was the love of his life, it still doesn’t mean I want to see it.
Still, if this man was bothering her, and has killed Alyssa, then they both deserve us to find who that was and end this.
“Are you okay with this?” Serenity asks, flicking through a heap of old photos. “I know it isn’t easy.”
I shrug, but there is a lump in my throat I can’t shake. “I’m okay, it’s just something I haven’t done, and I didn’t realize that it was going to be this hard. I feel for my mom, having to pack all of this away after she died.”
“Does it hurt?” Addison asks, giving me a sympathetic smile. “I know you two didn’t have the best relationship, but ultimately, she was still your sister.”
“It hurts more than I thought. We might not have been close, but Chey never deserved what happened to her, and I’d do anything to have her back, to at least have the chance to mend the broken relationship.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get that,” Serenity gives me a small smile. “Maybe this will help with some closure.”
I hope so.
We continue going through the boxes. Mom was okay with us doing it, but she didn’t want to be in the room with us. I know how hard it is, still living with Cheyenne’s death. It’s like a wound that never fully heals. She has accepted she’s gone and isn’t coming back, but she also lives with a pain I just can’t comprehend.
I understand it a little better now I’m a mother.
I couldn’t imagine a single thing worse in this world than losing my children.
I have a new respect for what she went through.
I find an old stack of photos and flick through them. There is nothing apart from pictures of Cheyenne with her friends. My heart aches when I look at her smiling face. I had almost forgotten how beautiful she was, and no matter how hard I think, I can’t remember how her laugh sounded.
How is that possible?
You spend all this time with someone, hearing their laugh every day, but after you lose them, you just can’t remember it.
It’s soul crushing.
“Here are some diaries,” Serenity says, pulling a stack of old diaries out of a box. “They’re locked, but it won’t take much to get into them. Has anyone got a hair pin?”
Addison reaches into her thick, dark hair and pulls out a pin. She hands it to Serenity, and one by one, she unlocks the diaries, handing them to us. I take one and with a heavy heart, I open it. It’s dated quite early, before she would have been at school, so I put it aside. I’m not here to invade her privacy completely.