Total pages in book: 10
Estimated words: 11563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 58(@200wpm)___ 46(@250wpm)___ 39(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 11563 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 58(@200wpm)___ 46(@250wpm)___ 39(@300wpm)
“You read my diary!” she shouts from behind me.
A bark of laughter belts out of me, and I shake my head. “Love, we’ve done just about everything in that little book. Have I missed something?” I say while cracking a couple eggs into a bowl.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers so softly I almost don’t hear.
I turn and face her, and her deep green eyes meet mine. “Because I want to give you everything you could ever dream of.”
“What if I want to leave?”
My eyes shoot to the door that I intentionally left wide open when I returned from my cruiser. She follows my line of sight.
“I’ll give you everything in the whole goddamn world, Rose. Sometimes I think the only reason I exist is because without you I’d be nothing. The day I saw you my whole world changed. I’ll give you anything you want, but what I won’t give you is freedom from me. You’ll always be mine. You’ll have to kill me to be free of me, Rose. Can you do that?”
“Why won’t you just let me go?” she whispers, and I smile at her.
“All right, how about this. I’ll give you a thirty-second head start. If I catch you, you’ll stop fighting me so much. Not completely, because we both know how much your fighting gets us off, but you’ll stop being so cold to me. If I catch you, you’ll stop making me drag ‘I love you’s from you. It breaks my heart every time you make me do that.”
“And if I get away, you’ll let me go? You promise?” she says with a little hope in her voice.
“I’ll give you a thirty-second head start, but I promise there will never be any getting away from me. If you make it to the clearing on the other side of the woods, I’ll drive you back to your car and we can pretend this never happened. But if I catch you, then we come right back here.”
CHAPTER SIX
ROSE
My heart is beating out of my chest. I remember seeing the clearing on the other side of the trees when we got here yesterday. Hope creeps in my heart and I think I can do it. Thirty seconds isn’t long, but I’m fast. I’m not strong, and I’m little, but I’m quick.
I look down at my bare feet, and think this could be problematic, but I don’t pass up this chance at freedom.
“Okay,” I say with more confidence than I feel. I stand up and walk to the open cabin door. “Thirty seconds,” I confirm and look back over my shoulder.
Colton puts the bowl of uncooked eggs on the counter and wipes his hands off. He lowers his chin in agreement, and a devilish grin creeps across his mouth.
I nod and turn to face the outside world. This is it. My one chance to make a break for it. I take a deep breath and sprint off the porch.
I’m counting in my head as I bolt from the cabin. One, two, three…my feet feel the gravel in the driveway, but I don’t pay attention to the pain. I push my legs as fast as I can and I have my sights set on the clearing.
Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…when I reach the edge of the woods, my feet hit the leaves and sticks just as my lungs start to burn. Adrenaline and panic are flooding my body and making my body push harder than I thought. I can see the sun breaking through on the other side of the treetops, and I feel like I’m going to make it. I’m going to beat him and he’ll let me go.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…suddenly I’m being wrapped up from behind and tackled to the ground. When he catches me from behind, he twists so he hits first, and takes the brunt of the fall.
My lungs are on fire, and I kick out with my legs as he wraps up my arms with his. “You cheated!” I scream, but he only laughs.
“I changed my mind is all, sweet Rose. Don’t be mad,” he says, hauling me up from the ground. “I saw how fast you were, and didn’t want to take the chance.”
He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder fireman-style as he carries me back to the cabin, my bare ass exposed. I try to pull the shirt back down to cover up as he carries me back inside, but he just smacks my ass and laughs again.
“Baby, there’s no one around for miles. You think I’d let anyone see what’s mine? Never.”
He walks into the cabin and tosses me down on the bed. I lie back, defeated from my getaway. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to make it.
Colton climbs on top of me and looks down into my eyes. “Don’t be so sad, baby. Now we get to spend the rest of the night together,” he says with a wicked look.
He climbs off the bed, and cleans my feet, putting medicine on all the little cuts I got from the woods. After he deems me patched up, he goes back to making me breakfast like nothing happened.
I don’t remember how many times he reached for me last night, but I do remember that when I finally passed out I clung to him. My body was so physically exhausted, and my mind so mentally spent, that I needed the comfort. I needed the tenderness of affection after such an intense day. I don’t know what flipped in my mind, but after feeling what he did to me, and how obsessed he is, I knew that he would give me the comfort I needed. I knew that when I rolled over and put my arms around him, he would accept me with an open heart.
Colton may have done many things to me, but he would never deny me the physical love that my heart and body craved last night.
When we are finished eating, he washes me in the shower, just like yesterday. He is tender with my body, and lovingly washes my hair. Afterward, he applies medicine to my feet again and puts cream on the tender flesh between my legs.