Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I went ahead and had a little cry then too, making sure I took enough time for the redness to go away before I went home to keen-eyed Vega.
I held it together through dinner. Luckily, Vega got bored with my one-word answers, and went to go kill a bunch of trash-talking jerks on her video game, shouting out increasingly inventive insults as the time stretched on, allowing me to focus on cooking, cleaning, prepping for the next day, taking my bath, then curling up in bed to have a good, long cry.
I made sure I woke up extra early to ice my swollen eyelids, then went about my morning like my heart didn’t feel like a deflated balloon in my chest.
I tried to make myself delete that final text he sent, the one I knew would be his last.
He’d made it clear what he wanted.
But he wasn’t going to beg.
The man deserved to have his pride, after all.
I felt the sting at the backs of my eyes as I pulled my car into my parking spot. Leaning my head back against the rest, I closed them, taking several long, deep breaths.
Opening them, I looked at the shop.
The place that used to be my little sanctuary. Now, I dreaded having to step inside of it.
There wasn’t anywhere that held any peace for me anymore. Not work. Not home. Certainly not in my own mind.
I guess that was just something I was going to need to get used to. Because there seemed to be no end in sight.
On a resigned sigh, I grabbed my bag, unlocked the shop, locking it behind me, and looking around.
Even the flowers seemed to have lost their vibrancy, I realized as I put my bag on the desk, then tried to shake some of the tension out of my shoulders before walking into the back room, ready to start pulling flowers out of the fridge to restock the displays.
“You fucking lied to me,” a voice said, making a small shriek escape me as I froze.
My heart flew up into my throat, blocking my airway, even as my stomach dropped down to my feet.
A cold sweat broke out across my skin as the blood in my veins seemed to stop running, immediately frozen in place.
Because there he was.
The man from before.
With his threats.
With his dead eyes that told me he was more than capable of following through with them.
And there he was, fury wrapped around him. Not the heated kind. The frigid sort. Which, in my experience, was a much more lethal kind. I would take passionate and heated over calculated and cold any day.
Not that I had a choice.
“Lied?” I asked, feeling like I was gulping for enough breath to choke that one word out.
If I turned and ran, could I beat him to the door?
Even if I could, it was locked.
I would waste precious seconds getting it unlocked and opened.
Why hadn’t I considered the need to start carrying some sort of self-defense item on me?
I could have taken one of Vega’s. She practically collected them. Hot pink stun guns, mace that looked like a lipstick tube, little eye gougers in the shape of devil cats. She even had several expandable batons that looked like pens or umbrellas.
I literally could have snatched three or four of them to keep on myself without her even knowing any were gone and asking questions.
What was wrong with me?
My lower lip trembled at the complete and utter helplessness I felt at that moment.
There were razor knives in a cabinet a few feet away from me. Almost a dozen of them.
I wondered if I could get one without him seeing, keep it hidden until I needed to use it.
Could I use it?
I wasn’t sure.
Just the thought of pulling the knife across someone’s skin made me feel queasy.
I’d once cut myself with one of them. The blade had been so sharp that I hadn’t even felt it slip into my skin until blood was pouring out of my finger, spilling all over the table, the flowers I’d been arranging, and my own dress. The doctor had remarked that I’d been lucky not to need stitches, just butterfly sutures.
“You wouldn’t believe the kinds of injuries I’ve needed to repair thanks to those things. And nerve damage that no one can fix,” he’d rambled on as he finished with the sutures. “You should look into getting the ones that have a hook at the end that protect the blade. Much safer.”
I’d thanked him, but hadn’t bought the new ones. Mostly because I knew myself. One misstep would make me ultra-careful from now until eternity. I would never lose focus using a razor knife again.
And I never had.
Maybe, if I tried, I could apply that focus onto the task of hurting someone with one.
I was dubious at best, but I figured if it was between dragging a blade across someone’s throat or getting raped, I would likely be able to do anything.