Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154728 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Running out into the alley, her eyes wide, pupils dilated like an animal that had become prey. The red mark on her cheek. The complete absence of the strong and sure woman I’d come to know. To love.
Her face after I was done beating Gerald to a pulp. Not horror. Not disgust in me. Not fear either. I couldn’t quite decipher the expression. There was an emptiness in it that scared me.
Then the way she looked when she came to visit me. Pale. Gaunt. Bags under her eyes she’d tried to cover. Panic coming out of her very pores. Worry. And worst of all, guilt. She blamed herself. The fucking world blamed her. A conclusion that made me furious enough to punch through a goddamn wall.
The world was mad at a brilliant, interesting, talented woman for the crime of being abused. For the crime of knocking an asshole off his pedestal.
When it was me who did the knocking.
And I’d do it all over again.
But fuck, did I miss the taste of her. The smell of her. The warmth of her. I was well aware that she had the reputation of being an ‘ice queen,’ but no woman had burned hotter under my touch than Avery Hart.
Thinking of that, of her, her hair splayed out on the pillow, me inside her, eyes electric, wide, wild. The woman unrestrained …that calmed me.
Three hundred and fifty-five more days.
I looked up when I heard the clang of the doors open, my smile ready.
But Brax walked through the door, the door closing and bolting behind him. I’d already seen him once before. How he’d managed to get in before Avery I didn’t know, and it pissed me off. But he had things for me to sign, papers for me to go over, apparently.
“Where’s Chef?” I demanded, standing. “Is she okay?” My mind whirled with things that could’ve happened, my fucking knees trembling at just the thought.
Brax smoothed his suit, taking his time to walk over and sit down across from me. And fuck if I hated that unhurried gait, that inflated sense of importance. I’d always known who Brax was—arrogant, power hungry, calculated—but it had amused me more than anything.
No one was perfect, and I knew better than anyone that we were a product of our trauma, never knowing what someone had gone through. I tended to give people the benefit of the doubt. Brax had been with me since the start. And as much as he could be a smarmy, sanctimonious prick, he’d never fucked me over.
“She’s not coming,” Brax said.
I was still standing. “I fuckin’ deduced that. Why not?”
“You wanna sit?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “I want you to tell me where Chef is.”
Brax sighed. It was long and dramatic and fuck, it ignited the embers already simmering in my gut.
“No one knows.” He drummed his fingers on the table.
My heart rate went haywire. “What do you mean? Has someone—”
“No, it’s not as dramatic as all that,” Brax chuckled.
I wanted to plow my fist through his face for that chuckle.
“Although I would argue dropping everything, quitting her restaurant and leaving town is still pretty dramatic,” he continued, unaware of how close I was to ruining his veneers.
Everything in me silenced.
“What?” I gasped.
He looked at me with pity in his gaze. “Man, I didn’t want to be the one to tell you this. Fuck.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I wanted her to be different for you, bro, I really did. I didn’t think she was one of those clout chasers, in it for whatever they can get out of you. But she got her interview, got paid six figures for it, and now she’s gone.”
“Fuck off.” I slumped into the chair. “She’s not gone. Chef wouldn’t leave. She promised.”
“She came to see me a few days ago, before she left,” he sighed again. “And her mind was made up.”
“Bullshit,” I spat, looking up at Brax. “She’s not fucking gone. She’ll be here.”
Brax shrugged his shoulders. “I wish I had your optimism. And maybe she will be.”
There was no maybe about it.
Chef had not gone. I knew that shit surer than I knew anything.
She had promised me.
Fifteen
FOUR MONTHS LATER
AVERY
Jupiter, Maine was as good a place as any to hide. In fact, it could be described as one of the best places to run to.
It was idyllic, picturesque, settled on the rugged coastline, with idyllic, sea-weathered cottages. With well-maintained, colorful businesses on the cobbled main street. No chain restaurants or big-box stores to be seen. Everything was mom-and-pop, from the grocery store to the bakery that offered the best croissants I’d had inside and outside of France. Along with everything else in the pretty display cabinet.
The pastry chef was one of the most talented I’d encountered in my life. Which was saying something. When I’d first bit into her food, I’d told myself that I’d have to recruit her for the restaurant.