Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 150546 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 753(@200wpm)___ 602(@250wpm)___ 502(@300wpm)
I closed the distance, my hands resting on her cheeks. “Not right now.”
Not right now was the kind thing to say. It just wasn’t the truth.
War
“Halen, you can’t fucking do that…” I reach for her hand as she zaps forward and disappears into the forest behind the cathedral of town square.
She spins around, her eyes meeting mine. She doesn’t bother to stop walking back as she makes her way between the clearing of two overgrown onyx maple trees. “But I want to…”
Halen is a fucking tornado that rips through your life. We used to joke and say that the reason why Priest had no emotions is because she sucked it all out of him in the womb. It wasn’t so funny when we realized we were right.
Rain begins to fall from the sky, a pebble hitting the tip of my nose.
“Hale—” The spot she was just standing in is empty. My stomach rolls as I look side to side, unease pricking over my skin. “Halen, this isn’t funny!”
I turn to find Priest, but he’s still chatting behind me with the girl he was with, his eyes meeting mine mid-sentence.
He nods his head for me to find her.
My feet couldn’t move fast enough and before I know it, I am shoving through rogue branches. Where the fuck could she just disappear to so quickly?
I push through two larger trees that open onto a leveled meadow.
She’s directly in the middle, her arms to her side and her face on me.
Void. Expressionless.
“Halen…” I step closer, fighting with myself to not rush forward and slap the shit out of her for dipping, only the closer I get, the clearer I see. Her face pales and her pupils bloat until the entirety of her eye looks black.
She collapses as her eyes roll to the back of her head.
I dive forward to catch her before she hits the ground, my arm tensing around her small waist as I lower her down slowly, gripping her chin to force her focus back onto mine.
“What the fuck have you taken today?” I shake her face gently, even though I kind of want to fuck her up to wake her. “Hey! You’re fucking fifteen. Get off the Molly.”
Her eyes split, and when she gazes up at me, my panic subsides.
“You’re a bitch.”
Her mouth curves upward in a smirk. “Maybe. But you caught me anyway.”
My brows tense together, and I look between her eyes and the swell of her lips. The perfect bow dips in the middle, surrounded by skin so polished my fingers itched to touch it. She’s the kind of perfection you want to terrorize because it simply should not exist.
She smiles. She fucking smiles, revealing the two dimples on either side of her cheeks.
“I’ll always fucking catch you, Halen.” I move away from her as we both stand. “That’s the fucking problem.”
They’ve been gone for three hours. I hate them anywhere near this shit, but I respect that they need to be.
“Thoughts on Katsia and her suspicions of the girls?” Priest lowers onto the bed I use while we’re in Perdita. The Hutt is tucked adjacent to the Perdita mansion. When we decided this was how we were going to handle enemies going forward, we knew we’d spend more time here, so we had a shack built on the same property as Katsia’s, without being too close to her.
“You and I both know there’s truth in it—” I push up from the sofa and make my way to the bar cart that’s near the floor-to-ceiling window which overlooks the edge of the cliff and sparse ocean. Right now, it’s showing nothing but darkness, blanketed by the caliginous night. “It’s only a matter of time until everything comes out.” I pop the cork off the bottle of scotch, pouring just enough.
The silence is tumultuous as liquid pirouettes in my glass. Not much bothers me, but the perpetual stench of death that continues to rot at the base of my throat isn’t helping my drinking habits.
Priest leans over the bedside table and swipes his phone. “Let them do it at their pace. I enjoy watching them squirm.”
I raise a brow at him from behind my glass. Alcoholism starts at an early age in our families. Probably has to do with trying to drown out that infamous stench. “You wanna talk about me and Halen?”
His eyes turn cold. “You both knew what you were getting yourself into. I won’t pick sides when shit goes down, because you know shit will go down. You’re both too messy. Too volatile. But there’s a distinct difference between the two of you that I’m not sure either of you have realized.” He plays on his phone, brows knitted in concentration, before tossing it onto the bed. His broad shoulders lift in a shrug. “And the difference is that she needs it more than you do.”