Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 452(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Flowers surrounded the whole space and blanketed us with perfumed softness.
The food was forgotten.
The poor waiter and chef probably hid in the kitchen, waiting for us to put our clothes back on. But I didn’t care, and was sure Chase didn’t either, as he laid his head on my chest and traced lovely circles on the bare area below my belly button.
“I love you, Jasmine,” he whispered over and over until his voice began to sound hoarse. “I’ll always love you.”
Pressure rose in my chest.
I love you too, Chase.
Those words coated my tongue and begged to be released, but something drummed at the back of my head. A tiny little thought that wouldn’t stay still. Agitated, the thought stirred and fussed, shifting from side to side, nudging the logical part of my brain and rousing other thoughts in my mind.
For the past five years he’d been involved with at least three women at a time. They attended to his needs and spoiled him rotten. He’d made love to them as he pleased, treated, and dressed them however he desired.
But now all of a sudden he’d said he wasn’t in the arrangement anymore?
What did that mean for us? Where was our future? Would he need a new arrangement?
“I love you, Jasmine,” he whispered.
But will that love be enough?
Epilogue
Murderous Rage
I watched Chase and Jasmine from my darkened corner of the restaurant.
I am a spectator of love, nothing more.
I followed him here, and realized what he was up to immediately.
I’d followed them both here before.
I should have killed her then, but I’d been hopeful, too full of optimism.
“I’m so sorry,” he’d told us. “I’ll provide for all of you for two more years so you can find employment and living arrangements.”
You expect us to leave Willow Park in two years? Well, I’m done giving you what you want.
He’d quantified five years of tears, heartbreaking compromise, and lonely nights of depression into a lump sum that he’d dropped into each of our accounts. He thought money could solve it.
But you forgot that I don’t need your money. I need you.
He kissed Jasmine again.
My stomach twisted into tough knots.
“I love you,” he murmured into her ear.
I felt like I was standing in quicksand, sinking down to meet my death. This life had been as rewarding as the hard liquor that coated my tongue.
What else did I have left?
He took it all with him—my love, my sanity, my dignity, and even my will to wake up each morning. He snatched my soul away and squeezed it. He cut me into nothing. He skinned me until I was only the bare bones of the woman I used to know.
And when he was finished, he offered a pathetic apology, a slap in the face of pity money to help him sleep at night, and a sort of regretful smile that made me weak just to see it.
Because was it really all your fault?
I studied Jasmine’s face as she stared at the flower petals dropping down around her. She had barely given our arrangement a try and didn’t want to share.
Of course not! None of us do. But we did. That’s the point, Chase. You of all people should know that.
We’d stepped outside our own desires and gathered together. We sacrificed, united, and became something greater. It was bigger than any tragic love story. It rivaled any marriage or bond between just two people. We exemplified what it meant to truly surrender yourself to love, to move, bend, and intertwine for the needs of others.
“Goodbye,” Chase had said. “Okay?”
I remembered that his fingers shook as he retreated across the front lawn of Willow Park.
The wind blew through his hair.
Those green eyes landed on each of our faces. That little question shone over those betraying eyes. The question I knew nagged at him when I’d killed Vicki.
After each death, he’d assaulted us with insinuations and was soothed by our seemingly honest responses.
But I understood you best of all, Chase.
“Will there be any problems?” he’d asked.
The others had exchanged weird glances with me, unsure of what he truly meant, but I knew.
That wasn’t the question he wondered.
Oh no.
Will this one be killed too? That’s what you wanted to know, right, Chase?
“I love you, Jasmine,” he whispered again.
Tears burned my eyes.
My knees buckled and I collapsed to the rose-petaled ground as they began to make love again.
Will she die?
Yes, Chase.
With that satisfying thought, I wiped away my tears and stood up. I edged out of the room and tip-toed down the hallway through the back doors.
And she’ll die with no mercy because you gave me none.