Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 323(@200wpm)___ 258(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
He whirls on me, not as far away as I’d thought, his emotions dark and suffocating in their intensity. “What part of you’re better off without me do you not get? I tried to leave you alone, Alana. I stayed away. You should have fucking married someone else.”
I recoil and hug myself. “Okay. Yes. Okay.” Tears prickle in my eyes, and I hurt. I hurt so very badly, the way only he can hurt me.
He curses, and then he’s in front of me, pulling me to him, and his touch is fire—the friction between us flames. “That’s not what I want,” he says, his voice a gravelly, rough baritone. “It’s not what I have ever wanted, but did you not hear what I told you? I’m not a good person, Alana. Why the hell are you not the one walking to the door?”
“Because I love you, and I don’t think love is logical. I also know you’re not your father. You want to make things right, so do it. Make things right. And stop walking away, damn it. Just stop!” The words are all but ripped from my throat by way of my emotions.
His hands come down on my face, and he tilts my gaze to his. “I’m standing right here. I’m right here, Alana.”
“But you wanted to walk away.”
“I didn’t want to look in your eyes after I told you what I’d done. I didn’t want to see the rejection.” He presses his forehead to mine. “I’m not the boy next door anymore.”
Tension uncurls in my belly with his confession, and my fingers curl on his jaw. “You are to me,” I whisper.
He pulls back to stare down at me, his fingers fanning my face, and the torment I’d seen in him moments before has gone nowhere. “I don’t deserve you.” With this declaration, his mouth closes over mine, and I moan with the deep stroke of tongue, gone too soon as he tears his mouth from mine. “I’m not good for you.”
“Those words are destructive. You know that, right? They drive us apart.”
“I want to be your hero, baby, but the stakes are high. You have to know that.”
My fingers ball in the soft cotton of his t-shirt. “There’s a way to fix this. There’s always a way.”
“Not as long as he’s alive. That’s the cold, hard truth.”
I jolt back to the present. He’s going to kill his father. And that’s exactly why he’s not coming to me. The same reason I didn’t want him close to me. I didn’t want him to stop me from doing what I needed to do. He doesn’t want me to stop him from killing his father. But he’s telling himself it’s because I hurt him. He’s telling himself lies, just like I was telling myself lies.
I push to my feet and step out of the pool, suddenly aware that I don’t have a towel and that I don’t even care. I slide my shoes back on, grab my cover-up, but don’t bother pulling it on, carrying it with me as I all but run toward that cottage. I’m through the shrubs in a blink and standing at the door when a small part of my mind warns that I could be offering my half-naked self to someone else, but everything inside me says this is Damion.
The door opens, and Damion is standing there, still in his suit, his expression colder than the water, but I’m not dissuaded. “You walked away from me so many times to ‘protect’ me, as you called it, and I do it one time and you shut me out? How is that fair? And I love you too much to ever hate you, but being pissed at you like I am right now is another story. I’m pissed at you. I’m so very pissed at you. Why would you let me—”
He grabs me and pulls me to him, and then glances over his shoulder. “Leave,” he orders to whoever is with him.
A moment later, he’s pulled me inside, shut the door, and folded me close. “Why would I let you what, Alana?”
Chapter Seven
Alana
My cover-up falls to the ground, and my hands find the lapels of Damion’s jacket. The back door, or what I assume is the back door, shuts, and whoever was with Damion is now gone. “Answer, Alana,” Damion presses. “Why would I let you what?”
“Go again,” I dare, the feel of him next to my scantily clad body softening me inside and out. “Why would you let me go again? You promised—”
“I didn’t let you go. You let me go. You left me.”
I’m angry all over again, my temper flaring and my body hot for all kinds of reasons right about now. “As if you haven’t left me over and over my entire life?! I was trying to protect you.” I do my best to try to twist away from him.