Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
But it isn’t what I want. I can’t get my head around that. The idea that I won’t ever kiss her again. Or hold her again. I’ll be coming home to an empty bed every night where she should have been.
Fuck.
I let her down. I let them both down.
I told her in the beginning that I’d come after her. And I know now that I meant it. Because if nothing else, I need to know she’s safe. I need her to look me in the eyes and tell me that it’s over. Even then, I probably won’t let them go. Because I need them. I love them, and she can hate me for as long as she wants because I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.
I comb through her empty drawers, looking for any evidence she might have left behind. But everything is gone. She just deleted herself from my life. Her clothes, her shoes, her scent. None of it’s here, and it isn’t right.
The only thing I find is the last thing I’m expecting. Her journal is still tucked beneath her pillow on her side of the bed, forgotten. And I can’t forget how badly things imploded the last time I looked at this, but it doesn’t matter now. My feelings don’t matter. I need to make sure she’s safe.
I crack the pages and flip through to the end, and that’s when I notice the gap. The pages I read before weren’t the last pages she wrote. Not by a long shot. She started again in a different section of the journal, and when I see the words written there, I collapse back onto the bed.
I miss him. I miss him so much it hurts. But I know that I can’t make him love me. I just wish I’d never fallen for him.
My heart drums out a war cry in my chest. She fell for me. She wants me. It’s right here in black and white, but now she’s gone.
From somewhere in the house, something creaks, and I shoot up from the bed, whipping out my Glock. I listen for the noise again as I slink down the hall, but it’s quiet. Archer’s room is open, and everything is just as Ivy left it. The bed is made, but all his toys are gone. It stabs at me all over again.
And then I hear a sniffle. A tiny inhale of air, and my pulse pounds. Someone is under the bed. Ivy and Archer are gone, but someone is under the bed. I kneel down, ready to kill whoever the fuck thought they could come into my house. Only, what I find there is a pair of terrified, tear-soaked eyes.
“Archer?”
He splutters, and a sob bursts from his chest when he realizes it’s me. I reach in and drag his tiny body toward me, wrapping him up in the safety of my arms.
“It’s okay, buddy,” I whisper. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
He clings to me, squeezing me so tight it scares me. Because I know something awful has happened. Ivy would never leave him. Never. And as much as I want to give him time to calm, I need to know what went down here.
I rub his back and tip his chin up to face me. “Tell me what happened. Where’s mama?”
“She said Mr. Potato Head,” Archer sniffs. “That means danger. I had to go hide.”
“Ye did a grand job of it,” I assure him. “Now can you tell me where your mama was when she said it?”
“We were outside,” he croaks. “And the man came to pick us up. We were going to get in the car, but then mama said Mr. Potato Head.”
Acid eats at my throat as I consider the possibilities. But there is really only one. The Locos have found her, and I won’t stop looking for her until I’ve flooded the streets of Boston with their blood.
“You have to know this is a death sentence.”
Slick ignores me, going about the business of tying me to a lawn chair. Judging by the amount of time he spent driving around and the lack of foresight on his part, I can tell he’s not prepared. The rope he’s using is something he dragged out of a janitor’s closet, and it’s way too stiff to tie a decent knot. He didn’t think this through, and I’m eager to convince him of that because it’s the only hope I’ve got.
“You’ll bring down the heat of the entire Irish mafia if you do this.”
“Not likely,” he scoffs. “I don’t care who you are, they aren’t coming into this territory unless they want war with the locals.”
When I swallow, it feels like there’s glass stuck in my throat. All this time, I was afraid of the Locos. I thought for sure if someone got me, it would be one of them. But instead it’s some random guy who saw me in a club for five minutes and got bent out of shape.