Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75792 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75792 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
But Eli’s hand suddenly grips my arm tight, digging his fingers into my skin. “I would never allow them to lay a finger on you.”
Oh. He’s saved me now? That’s it? That’s what this is about?
“And that’s supposed to make me feel safe?” I scoff, frowning at him. “You still used me like a fuck doll. Like I was nothing more than the sum of my sins. That hurt too.”
He sucks on his lip, looking even more riled up than before. “You think I did all those things because I like it? Because I love to see you in pain?” When I spin on my heels, he whips me back around to look at him. His face is full of anguish, and something about it hits me like a brick. “Look at me. Just look. Please.”
He’s never begged me like that before, and it undoes me, dissolving whatever determination I had.
“I hurt them because I must punish them for their sins …” His hand rises to meet my face, waiting, waiting for me to pull away. When I don’t, he softly caresses my cheek. “But anyone who hurt you, especially.”
My face softens when he lowers his hand. “You did this for me?”
He gives me a firm nod even though his jaw is clenched tightly and his hand is palmed into a fist.
“You captured and tortured those men—”
“Because they hurt you,” he says, his words cutting as harshly as his voice. “And I did the same thing to you.” His nostrils flare as he sucks in a loud breath. “I hated every single second of it. I hate, hate hurting you. But I needed you to see what you had done,” he says, his voice aching as much as my heart. “I needed you to see the pain in your own heart. I did it so you could remember and get past it. So you could heal.”
He clutches his chest like he’s trying to grip his heart while towering over me. “It wounds me. Physically. Emotionally. But it’s a toll I accept.”
“Why? Why don’t you stop all of it?” I ask, feeling out of breath just looking at him.
He’s never been this open with me, and the sheer power he exudes is all-consuming.
He lowers his eyes away from mine. “I can’t.”
The rush of adrenaline feels trapped under a layer of disappointment. “Why? Why not?” I grab his hands and clutch them tight, his eyes rising to meet mine in a moment of reinvigoration.
“Because this is what I was born to do,” he says.
I never thought I would see it firsthand, but I have never seen this much misery in a living man. And worse is the amount of worry it gives my already aching heart.
“And there is something else I need you to see.”
Eli
My hand tears away from hers.
For the first time since I laid eyes on her, it’s like she’s the one chasing me instead of the other way around.
All of our back and forth bickering, the push and pull of our hearts, my devotion to her … it’s all come down to this single moment. The one thing I’ve kept hidden from her all this time.
It’s going to destroy her.
And me along with it.
But I must.
I have no choice.
No more options left to make her see the real me.
Nothing left to give except this … the full and honest truth.
And I already know exactly how it’s going to end.
I hold my breath as I walk toward the door all the way in the back.
A loud squeal coming from the other end of the door makes Amelia stop following me. Her pupils dilate. Finally, she realizes the truth. That wasn’t a sound any man could make.
It was a woman’s voice.
She rushes past me right as I open the door, only to stop in the midst of her tracks the second she spots who’s strapped to that bed with nothing but her own mind to keep her company.
The girl who fucked Chris.
Amelia’s lips part, her breath faltering. “This … this is …”
“The woman who Chris betrayed you for. The woman who snaked her way into your bed.”
Tears well up in her eyes as she stands frozen to the ground, staring at the woman in front of her, who squeals some more when she sees Amelia. Her mouth has been covered by a thick piece of duct tape, which she would never be able to get off on her own because of her bound wrists and ankles.
“What did you do to her?” Amelia asks.
I frown. “Is that really what you want to ask?”
She makes an uncomfortable face and approaches the woman gently. “I can’t …”
“Yes, you can. Go on. Talk to her.”
She turns white as a ghost. “But she’s—”
I march past Amelia and rip the tape off the woman’s lips. The woman shrieks. “There.”