Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
He inches toward me, but I back up, tearing my heart apart with that one step.
I love him.
But I’m confused. I need to think.
“Krisjen, I was a kid,” he pleads, “with an unbelievable weight on my shoulders. I never wanted to think about it again! And years later, there you were. In my house. All the time. With your bare feet and your pretty smile. Your music, your candles, your happy little fucking heart, and I never imagined this would happen!”
I drop the pillow, covering my face with my hands. Images assault me of them in bed together. They must’ve had conversation. Foreplay. A few laughs. Some part of him had to enjoy it, right?
Oh God. The tears stream. I can’t think about anything else. They’re all I see. I’m always going to see them in my head. I’m gonna be sick.
“You should’ve told me,” I sob. “You should’ve …”
“What?” he growls. “I should’ve what?!”
I startle, dropping my hands and looking at him through teary eyes.
“Should’ve stayed away from you?” he yells, advancing on me. “Should’ve let you go? Is that what I was supposed to do?” And he sweeps his arm across my desk, sending all my shit to the floor. “Just fucking let you go?!”
I breathe hard as my pencils and pens roll over my chair and onto the floor.
He grabs me, snaking an arm around my waist, the other hand holding my face. He kisses me hard, stealing my breath, but he releases me before I start fighting him.
He stares into my eyes. “Your mother is just jealous that you never had to pay me,” he says in a low voice, filled with disdain. “It was quite my pleasure, actually.”
And he throws me off, wiping me off his mouth and taking out a bill from his pocket.
He backs away, leaving it on the corner of my desk before he walks out the door. “I’ll let Dallas know he’s up.”
28
Macon
I charge out of the house, yanking off my tie and ripping open my shirt.
Whatever buttons were left after last night fly off in the driveway. Fuck her.
She has screwed her way through nearly every bedroom in my house, slept with family members I see every day. And she wanted to do it. There is nothing I wanted about Cara Conroy. So much so I could barely look at her daughter when she started hanging with Trace last spring. Every time she was around, it was a constant reminder of St. Carmen. In a way that Clay never was.
I swing open the door to my truck and climb in, starting the engine and peeling out of the driveway as fast as I can.
It’s light out, way past dawn, but I don’t know what time it is. The guys might be at work by now.
My hands shake, but I don’t know why. I’m not fucking mad. Or upset. I feel nothing. She’s nothing. Not special.
Traffic blurs in front of me, and I blink, feeling my eyes wet. I dig the heel of my palm in to clear my vision. They’ll probably be at work by now.
The road stretches in front of me, trees breeze past—cars—and I’m on autopilot. One arm stretched out with a hand on the wheel, the other propped up on the door, my hand gliding through my hair over and over again.
“Don’t.” I jerked away. “I don’t like that.”
I tongued the inside of my lip, tasting my blood.
She squeezed my neck. “Just get hard,” she tells me. “That’s your job.”
I can’t breathe. It hurts. My head is throbbing. Fuck.
A horn honks, and I snap to, veering to the side of the road. I stop and drop my head in my hand, tensing every muscle to keep the pain at bay.
I didn’t think about it for years. Every time it crept in, I pushed it away, not because what I had to do was so horrible, but what they wanted from me was.
People fuck for money all time, but they weren’t paying for sex. They were paying to fuck a servant. A nonperson.
I’d never had sex with a woman I didn’t like before that. I always knew her. Liked her. There had never been a one-night stand. It had never made me feel bad.
And after a while, I didn’t see Krisjen as anything other than what she really was. Beautiful. A good person. She’s bright and amazing. St. Carmen no longer existed when I saw her.
The last thing she deserves is me. She should have someone good. She deserves a clean slate.
I’ll never get out of this fucking hole I’m in.
She’ll never look at me the same.
I don’t know how I get home because I don’t remember the streets or the traffic lights, but I drift through my front door, hearing, “Hey.”
I turn my head as my brothers rise from their chairs, fully dressed. They blur in my vision, but I see Trace’s smile. He looks five again when he smiles like that.