Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
He turned the heat on full blast.
Then he drove.
FIFTY-FIVE
RIVER
My pulse roared in my ears as I stared at Charleigh. She stood across the lobby, face full of tears, eyes puffy and red, cheeks chapped and raw.
My mind fucking reeled, trying to make sense of what she was saying. I kept looking between her face and the stuffed animal she had clutched in her hand.
Stones sank to the pit of my stomach as I tried to process through her demands. Wondering why the fuck she had that stuffed animal. Why she’d gone through my things.
Why the fuck she could barely stand.
She swayed from side to side, clinging to that stuffed puppy like it was a lifeline. A buoy when she was drowning in a sea of misery.
My throat thickened, and my chest stretched tight. The protectiveness I’d always felt for the child built in intensity. Steel barricades I would never let anyone through.
But this was Charleigh we were talking about. Charleigh who I’d confessed everything to.
Everything but this.
“Is he yours?” She choked the words around a sob.
I wavered, uncertainty battering my brain. My devotion to the child had become the greatest focus of my life. My reason. But Charleigh had become that, too. I couldn’t keep her in the dark. Not with this.
I minutely shook my head. “I love him in every sense of the word, but no, he’s not my biological son.”
It felt like a blade was driven through me at saying it.
Charleigh broke at the confession, and she flew into a fury of sorrow and grief and rage. In the span of a second, she’d erased the space between us and was slamming her fists against my chest. “Whose is he? Whose is he? You said his mother was dead. Tell me.”
She kept begging it. Wheezing it over the grief that clotted her throat.
What the fuck was going on?
I tried to gather her up and stop her assault, but she was distraught, verging on hysterical. “Tell me!”
I managed to pull her to my chest, and I locked my arms around her. My thoughts were a disorder as I tried to catch up to what she was implying.
I tucked her tight, pinning her arms to my chest as I muttered at the top of her head, the grief of what I’d felt that day slamming me through.
The way I’d failed.
The way I’d made the commitment that day that Nolan would be the only person I would ever again make a commitment to.
Until her.
“She is dead.” The words scraped from my throat as if they were a confession.
“No,” Charleigh sobbed, her head shaking against the violent thunder in my chest. “No. You had his things. I know they are the same. It’s him. It’s him. And his hair…the birthmark.”
“Charleigh.” I tried to break into the turmoil that had her trapped.
“Levi. He’s Levi.”
I went cold. A slick of ice slipped down my spine, freezing every inch of me as it went.
“What did you say?” It raked out of me like the dragging of razors.
“Levi. My son was Levi.”
Levi.
I started to tremble, guts a tangle of confusion and fear.
“Tell me who you’ve been runnin’ from, Charleigh. Who?” It grated off my tongue.
Charleigh went rigid before she burrowed deeper into my chest.
“Frederick Winston.”
The two words hit me like shotgun blasts.
The room spun around me, and the walls closed in. I held her tighter as it all sped, coming together. The truth slammed me like a runaway train.
Charleigh Lowe doesn’t exist.
My arms fucking shook, and my teeth ground as I forced out, “What’s your name? Your real name?”
Charleigh flinched then hung on tighter as she breathed, “Chastity Winston.”
No.
She was dead.
Chastity Winston was dead.
I’d seen it myself.
Had seen that car go over the bridge.
I’d only been able to save one person in that car.
Levi.
“Chastity died in that car wreck.” The words were gravel. Shards and stone.
Charleigh trembled like razors were dragging across her flesh.
“No. It was my cousin,” she choked. “She was in the car. A decoy so I could meet my parents at the right place so they could help me and Levi get to safety.”
That energy that had connected us bashed against the walls. A howl that thundered and shook.
“Levi was killed,” she whimpered. “The news said…”
I gripped her tighter, holding her through the hurricane that beat around us. “I got him out, Charleigh, I got him out.”
A sob tore from her mouth and Charleigh lost strength. She crumpled to the floor. I went with her and pulled her onto my lap and let her sob. My hands stroked through her hair. Again and again.
While the truth whirled around us.
Nolan was her son. Nolan was her son.
“How?” she begged. “I didn’t…my father…”
She couldn’t even form the questions, and I tried to fill in the pieces that loomed around us.
“Your father contacted us for help to get his daughter and grandson out of an abusive situation. We were supposed to meet on the other side of the bridge where the accident happened. I was waiting. They were being chased by an SUV. No question, Frederick’s men. They were driving recklessly and caused the accident. I watched the car go over. The SUV immediately took off, and I dove in. I was able to get Nolan…Levi…” I corrected, “…out.”