Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 120176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Too foolish.
But if he hated me, yeah. I could see it. We could still do this then. He just had to keep hating me.
My phone stopped ringing, and a second later, it started up again.
Cruz cursed, going for the phone. He answered, “What?”
A woman’s voice was on the other end.
He blinked, frowning, but handed the phone to me. “Some lady in Vegas?”
I launched off the chair, snatching the phone from him and I went to the bedroom. “Mom?”
“I’m not her.”
It wasn’t the lady from before. Different voice.
“Who is this?”
She coughed into the phone, her voice coming out hoarse. “I got a call from your mom. I was in the same facility as her. She asked me to give you a message.”
Every word she said was searing me. “What’s the message?” I didn’t want to hear it. It would be bad, so bad.
“She said she knows where you are and if you don’t want her to show up and fuck your life up, she wants fifty grand.” The lady’s tone grew firm but cold. Businesslike. “You’ve got to the end of the week to get it to her, and she said if you want instructions on how to get it to her, unblock one of her numbers. She’ll be waiting for your call.”
She ended the call after that.
“Who was that?”
Cruz was still here.
Fifty grand? She was blackmailing me?
Blackmailing her daughter?
What was the fifty grand for? Was she in trouble? Again?
My walls were rattling. They were threatening to explode, and I tried bringing up the house imagery again. Everyone had their own room. I could walk freely through the hallways, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t focus on envisioning a house.
I was so fucked.
My mom was blackmailing me, and if I gave in, she’d keep doing it. “This is payback for ignoring her.”
Right? Or was she really in trouble?
My chest was starting to hurt.
“Ignoring who? Who was on the phone?” Cruz was at my side, and he lifted my hand. “Jesus, Mara.”
He pulled back my fingers. I saw the blood trickling down.
I’d sunk my nails into my skin and hadn’t felt a thing.
Huh.
I looked at my other hand, wondering if I’d done the same with that one, but no. It still had the phone.
That’s when I lost it, throwing my phone.
A deep and primal scream ripped from me, and I couldn’t stop.
“Mara!”
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
My mother.
I couldn’t–
Cruz picked me up and ran.
I was still screaming.
I wanted to puncture my own ears.
Pain. Something. I needed to feel something other than what she was doing to me.
Cruz was fumbling, reaching into my pockets. I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t care. He was searching his own pockets. He tossed something in the corner, and then I was being shoved underwater.
I choked off, the water cascading inside my mouth, but no. That was even better.
I could drown.
Could I drown?
Would that make it stop?
“Fuck!”
I turned, starting to fight off whoever was there.
“What–Mara!” Cruz was yelling in my face.
Cruz.
It was Cruz.
I looked down, in a daze, seeing he was soaked, his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.
“Baby, stop screaming.” He moved in, huddling over me since I was starting to shake from the cold.
I felt that. Why was I cold?
He pushed back some of my hair, cupping and framing my face. His forehead rested on mine. “If you don’t shut up, your neighbors are going to call the cops. I have no idea why your roommates aren’t up here yet.”
Shut up?
Screaming. I’d been screaming.
My throat was hurting.
I whispered, “You hate me.”
His eyes flashed. “I don’t know about that, but yeah, I’m still pissed.”
“I need you to hate me.”
He frowned, not saying anything. But the need was too deep, too now.
I reached for him.
17
CRUZ
I didn’t know who this Mara was, and the thought didn’t sit right with me. She was lying on her stomach, stretched out on the bed, and I was moving inside of her from behind. I ran a hand down her back, over her ass, and she curled her back for me. She was always so responsive to me.
I loved that.
Did not love whatever was going on with her, but there was an extra frenzy to her. It was addicting. I felt it in my blood, this voracious need to keep going, keep tasting, keep fucking, just keep keep keep.
I’d only felt this on the ice. The hardest games, when you just inch out the win, get that last score or get past their last line of defense. It was the same feeling. Man, the rush. It was like ecstasy, but you’re in the zone.
I was feeling it now, this new demand to dominate her, as if I could fuck myself into her body, get under her skin where she’d never not feel me there. Every guy after, she’d be feeling me and not them.