Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 67324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 224(@300wpm)
When big strong arms wrap around me and lift me up, I blink through blurred vision to see Mykel carrying me to the bed. He’s helping me, even though I’m sure he doesn’t want to. He’s making me feel better during a time when I honestly don’t know how I will cope on my own. He lays me down on plush mattress and pulls the covers over me, and then he sits beside me, and when I gaze into his eyes, my heart aches a little.
He’s actually looking at me with appreciation, with kindness. A look I’ve not seen from him. A look I’ve been craving so heavily since the moment I met him. He’s seeing me for the first time, and I want to cry with happiness. He reaches down and swipes a piece of tear-soaked hair from my eyes, and then murmurs, “The first dead body I saw, it fucked me up, too. It always does. It’s somethin’ you don’t forget easily. It’s somethin’ that stays with you. But you gotta know it wasn’t on you, Waverly. Wasn’t your fault.”
“I helped bury him,” I whisper, and then another sob tears from my throat. “I helped dig the hole. I helped shove his body into it. I heard the thud as it hit the bottom. I watched a life just vanish, just like that . . .”
Mykel takes my face in his hands, and orders me to look at him. I do, mostly because there’s nowhere else to look when he’s holding onto me like that. “You did not fuckin’ do anything wrong. The club put you in this, and it’s exactly why I wanted you fuckin’ out from the start. It’s not right, and it’s not somethin’ you should have been forced to deal with.”
“I wasn’t forced,” I say, softly. “I wanted to do it, Mykel.”
“Yeah, and I fuckin’ said you shouldn’t for a reason.”
“I thought that reason was that you didn’t like me.”
He makes a low growling sound in his throat. “I like you, Waverly.”
“You do?” I confirm, gently.
“Yeah, I fuckin’ do.”
I start crying again, for what reason? I don’t know. Maybe because it feels good to hear those words. Or maybe because I’m just so damned exhausted.
“Come with me. I want to show you somethin’,” he murmurs, pulling the covers back and reaching for my hand.
I push up, swipe my tears away, and then take his hand and let him lead me from the room. He tells me to wait a minute and when he returns with the key to the locked room, guilt slams into my chest. I feel bad that I’ve gone into that room already, and looked at what he’s got in there, but I figure that’s a secret I’m just going to have to keep. I want him to show me this, and I want to know what it is he plans on sharing with me.
He opens the door and when we step inside, he flicks the light on, I let my eyes fall on the massive board that he’s got set up. I stare at it for a long moment, and after a second, I turn to him and say, “What’s all this?”
He walks in, taking it all in. “My parents went missing out of nowhere. I never believed they just decided to up and leave; they wouldn’t do that. This house, this life—they loved it. They went on a vacation, and never came back. Got the cops to look into it, but no real leads ever came out of it, and they told me they were likely dead or had decided to create a new life for themselves somewhere else.”
“That’s . . . shitty.”
“They’re not dead—I’m almost sure of it. I’ve been piecing it together for years, but none of it makes sense. I’ll find out what happened to them, though.”
“Is that what all this is?” I ask, staring at the board. “The information you’ve gotten?”
“Yeah,” he tells me, stepping forward. “It’s the information the cops gathered as well as the information I’ve gotten on my own. I was gettin’ close to findin’ somethin’ but then all this shit with Dax happened and I’ve been focused on the club.”
I step forward and point to the girl in the photo I saw the other day. Harlow. “Who is that?”
“She’s got somethin’ to do with it, but fucked if I can work out how. When all of this happened, the cops traced my parents’ movements and we traced it to this club.” He points to a clubhouse on the board near the picture of the three men. “After that, their trail went cold. We couldn’t find anything to indicate where they had gone. This is the last photo of them.”
I stare at the picture of his parents. It’s a semi-blurred camera shot in what looks like some sort of bunker. They’re both standing, staring at something or someone. They don’t look distressed, but they’re definitely focusing on something. I squint and lean in a little farther, looking at every aspect of the photo.