Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
“Ah, so that’s the problem. Attractive and nice. It’s hard to hurt them when they’re like that.”
He would know. But then he’d been on a path of vengeance when he went after Halo. Holding a knife to her throat hadn’t bothered him at all. Although that memory tortured him now.
The last time someone had brought it up—which was Than Carver, his dead brother’s best friend—Bane had held him against a wall by the throat while I ate my breakfast and watched. Lucky for Than, his older brother walked into the room, and Ransom had calmed Bane down, threatening to go tell Halo if he didn’t let him go so Than could breathe. We all kept our mouths shut about the things he’d done to Halo before he fell into fucking infatuation with her. Now, he was married to her sexy ass.
“She’s got to be lying,” I said, setting down the bottle to pick my cigar back up from the tray I’d placed it in. “But she’s real…low maintenance. I don’t know that the living arrangements down there are enough to make her crack. She wasn’t wailing about the fact that her stomach was rumbling so loud that it echoed or that she would have to piss and shit in a bucket. I’m mentally preparing myself to physically hurt a female who can babble on about food from a Sam’s Club café like it’s fine dining.”
There was silence.
“Sam’s Club has a café?” Bane asked.
I took a pull from the cigar. “Yeah. And the hot dogs are fucking delicious. Even when they’re cold.”
“Huh, interesting.”
She had been funny at Hobby Lobby. She made me want to laugh more than once. It made me angry. I hadn’t wanted to have any opinion of her at all. Especially the one I’d gotten in the short few minutes we interacted before I took her from the parking lot.
“No female who looks like that one is going to be used to the conditions she’s in. Don’t let her fool you. She’s been having men fall at her feet all her life. And the ex-boyfriend of hers is fucking Alec Dart, as in the running back for the Saints.”
I stilled my cigar halfway to my mouth. She’d dated Alec Dart for two years? Really? The second-grade school teacher with no makeup, no fake anything, who was wearing a pair of cutoff sweatpants and flip-flops, had dated Alec Dart.
“Are you positive?” I asked, finding it hard to believe.
“Go look at his Instagram. He’s not deleted her from it. You’ve got to scroll a bit, but you’ll find her. I didn’t realize it, but when Halo saw her photo, she recognized her. She went and found her on his Instagram. That fucker who calls himself her brother is a State fan and followed Dart back then.”
Winslet was stunning. The all-natural-beauty thing had been given to her all the way around. But she didn’t seem like the kind of girl a guy like Dart would date. He had a huge ego, and he didn’t seem to be a relationship guy. In the interviews I’d seen him do, he was a fucking cocky-ass douchebag.
“Do we need to be concerned that the football star is gonna track her? If he calls the cops, then the Feds need to be alerted that he’s stepping into things.”
“Nah, he’s got models and cheerleaders on his arms all the time now. She’s not been on there in a long time. They’re the past.”
I fucking hoped so. But if anyone tracked her phone, then Wilder would know. We’d wait and see.
“I gotta get back to bed. Halo needs sleep, and if she wakes up and I’m still not back, she’ll come looking for me.”
I took another drink. “Yeah. Night,” I said.
“More like morning,” he replied with a small chuckle.
The call ended, and I dropped my phone into my lap.
I wanted to go see what she was doing. If she was sleeping on the concrete floor. I knew she wouldn’t be cold. It was July. But she sure as hell wasn’t gonna be comfortable.
“Just talk, little darlin’, and this can all end,” I whispered to no one.
Five
Winslet
Last night hadn’t been horrible. I had slept in worse places.
Like the time I’d run out of the apartment with Perry before Mom could kill him for breaking a glass he’d dropped because she’d startled him with her screaming. There was no way I was taking Perry back home that night, so we slept under the back stairs in the far corner of our apartment complex. It stunk, I saw three rats, and I slept sitting up while Perry laid his head in my lap. He had been seven. I had been nine.
Thankfully, I hadn’t heard anything down here, like a mouse or rat. Small miracles.
That was the main reason I could shut my eyes last night. The chair had been an added bonus, and sitting up with my back against the wall and my head on the seat, like I’d had to do on my desk in elementary school during quiet time, hadn’t been so bad. I had a stiff neck, but that was about it.