Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
“Because you’re dying.”
He flinched. “Eventually. My brother was only thirty-six when he was diagnosed with what our dad had. Pancreatic cancer works fast. He was gone within two years, despite immunotherapy and trial drugs.”
“So you think you will be dead by thirty-eight.” I didn’t say it as a question, more like an incredulous statement.
“Seven years is nothing in the scheme of a life.” His gaze softened. “A life I very much want you to have.”
“What about what I want?”
Unscrewing the cap, he refused to meet my eyes. “I’m protecting you. I know you don’t see it that way right now, but you will. I refuse to make you live through what my mother did when my father died. I refuse to fall in love and play happy families when there are millions of families losing their loved ones to cancers that I could potentially cure if I could just figure out the right recipe.” Grabbing my arm, he swung me toward my bed. “I swore on my brother’s death bed that I would dedicate my life to preventing others from feeling the same pain we did. I can’t break that promise just because I—”
The inertia of his swing made me sit heavily on my mattress. I braced myself and asked, “Just because you what?”
He froze and bit his bottom lip.
“Because you love me?” I asked quietly. “Because if you do...isn’t that worth all the pain? Isn’t love worth—”
“Love isn’t worth living the rest of your life in misery when you lose the one person you can’t survive without.”
“You don’t believe that.”
His eyes snapped to mine. “I do. With every part of me.”
My heart palpitated, priming for a fight.
I wanted it.
Needed it.
I couldn’t be flayed so expertly with sex and return to before. I wasn’t hardwired that way. Things had changed. I’d changed. I was fine with the knowledge I’d never see Hunter again. After all, I went into that room knowing our relationship was only going to last a few hours, but Nick?
He’d punctured my very soul.
He’d proven just how worthy he was. Just how desperately I wanted to be the one he came home to...not because we’d been forced to rent together but because we chose to share a life together.
He couldn’t return to the closed-off version I’d grown to despise. He couldn’t hide the passion I knew dwelled inside him. He couldn’t because I wouldn’t survive it.
He wanted to protect me from surviving his possible death?
So how could he explain why I mourned him already?
Why did grief percolate inside me as if I’d already lost him when he was still alive, still here in my room, holding out a tube of cream to give me aftercare, all because he thought it was his duty to tend to me after tearing me into pieces?
So honourable.
So noble.
So tragic.
“W-We need to talk about what happened tonight,” I whispered.
Anger flared in his eyes. “It’s dawn, Ella. Whatever happened was yesterday, and we’ll never discuss it again.”
My head pounded with no warning, crushing my spine into a slouch.
I wanted to scream and shout.
I wanted to hit him until he saw sense.
But...I was done.
Endlessly tired.
Eternally sad.
For a moment, we didn’t move or speak. Nick watched me warily as if expecting me to do exactly what I wanted and attack him. But when I just sniffed quietly and a single tear rolled down my cheek, he stepped toward me and gently undid my towel.
I didn’t stop him.
I didn’t care he bared my nakedness to him or resist when he pushed me higher up my bed and shifted me until I rolled over.
I lay on my stomach with wet, crazy curls covering my face and choked on tears as he slowly rubbed soothing cream into my stinging skin.
He hurt me more in that moment of tenderness than he ever had when flaying me alive with the flogger.
He hurt my heart.
He hurt my soul.
And when he finished coating my back in honey and aloe vera, once he’d applied dabs of cream to the fingernail crescents Hunter had imprinted on my hips and the rope burn on my wrists, he pressed the gentlest kiss to my shoulder and whispered, “Happy birthday, Ella.”
And then, he left.
Chapter Ten
SATURDAY SHOT ME AWAKE WITH A LOUD clap of thunder shaking the glass in the window frames. The storm from yesterday decided to have a booming encore, and I wanted to tell Mother Nature to eff right off.
Groaning, I rolled onto my left, wincing a little as my back twinged. With a sigh, I snuggled deeper into my comforter as rain lashed and hissed against the metal roof. My alarm clock said I’d only been asleep for two and a half hours. Any sane person would still be in bed on a lazy Saturday morning, especially if they’d been to Spectacle of Secrets last night and stayed up till freaking five thirty in the morning.