Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
I’m dusting off my now-wrecked dress, it’s stained possibly beyond repair, when Shane reappears. He looks shaken, like something got jarred loose inside of him. He takes a few steps in my direction. Then a few more. The final few we take together. When he reaches me, he wraps me in his arms and holds me so tightly that for a moment I doubt he’ll ever let me go.
Breathing out harshly, he turns his mouth to meet the skin of my neck and kisses me there. Then he inhales me and kisses me again. Being held like this by him is a fever dream I don’t want to wake from. I almost can’t believe it’s happening.
Feeling bold, I cradle his head in my hands and kiss him and he kisses me back. It’s exactly as I remember it. Hungry and hard and soft and sweet at the same time. It’s perfect in every way. Like we were made for each other. Now what?
“Let’s get out of here,” he says.
Chapter 16
Once we get back to the Cobra and slip inside, we both sit quietly for a minute, getting our bearings. The parking lot emptied out at an alarmingly fast clip. We’re practically the last ones here.
“What happened?” I ask, my curiosity outweighing my concern.
I somehow feel like myself again. The person I was before the assault. Something happened to me tonight, snapping me back into place. It’s like my psyche got an adjustment. It does not look like Shane got the same benefit.
“Brandon was right. Hessians,” he tells me, staring straight ahead. His fingers stroke the bottom of the steering wheel. Strong hands, blunt long fingers. He won’t look at me and I have to wonder why. “Drug bust gone bad with undercover cops. One of them got shot in the stomach. It didn’t look good when I got there. He was bleeding out pretty quickly.”
“I could’ve helped.” Instinctively, I know I could have. No part of me feels scared or threatened anymore. And now that I think about it, I didn’t feel any anxiety when the shots rang out. That total calm that I’ve known most of my life is back. I’m liberated. I’m me again.
Shane shakes his head. “A miracle’s the only thing that could’ve helped that guy.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He nods, but his demeanor doesn’t match his words. “Why did you and that guy call off the engagement?”
That guy? The question throws me for a loop. I have to think about how to explain.
“Looking back, we were wrong for each other. I would’ve probably stayed married to him, maybe unhappily, for the rest of my life… But then I got jumped and the rose-colored glasses came off. Hard times will do that to any relationship––make you see the best and the worst in people more clearly…”
He glances over at me in the dark and takes me in, looking at me as if he’s seeing me for the very first time.
“He didn’t want to touch me after… like I was damaged goods. I broke it off after a session with a therapist we were seeing. He said––and I’ll never forget this––he said, ‘at least you weren’t raped.’ I knew then that I had grossly misjudged him… Worst part is he made me doubt my own judgement.”
“No person should ever be the reason you doubt yourself.”
He starts the engine and we ride the rest of the short way home in silence. It’s a comfortable silence, though. Not like the last time when it was fraught with tension. I’m at peace with whatever happens between us. Tonight was a great reminder that you can’t control life. It’s going to be what it’s going to be.
He pulls the Cobra up to the guesthouse and kills the engine, the dark creating a cozy cocoon for two. Neither one of us makes a move to get out.
“What do you want, Shane?” I say cutting to the chase. “Because you run more hot and cold than a fever. And frankly, I’m sick of it.”
“You.” It comes out direct and clear. There’s no questioning what he meant.
“Me?” I turn to see his face, to confirm what I’m hearing, but what I get is his profile. I get his chin, his sharp jaw, the straight line of his nose. What I don’t get are his eyes. The windows to his soul.
He exhales and looks at me then. His eyes burning with pent-up frustration and lust, so much lust and greedy need that I want to reach out and touch his face and crawl onto his lap and give him everything he can’t ask for.
“I want you morning, noon, and night,” he rasps. “I want you when you’re being a pain in the ass, and I want you when you’re playing Frank Sinatra to a heartsick donkey… I want you so badly I can taste you in my dreams; I’ve fucked you so many times there I can’t even count. Don’t ever doubt whether I want you.”