Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Before I completely lost it.
Before she realized who I really was.
“Milo, are you okay?” she whispered through the lapping shadows, and I thought it was just then she realized I wasn’t in a good state.
She eased forward another step.
Energy snapped in the air.
She touched my shoulder. “Milo?”
I fumbled around to face her.
She gasped, and both hands flew to her face. “Holy shit! What happened to you? Oh my God! Oh my God!”
She started flapping her hands all over.
Spastic.
Frantic.
“Oh no, Milo.”
In a frenzy, she blinked. “I’ll call an ambulance. Right. Yes. An ambulance.”
She started to dart back for her room.
“Don’t you dare.”
She whirled around, shrieking at the same time, “You’re bleeding!”
She had no idea the blood I’d shed.
“I’m fine.”
A frown curled her adorable brow, and she slowed, swallowing, still looking like she might pass out at the sight of me. “Who did this?”
“It’s fine,” I grumbled.
She opened her fingers enough that she could peek at me through them. “It’s not fine. Please tell me Karl didn’t do this.”
Funny how she didn’t want it to be him, and I was praying it was.
That asshole would be so much easier to deal with.
“Don’t know. Three guys jumped me.”
“Oh, God,” she whimpered, and she looked around like she was searching for an answer before her attention returned to me, her voice curdled with disbelief. “Please let me call an ambulance.”
I lifted the bottle. “I have everything I need right here.”
I tipped it to my mouth, my sights set on draining it.
Oblivion.
It’s what I needed.
That or her touch, and that was something I’d be a bastard to take.
I’d already proven that earlier.
I let the bottle fall to my side, dangling it by the neck.
From where she stood halfway across the room, I stared at her silhouette.
At her care.
At this woman who was going to do me in.
It didn’t matter that one of my eyes was almost completely swollen shut. That I could hardly make her out. She was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. “Just go, Tessa.”
Worry split through her features. “Do you really think I’m going to walk out on you, Milo? Do you really think that’s who I am? Because I don’t walk out on my friends, not when they need me.”
TWENTY-TWO
TESSA
Horror held me captive as I looked at Milo from halfway across the room.
Dread and sickness a spiked ball that I swallowed, ripping up my throat and tearing holes in my stomach.
I felt…shattered.
Shattered at the sight of Milo who’d been shattered, too.
Physically, and in a bad, bad way.
Blood saturated his white T-shirt that was ripped at the side. What wasn’t red was soiled with dirt and debris. He had an oozing gash at his temple, the blood dried and sticky where it’d trailed down his cheek and into his beard. His right eye was so swollen it was merely a slit.
My sweet mountain man was a mangled mess.
But I thought it might have been his heart that’d been battered the most. That broken crown mangled where it barely clung to his head.
His spirit was this darkened veil that murmured of secrets and atrocity.
His pain and guilt at touching me.
I wanted to wipe it from his being.
But it was my own guilt that threatened to suffocate. The proof of what I’d dragged him into.
Hatred burned through my being, infiltrating every fiber.
Karl was a monster.
A disgusting pig.
His pathetic ego so vile and inflated that he would stoop to this.
I eased back Milo’s direction.
Energy flashed. Strikes of electricity that zapped in the night.
I tried to protect myself against it, against the memories of Milo having me propped on the island that were so vivid I had to grind my teeth to keep from moaning.
His kisses still alive on my tongue.
His touch still trembling through my body.
“Tessa,” he warned. I thought the man might be so in tune with me that he’d read every sordid, beautiful thought that had traipsed through my mind.
“Let me take care of you,” I murmured as I reached out to pry the bottle from his fingers that he seemed set on emptying.
I set it on the counter, trying to find composure and balance, my tongue swiping my bottom lip as I steadied myself to look back at his marred face.
Pain hit me again.
God, how could Karl be so cruel? So vicious?
I wrapped my shaking hand around his. “Come with me.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Please.” Reservations curled deep in the lines of his face, but he finally nodded and gave, threading his fingers through mine.
Relief pummeled me when he did, that connection coursing through our touch.
I slowly led him into his room.
Everything about it was as masculine as the man. That enormous bed and the chunky, rustic furniture, his pride in the pictures of his children that he had displayed all over.
There were a couple that were of him and his mother, and damn it, that was sweet, too.