Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88114 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Finn throws himself into the room followed by Angus and more of my guys. The smoke is thick and nobody can see a damn fucking thing. Another bullet hits me, this time in the shoulder, and I’m blinded with pain. I shoot at Hugh as he escapes into the bathroom, but I miss, and the gunshots and shouts are pure chaos as windows shatter and Tara screams. Blood’s everywhere, smoke’s filling everything, and the gunshots sound like they last a lifetime.
Finally, it ends with Finn calling for a ceasefire. I’m lying on the floor, bleeding, breathing hard. Cormac’s dead. Tara might be dead too. I don’t know and I don’t care. My eyes and lungs sting from the smoke and all I want to do is stay here on the floor of Tara’s old home and let the blood leak from my body until this pain is gone.
I don’t want this anymore. I’m tired, so fucking tired. Tara poisoned my dad and she poisoned my mom and everything’s so broken. I feel hands grab me and drag me outside into the fresh air. I cough and look up at Finn, who frowns at me.
“You alive?”
“For now.”
“You’re hit.”
“Three times.”
“How bad?”
I shrug and groan in pain. “Not too bad.”
More people come out of the cottage. My soldiers first followed by Tara limping alongside Angus. They lower her down on the ground and she hugs her knees to her chest, sobbing.
“Find Hugh,” I say, grabbing Finn. “Find him.”
“Already sent men to hunt him down. He won’t get far.” Finn looks at Tara. “I think the girl’s okay.”
I take a deep breath and roll onto my side. I suck in sharp breaths to keep myself from passing out as a wave of pain threatens to force me under. Slowly, I climb to my knees, and sit there panting as I stare at my wife, my girl, the one person I thought I could love most in the world.
Poisoner.
“I want you gone,” I say quietly. My voice sounds like gravel. She looks up at me with tear-streaked eyes rimmed red. Blood’s splattered all over her and I don’t know if she’s injured or not.
I won’t let myself care. Stop fucking caring. She poisoned your father and killed him. She poisoned your mother and ruined her.
I have to stop caring.
Stop fucking caring.
“Kellen,” she whispers.
“Leave,” I say sharply and clench my teeth against the fresh pain. “Leave this place and never come back. We’re finished. Any deal we had is done. We’re through. I don’t care where you go, but make sure it’s far away. You’re lucky I don’t kill you here and now.”
She nods, crying all over again. I gesture at Angus and he bends over and helps her to her feet.
She hesitates, looking down at me. I stare back at her but I don’t see the girl I thought I could love.
I only see someone I used to know.
My wounds are like fire. I can barely think from the pain and the blood loss. But the look in her eyes right now, the pure hurt and sorrow, it makes me want to curl up and die.
“Go,” I whisper, barely choking out the word.
And she turns around and leaves.
Chapter 25
Tara
The humidity is killer.
I wipe my forehead and guzzle down some water. The sun’s brutal and the heat is bad, but the humidity makes it feel like I’m swimming in an outdoor pool. I swear, but it rolls down my skin and seeps into my clothes and does nothing. Clouds roll across the sky and I squint at the weather forecast on my phone—almost time for the thunderstorm that seems to randomly show up each and every day. I have a few more flowers to plant and then I can call it quits.
When I shove my spade into the dirt, a single sob rips itself from my chest. A memory hits me hard in the face: the gardens and their cacti and the native bushes in neat and lovely rows all sculpted to perfection. My masterpiece.
I’m shaking. Trembling. I have to sit there with my face inches from the dirt breathing in the smell of the ground, the earthy bite of crushed rock and soil, the ancient scent of decaying plant life, until it finally passes.
I let out a strangled groan as I sit up and lean my head back, slowly filling my lungs with air.
It comes and goes, this feeling. The sadness hits me out of nowhere and suddenly I’m thinking about everything I’ve lost and hating myself so much for all my mistakes. For the death I’ve left behind. I keep wondering if I’ll ever be myself again.
It’s not going to stop.
But it’s only been a couple weeks. I have to keep reminding myself, it’s only been a couple weeks. Yes, I’m having daily panic attacks and yes, they don’t seem to be improving, but I need to give myself some time.