Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
He stopped and looked around.
He saw the furniture and the rug, the toss pillows and the lanterns, the flagstone and the fireplace, the rusted outline of a motorcycle hanging.
He turned to look in the house.
He could see most everything because he had a lot of windows. French doors to the kitchen. A huge picture window by the pool table.
The under-cupboard lights in the kitchen were on, casting a shine on his blender and coffee maker, dimly illuminating the pool table that was set with balls ready to break.
He didn’t live in a trailer.
He wasn’t wearing secondhand clothes.
The woman in his bed would never take a fist to her flesh, and if by some slim chance she did, it would not be Core’s, but the man who did it would not continue breathing.
She would forever be beautiful, nothing weighing down on that, no one stealing it away.
She was safe.
He was safe.
He’d found a family.
He’d made something of his life, fucking up royally along the way, but he still did it.
He’d made something of his life.
On that thought, he placed his call.
Beck picked up right away.
“Hey.”
“She’s home.”
“Brother, man,”—that came out in a gush of breath—“damn. Happy for you.”
“She brought the bylaws back.”
Hesitation and then, “You pissed at me?”
“She’s sleeping in my bed. She needs sleep. She needs to eat, get meat back on her bones. But she’s in my bed. What do you think?”
Beck didn’t respond to that.
“We need to go back into the woods,” Core told him.
“Figured that,” Beck muttered.
“You gotta get it, when I found her, I had to give it to her. She had to get it first.”
“I know, brother. I been there before you, remember?”
Right.
“I’ll call a meet,” Beck said. “We’ll find a time. Then we’ll gear up and go into the mountains.”
He heard the door open behind him, twisted, saw Hellen step out with Nanook, and lost his mind.
“Gotta go,” he whispered, because if he talked louder, he would shout.
“Later,” Beck replied.
Core just took his phone from his ear and stalked to her.
She was in another one of his hoodies, it fell over her ass, barely, and she had a pair of his socks on her feet.
That was it.
“Get your ass in the house. It’s fucking freezing out here.” He came up against her and stopped because she didn’t move, except to wind her arms around him.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
Damn, he liked her hair like that, a mess from his hands having been in it.
He shook off thoughts of her hair.
“Get in the house.”
“Were you talking to Beck?”
Fuck it, he’d answer her questions fast then get her into the house.
“Yes. We need to go back to the woods.”
“Good,” she mumbled.
“Babe—”
“You had to come out here to do that?”
Shit, she knew before he did why he came out there to make his call.
She could see down deep into him.
All the way to his…
Fuck him.
All the way to his core.
“I had to be in my space. Space I made.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t get it until you asked that.”
“Okay,” she repeated.
He slid his arms around her. “Maybe, I don’t know, when she died, she probably wasn’t thinking about anything but the pain she was feeling.”
Hellen pressed closer, held tighter…
And listened.
“Or that she knew she was going to die.”
She held on but said nothing.
“Tortured myself for years that what was in her head in those moments was that she worried about me. I got into trouble. Acted out. I worried that at her end, she thought she brought another man like him in the world. Worried that she died thinking that.”
“I bet she was worried,” she said.
A familiar current of rot charged through him.
“Worried about her boy,” she went on. “And what he’d do when he got home and saw his mother that way, and knew, for years, maybe the rest of his life, he’d blame himself for not being there for her.”
Core dropped his forehead to hers.
“She didn’t think you were him, honey. She knew who you were. You proved it to her by making her safe. It didn’t last as long as it should have, but that’s what she had, that’s what you gave her before he took her away.”
“Yeah,” he pushed out.
“So why are you out here?”
“Because I had to look at it. What I made with my own hands. And I wish she’d lived to see I got out and built something.”
Hellen shoved her face in his neck.
“Found a family. Found a good woman.”
She shoved her face in harder.
“And maybe got the chance to give what I found to her.”
Hellen held on tight.
“You gonna get out of the fucking cold now?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she answered.
He let her go and took her hand.
He led her inside.
He took her to his bedroom.
When he got in bed with her, her legs were freezing.
He knew it.
“Hellen,” he growled.
“Make me warm,” she whispered.