Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75633 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75633 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“That. Was. Amazing,” she says later in bursts, a smile on her sly little lips. She's perched over me, hand on my chest, a flicker in those dark green eyes tempting me to go one more round tonight. “And it's really the start of something, isn't it?”
I grab her hand, bring it to my lips, and kiss until I think I've left burns. “Damn right. It's the start of something beautiful, Red, and it's gonna be forever.”
Forever. Can it really be? The reward for putting my deepest, darkest fantasies about tearing Jackson Kelley apart to bed?
I don't know, but it's in my head the next time I'm in my shop. It's a painfully frigid January day, zipping near zero. The wind chill is a whole lot worse.
I'm under two layers of flannel, adding an extra log to the stove every hour, hands stuffed up an old Buick job for Sheryl's boy. It's his first car. I wouldn't have taken on something this easy for so little pay, normally, but she's always been good to me, treating Mia and me like human beings every time we visit her diner.
I wish like hell I had a piece of that dangerous cherry pie with my coffee right now.
Nothing like what I'd give to have a little peace and quiet, though. A void without the steady thump in my psychotic ears coming from the corner. It's the ammo box, and it's all in my head.
Three angry, bloodthirsty ghosts straining to get out. Who the hell can blame them?
I let them down. I didn't kill him when I had the chance. To have a wife and family, I fucking have to, and it's shredding me.
It's only been two days since the storm. Less than forty-eight hours since I got down on my knee, popping the most important question in the world.
She heard the crucial part. But I also asked the universe, God, whatever you want to call it for a second chance.
I know what the woman I'm marrying said. As for the rest...
I try. Strain my broken thoughts, trying to work on this car, without seeing Adam's severed hands in mine, or Zane and Erik screaming, armor piercing rounds blown clean through them.
My friends died so I could live. Me, and the sick fuck who still needs to pay for his crime.
“I haven't given up, you assholes!” I scream, spinning around, hurling my wrench at the floor. The clatter temporarily shuts up whatever's wrong inside me. “Give me some time. Let me figure this out. There's got to be another way. Clean, legal, some slip to bring the fuck to justice without outright killing him.”
That pounding in the box has stopped. Rather, my mind can't fabricate it anymore.
Time to step away. I walk to the frosted window facing my house. Growling, I swipe the ice off, chip away a little circle to see into my living room.
There's Mia inside, sitting on the couch with Red. They're laughing, pointing at something. The huge orange blur leaping onto the ottoman a second later tells me everything.
It's Whiskey, and I've never seen the greedy furball so happy. If a cat could smile, it'd look like him squealing for another treat, snatched from the ample supply of two giggling ladies who really shouldn't be indulging him.
Damn if there's not something wrong with my face. I was worried about my head, my mental health, a minute ago for seeing ghosts. Now I have a new reason.
I'm smiling, too.
Grinning like a slack-jawed idiot at the scene inside, which ought to be ripped from a Christmas card. Best part is, it comes alive when I wrap up for the day, and finally drag myself inside to wash the grease and oil off before dinner.
This is my life. Not the one I deserve, maybe, but the one I'll do anything to keep.
It's hard as hell to let go, but I can't be judge, jury, and executioner. Not if I want to be a husband, a father, and a good man.
If justice demands blood, it's a mortal threat to the forever I swore I'd defend with my life. And if it wants to upend everything, then I'm not the man to serve its sin.
The winter drags on. It's been weeks and nothing's resolved. I've buried myself in morning coffee blacker than the void, happy family dinners and weekend breakfasts at the kitchen table, and sex so good it makes me forget how to sign my own name the next morning.
It's finally warming up, too, thank Christ.
The late February thaw makes the streets muddy. I'm coming home, tires kicking up dirt, an empty flatbed and a fat envelope of cash in my glove compartment, two rebuilt tractors lighter since I dropped them off this morning one town over. Doesn't get more satisfying.
I stop at the mailbox before I pull into our driveway, holding the envelope in my hands I'm about to stuff inside. I finally broke down and got it together this morning, a sympathy card I picked up at the drugstore last week, while Red was busy helping my little girl pick out candy.