Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Trust.
It’s something we’ve shared with each other when we trust no one.
And yet, I turned on him after my attack, when he was the one who saved my life.
He wraps a soft cotton robe around me and I shove my arms inside. “This should keep you warm,” he murmurs.
I’ve forgotten my vow to trigger him to avoid a real conversation, to yell at him, to fuck like rabbits, to work my case, and just bury my phobia like he did my attacker’s body. He’ll never let me.
I twist out of his reach, my hair wet and dangling at my shoulders. His shirt is wet and clinging to his chest. I have a flashback to the past, to the night I killed my attacker. Kane had carried me inside my cottage, what had been my sacred sanctuary inherited from my mother until that night, while he took care of things. Things, being my attacker’s lifeless body on the beach. I’d been sitting on the couch, waiting on his return, and when the sliding doors had opened and he’d appeared, relief had washed over me until I’d seen his loose tie, and his white shirt streaked with red, with blood.
My gaze seeks out his now, and I say, “You know when I went to LA that was never about you, right? I wasn’t running from you. I was running from me.”
“The ‘you,’ you thought I created in you, Lilah. That still equates to me.”
“No,” I say, rejecting that answer. “No, it was about me. About how easily I killed that man and how little guilt I felt. This brings me to a confession. I have a phobia, Kane. Something I’ve never told you about.”
Surprise flickers in his eyes. “What phobia?”
“Right after I moved to LA, I was called to a crime scene. The body was hanging from the ceiling, but the hands and feet were in the wrong places—hands where the feet belonged and vice versa.” When he would speak, I hold up a hand. “The body didn’t bother me. It was the blood. It was all over the floor, like a lake. I had to leave the room and throw up.”
“That sounds human, bella.”
“I don’t get affected by crime scenes, Kane. You know this. No other scene did that to me. I thought it was a fluke. I thought it was about me being fucked in the head over you, me, and everything in between and on the left and right of us.”
His eyes narrow. “But tonight was the same?”
“Yes. The killer used a chainsaw. The body was all over the place, and I know that holds similarities, but my point here is that the water had been left on. The blood and water created a river. It suffocated me. I was not okay. But it wasn’t about the body. I could look right at the pieces of that body and be fine. I could not look down. What if that night I killed my attacker wasn’t my first kill, Kane? What if I’ve done it before and that’s what I’m remembering? What if there was a lot of blood and I’ve suppressed that memory?”
He closes the space between me and him and folds me close, his hand cupping my face. “You are no serial killer, Lilah. Killing to survive is not hunting.”
“I’m willing to hunt. I’d hunt Murphy and Miguel if they hurt those I love.”
“Not the same thing, bella. You know that. You fight for those you love. You fight for those who’ve been hurt by another, and you don’t stop until you find justice. All of this is the guilt you’ve suppressed. All of this is you proving you are human.”
“Do you feel guilt, Kane?”
“We’ve had this conversation, Lilah. No. It’s why I wanted you to let me kill that bastard for you. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Does that scare you?”
“You know you have never scared me but maybe you should.”
“No,” he says, his mouth lowering to mine. “But anyone who dares threaten you should not only fear me but should have nightmares about me.”
He means Miguel, who is no better than a walking dead man. What worries me is that he should know this. He should fear Kane, but he does not. This means there’s more going on than we know, but I don’t ever get the chance to express that concern. Suddenly, everything is about that moment Kane realized Miguel had cornered me. That moment he’d feared for my life.
His mouth closes down on mine and the robe is gone in an instant, and the taste of him is danger, anger, and fear for me. And fear is something I’ve never tasted on Kane’s lips. I end up on the edge of the sink with him buried inside me, and me holding onto him for dear life. As if holding onto him, is holding onto me.