Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
He arched an eyebrow. “Come on, Willow. You don’t have to play innocent.”
“Play innocent?”
“It was clear we had a connection earlier when we met in town.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not—”
Peter’s sinister smile made my skin crawl.
I swallowed hard, not wanting to say the wrong thing but wanting to make it clear that whatever he had in mind, I did not have in mine. “Peter, I think I’d like to go home.”
He snickered and shook his head. His eyes, though the same color as Theo’s, didn’t hold the same light. “Willow. Just come inside.”
Every hair on my body stood straight up from the deep, serious control of his voice. The last thing I wanted to do was push him to a level of discomfort because he was a stranger to me. He was the kind of stranger that I went out of my way to avoid, truthfully.
I’d traveled all over the world since I was eighteen years old. I’d met a handful of people, an array of personalities, yet my least favorite of all types were ones like Peter. The personalities that acted as if they deserved to have whatever it was that they wanted. The ones who expected people to bend over backward for them, no matter what. The ones who flipped the switch out of nowhere.
People like Peter were why my father feared me traveling alone.
People like Peter made my stomach turn.
I climbed out of the car, not wanting to make him angry, and I held my phone tight in my hand. He smiled as if pleased to get his way. I wondered how often Peter had heard the word “no” in his life.
We walked up to his front porch, and the moment I reached the top step, I asked him if we could enjoy the drink on his porch since the weather was so nice. I used my sweet-as-pie voice to make him unaware that I was two seconds away from booking it down the road.
He grinned his goofy grin. “Are you a whiskey or tequila girl?”
I bit my bottom lip and held the railing of his porch, swaying. “Surprise me.”
He rubbed his hands together. “My kind of girl. Be right back.”
The second he stepped inside his house and closed his front door, I turned into Forrest Gump, running down the driveway. I kept running and running as the sky darkened overhead. The second I felt as if I were far enough out of reach, I pulled out my phone to call someone.
Unfortunately for me?
Dead zone.
No service.
One of the perks of being surrounded by nature.
“Crap,” I muttered to myself, walking on the edge of the road, which had no streetlights. I glanced around the road, not seeing any other houses nearby. Did everyone in Westin Lake live on acres and acres of land with no other homes to be seen?
Even though my anxiety was building, I did my best not to get too overwhelmed. With each step I took, I said a silent prayer. I’d been in worse situations. Once, I got lost in the desert while traveling through Dubai. I had sand in parts of my body where sand did not belong. Currently, I had no sand between my butt cheeks, so that had to be a positive.
As I continued down the path, my heart skipped a beat when headlights came from around the corner. As I held my hand up in the air, I prayed that people in Westin Lake weren’t terrified of hitchhikers. Then I said an extra prayer that the driver wasn’t another Peter type of human.
As the truck slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road, my heart skipped several beats as the passenger window was rolled down to reveal the driver.
“Theo!” I shouted, tossing my hands up in celebration. “Oh my gosh! I’m so happy to see you!”
“Never thought I’d hear those words leave your mouth.”
“You and me both.”
“What the heck are you doing?” he asked, leaning toward the passenger window as he sat in the driver’s seat.
“Being lost.”
“And now found, I guess.” He unlocked his doors. “Get in.”
I did as he said, and the moment I slipped into the seat of his truck, my whole body relaxed. I released a weighted breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
I slammed my door shut and locked it instantly. “Thank you,” I said.
“The party was no good?”
“The party wasn’t a party. It was Peter trying to hook up with me.”
Theo’s face went stone-cold as he clenched his jaw. “Tell me what happened.”
I told him about the situation that went down with Peter. The more I spoke, the more I saw the rage building inside Theo. It was a quiet rage, though. A rage that others might not have noticed if they didn’t look closely enough. Luckily for me, all I could do was keep my eyes on him as I spoke.