Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
An emotion stirs in my chest. I’ve missed him so much, longed for him, and this is how we reunite?
“That was some storm,” he muses. “But it appears everything has cleared out now.”
Nothing is clear. Not a damn thing. Ren would hold me. Ren would kiss me. He would indulge himself in everything we’ve missed out on.
He wouldn’t treat this like a business meeting.
“Where have you been all this time?”
When he neglects to answer me, I press harder, glaring at the back of his head. “And why didn’t you ever contact me? Didn’t you ever consider what that would mean? How scared I’d be for you? I’ve been worried sick, Ren.” I try not to scold him, but we need to get over this before we can move on to anything else.
A second ticks by, then another.
Nothing. No response. I might as well be talking to myself.
Nausea claws up my throat, and an anxious worry settles into my bones.
This is all wrong.
If he would only speak to me, dammit.
I sit up slowly, cautiously, making the springs creak. My body’s stiff, aching, and there’s a funny sort of pain near my left shoulder. I guess I hit it on a stone in the garden. I look down over my chest and legs, surprised to see he changed me into clean but way oversized sweatpants and a thin Henley shirt. His clothes. A ghost of a smile pulls at my lips.
He does care about me, still, or else he would’ve left me in that muddy nightgown. I need to cling to that tiny bit of hope.
“You know,” I murmur, watching him closely for any sign of trouble, “everybody’s said all these things about you. Stuff you supposedly did. Bad things. I know they have it wrong, but how could I defend you if you never reached out to me to tell your side of the story? Do you realize how it looked when you ran away? Like you were guilty.”
I gulp as his shoulders roll back, his chin lifting. “Right?” I whisper. “But I know you aren’t guilty. You could never hurt Aspen or Quinton.”
That’s enough to make him turn his head partway, giving me a look at his sharp profile. Beautiful but forbidding. “Are you sure about that?”
“What?” I breathe, my throat getting tighter, my heart racing.
“I said, are you sure?” He turns toward me, brows drawn together over eyes I used to know so well. Eyes I wanted nothing more than to fall into and never come back.
“Of course,” I insist, even though it’s a lie. Now, it’s a lie. It wasn’t before when I clung to any last fiber of hope available. Relying on my finely honed talent for refusing anything I don’t want to believe.
But I’m not delusional, either. There are limits to hope.
“Or do you think I’m being noble again?” His lips twist in a sarcastic smirk as he throws my words back in my face. Yes, I did accuse him of that years ago. The Ren I knew wouldn’t make a joke of it.
He lets out a sigh before beginning to pace in front of the bed. “I can see why you’d think that,” he murmurs. “I was always there for you when you needed me. I was your hero.”
“You were,” I agree with a lump in my throat, emotion threatening to break through. “Even if you did break your promise.”
“My promise?”
No. Anything but this. He can’t have forgotten. “To always give me a first on my birthday. The night of my seventeenth, I didn’t sleep a wink. I waited past dawn, sitting at the window. You never came, never sent word.”
This time, there’s no hiding the pain so intense it makes my voice crack. I cried for hours, curled in a ball on the bed, once I gave up hope. Cursing myself, my naivete. How easy it was for him to hurt me, to abandon me. “It broke my heart.”
Understanding touches the corners of his eyes, softening them, and when he speaks, it’s with all the gentleness he was missing before. “It was impossible.” Says the man who kidnapped me from my father’s heavily guarded compound.
“Nothing is impossible. All I could think was that you were dead or something bad had happened to you.” Or that he’d changed his mind about me—somehow, the thought is even harder to voice than the fear of him dying.
“You think it wasn’t a struggle for me? That I didn’t curse myself for letting you down?”
“My point is, even that wasn’t enough to make me forget you. It didn’t change my feelings for you, either. I know the real you, Ren.” Who am I trying to convince? Him or myself?
“You’ve never seen my bad side.” He glances my way, meeting my gaze. “You never will, either. But it exists, and it is capable of any number of terrible things.”