Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 94436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
It seemed rather ridiculous to me that I would be threatening someone like Karson who probably knew at least fifty ways to kill a person. In other circumstances it would be. But not this one. I was being completely fucking sincere.
I pointed to the door. “You march your ass in there. You show her all that pain you’re feeling. Don’t you dare fucking hide it because she needs to see it. She doesn’t need you to be the big, strong man without a heart. She needs your heart. Your broken heart. To know she’s not in this alone.” My hand was shaking as I pointed toward the door.
Karson stared at me for a beat longer, heartbreak glittering in his eyes, defeat saturating his every pore. Then he turned and walked to the door, disappearing inside.
My entire body sagged in relief and exhaustion. In sorrow.
I jumped when something moved out of the corner of my eye. A black shadow. A shadow that turned out to be a man. I should’ve known better. I was here, holding myself together only so my best friend could fall apart. I could collect all of her broken pieces and keep them safe until she was ready to put herself together again.
He didn’t come to me immediately. He stood there, watching me, the silence in the hallway a roar in my ears. My hands started shaking first. Then my entire body, to the point where I wasn’t sure how I was still standing.
Then I knew why I was still standing because Jay was holding me up.
Chapter 16
Two Months Later
Things had changed drastically in two short months. For the worse except for one magnificent, extraordinary thing that I’d been keeping to myself for the past week because I’d had no idea how to be happy out loud when everything around me was so dark and uncertain.
Wren had been discharged from the hospital after two weeks. She’d broken up with Karson. Or had tried to. He’d tried his best to fight for her. His very best. And the very best of a badass, deadly alpha male was pretty fucking good.
Wren was better.
On a good day, Wren was better.
But this was not a good day. These had been the absolute worst days of Wren’s life. She was not at her absolute best. Therefore, the breakup stuck. No matter how hard we all tried to talk her out of it, reminding her that she loved him, that he fiercely loved her and that they’d lost something ... together. That they could heal together.
But sometimes, when you lose something so precious, so all-encompassing and so brutally, it doesn’t matter how much love there was. The pain was too great; it scooped out everything that came before.
Karson still followed her practically everywhere. She ignored him. She pasted on fake smiles, threw on heels, lip gloss and couture and strutted herself back in to her old life. The one that no longer fit her anymore. It was much too small. The trauma had made her expand, forcing open all new places to fit her pain. Sure, she could put on the same heels, follow her old patterns, but she’d never be the same woman.
We were all holding our breath for the moment when that realization hit her. For the inevitable breakdown. Because despite a few bouts of tears in the hospital, Wren had held tight to her grief, with a death grip. She was not in denial, but she was something. The closest she’d come to truly losing it was at the bonfire she had in her backyard, burning every piece of baby memorabilia she had collected the past five months. She’d watched the flames with dry eyes and a full glass then flirted with the firemen when they came.
Karson, despite following Wren around every spare moment he got—including sleeping in his car outside the gates to her house—had turned near mute. I found it physically hard to look at the man now. If you could call what he was a man.
Despite the yawning chasm of my friend’s pain, my life had returned to what could be called a semblance of normal. Albeit with a serious increase in security and Jay refusing to ‘let’ me take jobs he could not vet first. Before all of this, I would’ve put up a hefty fight, but I was wearing a small scar on my right arm to prove that that was not a fight worth having. I let Jay ‘vet’ my jobs. Didn’t say a word about the increased security or the guns. Plus, I now had something else I was trying to figure out how to tell him.
Tonight was meant to be the night when I told Jay the news. The extraordinary—though incredibly bittersweet given what Wren was going through right now—thing that scared the shit out of me but also filled me up with a unique kind of warmth, a kind of hope.