Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
I stared at her. She looked away.
“Come here.”
She tensed up.
I grabbed her and pulled her closer. I got her face into both hands. “I’m sorry if I scared you tonight when I lost it. The fucking bastard raped my sister and carved his initials in her arm. To get back at me, Tia. Me. It’s my fault that happened to her.”
“It’s not, Tommy. The only person responsible for an action is the person who did the action.”
I massaged my temples and adjusted the blankets over us.
She tried to roll away after a minute and everything was all fucking wrong.
My girl was always there for me, she was soothing, always giving me her touch when I needed it. In the short time we’d been together it was as if she’d started sensing what I needed so that she could give it to me. It was like her secret power or something whacked like that.
But this shit with Tess must be hitting her hard. The news of Angel’s sister added to that? News of Angel and Dare being in Thailand maybe? She and Angel had gotten close. And the pregnancy. Was it all overload for her?
I reached for her jaw and she flinched.
“Stop pulling away. I need you. You don’t wanna fuck, I get it but come the fuck here.”
She settled in beside me but she was holding herself stiff.
“What the fuck, baby? For the love of Christ, I need you right now and you’re acting like I’m a stranger you’re stuck in an elevator with.”
She started to sob, bawl her eyes out hard.
“Athena?” I took her face into my hands again and kissed her on the lips, “Please, baby girl, what? What aren’t you telling me? You don’t have to be scared to tell me whatever it is…”
“You were so fucking mad at someone raping your sister. So enraged. What if I had a big brother to come after you when you did that shit to me?”
My world stopped. Tilted.
She stared at me and I saw what looked like regret wash across her features.
“You just said that to me?” My voice was rough.
She swallowed.
“Our vows, Tia. All the time we spent, trying to fix what I fucked up and you promised to love me unconditionally. But yet you throw my fuck ups in my face like this? At a time like this? Good this came out now, huh? How badly has this been festering while you pretend to love me?”
“I haven’t been pretending.”
“Then what is this?”
“I…”
“What the fuck is this?”
She sniffed. “I dunno. Maybe this is just me, amped up on pregnancy hormones, reacting to the shit show around us right now. You’ve stopped seeing Oliver, you’re all broody and angry. It feels like we’ve gone backwards so maybe that’s why my brain has gone back there. And now I’m here, staring at the same spot on the stupid Las Vegas strip as when we were here last time and you’re out there, pissed off, coming back and taking off that belt and my brain, it just…” she stopped talking.
There was a lot there, some of it made no fucking sense to me. Some of it, too much sense. So much sense that it made me feel really fucking sour.
“Know why I stopped seeing Oliver?” I snapped.
“No. I don’t. Because you haven’t said anything.”
“Did you ask me?”
She stared at me a second, then said, “I saw the rejected video calls and he left two voicemails on our landline.”
“Did you fucking ask me?” I asked, my voice nearly guttural.
“No. Did you fucking tell me?” she challenged, full of sass.
I fought the urge to throw her over my knee.
“He’s a Fed, Athena. He was planted. He’s wrapped up in all this shit with Zack and the place Dare’s wife came from. We sent Lisa to his fucking victim’s retreat to help her and they interviewed her to get all sorts of shit about the Ferrano family, and are using her to testify now, too. I’m in the line of fire in multiple directions, baby, not knowing if the bad guys in Thailand are gonna order hits on all of us or if we’re gonna have to change our names and live in hiding. I haven’t even decided what to do about Lisa, whether it’s safe to ask her what she told them or not. I’m in front of multiple firing squads here, this little fuck screwing with our family and raping Tess, but fuck, I didn’t think I was in your sights, too.”
She looked away.
I grabbed her by the chin and made her look at me. “This is bullshit what you’re doing to me right now, and once you think about it you’ll realize it. The way me and you started out was painful, I know I fucked up. You know I was fucked in the head and I’ve been trying very hard to get unfucked. I find out the counselor has been using me. I have good reasons to have trust issues. I thought the one thing I fucking had in the bullshit that is my fucked up life was you. Now this?”