Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154037 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
One second later, my phone buzzed in my hand. I grinned when I opened it to see the message.
Charleigh
Have fun, you sexy bitch. Make sure that man loves you up right.
Glee skated through me. I really was rubbing off on her.
I tapped out a response, my head downturned as my fingers flew across the screen.
Me
I intend to.
I started to straighten when I felt the shift in the air.
The cool breeze that had brushed my skin in comfort turned to a chill.
An ice slick that streaked down my spine and pooled as dread in the pit of my stomach. I started to whirl toward it, toward the foreboding that covered me like a dark shroud.
To pinpoint it.
To stop it.
Only there was no time.
No time to process anything except for the blur at the corner of my eye. A thunder of footsteps and a clamor of evil. The flash of a man raising an arm with a brick in his hand.
A brick that he smashed against the side of my head.
FORTY-NINE
OTTO
It was a couple of minutes before one when Raven and Charleigh stepped out of the café.
My insides stirred, a whipping of need to get back to my girl.
I was so fucked.
So fucked considering I hadn’t seen her in all of fifty minutes, and I was already sick to my stomach at missing her.
She and Charleigh were huggin’ it out in front of the restaurant.
The two friends who’d become sisters clinging to each other in the middle of the sidewalk as they whispered something under their breaths.
Could feel the emotion radiate from all the way over there. It clutched my chest in a grip of thankfulness that Raven had someone like Charleigh.
Someone to confide in.
Someone to trust.
Knew their relationship had changed both of them, their belief and encouragement in each other pushing the other toward their goals and dreams.
Didn’t mind that I had likely been the main topic of conversation during their lunch, either. Without question, Charleigh had Raven’s back, no matter what, even when her heart belonged to the man who was going to hate me when he found out.
He would.
The oath I’d made him all those years ago swirled through my head.
Raven might have liked to believe that he would see through it to support us, but she didn’t know the full extent of the promise I’d made to her brother.
But I wouldn’t be so much a coward that I would keep it from him for long. No chance I would keep the woman like a dirty secret.
Charleigh pulled away, then turned and started up the sidewalk. Raven watched her go, her expression filling with a grin when she lifted her phone to look at it.
I started to round the counter so I could meet her at the door, just needing to get her back into my arms, when I felt it.
A change.
An omen that blustered through the atmosphere.
The sense that I always got when something bad was about to go down.
Nothing but a slick of wickedness.
A thick stench that coated the oxygen and turned it evil.
I went clamoring for the door, shouting her name from within the confines of Moonflower.
“Raven!”
But it was too fucking late.
Too fuckin’ late because some vile motherfucker came from out of nowhere. Manifesting from thin air, emerging from the crowd in a flurry of depravity.
Panic surged through me when I saw he had a brick in his hand.
My hand was on the knob at the same second as Raven whirled his direction.
Sensing it, too.
No, Raven, no.
My heart leaped to my throat, and I ripped open the door and tore out onto the sidewalk at the same time as he brought the brick down hard and struck her on the side of her head.
She didn’t scream or fight.
She didn’t do anything but crumble to the ground.
“Raven. No!”
Fury and fear bashed at my senses, hate careening through my veins and sickness churning in my guts.
No. Raven. No.
Head spinning, I darted out into the road. Horns blared and people shouted their disdain. I just dodged the cars that screeched to a stop to avoid hitting me, zigzagging through the chaos as I raced for her.
Confusion bound, and I could hear the shouts of concerned bystanders, though it was a dull drone that could barely penetrate the tumult that cluttered my mind.
Second my feet hit the sidewalk, I was shoving people aside so I could get to her.
Anguish cut through the middle of me when I saw her. Cleaving and flaying as I looked down at this beautiful girl with blood pouring out of a wound on the side of her head.
I dropped to my knees, my hands shaking out of control as I brushed back her hair so I could get a better look at where she’d been hit. “Oh God, Raven.”
Feet came clattering up from behind, and Charleigh was on her knees beside me, horror in her expression as she began to inspect her.