Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Which left me wondering what had made her leave as fast and as recklessly as she had.
Did someone catch up with her? Her past?
Was she okay, wherever she was now?
Those worries were just my general worries now. I was known as a worrywart—or used to be anyway.
“Lark, are you sure you’re okay?”
This time worry was in his voice again.
I cringed.
What the hell was going on with me? I hadn’t been this spacey in months!
Then I realized why I was acting like this. It’d been Harold’s threats.
Last week it’d been the threat of taking my house away. This week it’d been the threat of telling people I wasn’t who they thought I was.
Sal wouldn’t need much. Just a tiny little nibble on a line, and he’d have someone here to investigate it.
It wouldn’t take long from there.
Sal had a lot of money.
I liked to say it was more than Bill freakin’ Gates, but that would be an over exaggeration—but only barely.
If he lost a hundred-dollar bill, he’d be more upset that the thickness of his wallet was throwing off his perfect posture causing him to appear less than the superior person he deemed himself to be then he would’ve been over the fact that he lost the money in the first place.
No, it’d take more than the loss of a measly hundred dollars to have him worried.
I once overheard him talking to his accountant who said that he couldn’t find ten thousand dollars, and Sal had just waved him off like he was an annoying flea. “Just mark it as a loss, and go from there.”
Those words had haunted me from the day that I’d heard them.
I could’ve taken that ten thousand dollars and lived off of it for the first few months that I hid from him.
I could’ve done a whole lot of stuff with that money.
So much that it still made me angry to this day that he’d been so nonchalant about losing it.
The asshole.
Then, come to find out, he hadn’t ‘lost’ the ten grand at all. Sal had given it to some random waitress who he’d thought was excellent at serving him his steak.
It hadn’t even been our waitress that he’d given it to, but literally, the woman that had placed his steak in front of him.
“Lark.”
It was the hands this time that brought me back to the present.
“You’re kind of scaring the shit out of me,” Baylor said. “What’s going on?”
I grimaced. “Bad memories.”
He stared at me, studying my face, and then nodded once. “Have those myself.”
I smiled, but the smile didn’t reach my eyes.
He noticed that, too.
“Why are you here?”
He didn’t answer.
Or at least, not for a long time.
“I’m here because I want to be here,” he finally said. “I—”
There was a commotion outside—a lot of yelling, screaming and word hurling—that had Baylor and I walking out onto my front porch.
I wasn’t surprised by what we saw in the least. At least, not by the altercation that was going on in the middle of the street.
It was the man that surprised me.
I’d expected Travis, or maybe his wife to say something. What I hadn’t expected was some random man.
A random man who was utterly, stunningly gorgeous.
His hair was black, and his eyes were even darker.
He was wearing a black t-shirt, dark washed blue jeans and a black baseball cap. His eyes were ahead, focused solely on Harold, who was being surrounded by three very upset looking ladies.
The three ladies were yelling at Harold—well, yelling was probably too strong of a word. More like they were having a strained conversation that clearly had to do with the tow truck that was backing up to Kennedy’s car right that very second.
Well, it was trying to at least, but Evander was standing in front of her car.
His ass was leaning against the hood, blocking the tow truck from getting to the car, with his arms crossed tightly over his abdomen.
I had a feeling that he wasn’t angry as much as he was waiting to pounce.
Oh, and he was blocking the tow truck from getting to him by continuing to lean casually against it.
A man got out and started speaking in low tones to Evander, but moments after the conversation started, it ended and Evander turned to me.
“You reported the car?”
I shook my head frantically. “No, I didn’t.”
Having that man’s attention solely on me felt like I’d just stuck my finger in a live socket.
Though they were chills, they weren’t good ones like the ones I got with Baylor. These were ones that spread down my spine as Evander stared at me with open anger on his face.
“I have the complaint right here. Brown car parked in front of 1992 Liberty Lane.” He pointed to my house. “That’s you.”
“It might be me, but I didn’t call anyone.” I paused and narrowed my eyes at Harold. “I’ll bet he did, though. Gave me a ticket for it and everything.”