Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
It felt so wrong. Not in my stomach but in my head. I wasn’t supposed to get other people involved, but I was never supposed to be in this position, so where did that leave me?
Having to rely on someone with no allegiance to me other than a debt he really didn’t owe me, if he put his mind to it.
On the flipside, he had no reason to believe I would be true to him either, especially with the amount of information he’d willingly shared with me, which I was still suspicious about.
Then again, I was suspicious about everything with him. Why he had suddenly started to talk to me. Why he had gone out of his way to hold me while I’d been sick when he could have easily just let me lay there, miserable.
But my paranoia hadn’t gotten me anywhere in life. Not really. And if he could go out on a limb and tell me things about himself, then I could do the same.
For the first time in my life.
Watching him carefully, I slowly lifted my hand and held it out toward him. “Friends?” I offered slowly, expecting him to laugh or scoff or something.
Those incredible eyes moved from my hand to my face and back.
“We were temporary friends before. I want you to know that I don’t have any plans to backstab you or sell you out. Friends don’t do that kind of shit to each other, right?” I asked him, holding my palm out mostly steady. “You saved my life, and I want you to know that whatever I can ever do for you, I will. You can use me as a human shield, really, even if I’m not dead. But I hope you won’t. Because that would kill me.”
His face was remarkably calm.
Then those long, almost cool fingers and that big, smooth palm met mine. Alexander shook my hand as his eyebrows rose… and was that amusement on his face? A little bit of it? Then he let go just as fast. “That was easy,” he said in a funny voice. “Good.”
I lowered my arm, rubbing my fingers against my palm. I’d felt a light zap on my skin from the contact. “You’re ruining it by being smug.”
He lifted a shoulder, and his amusement disappeared. “You’ll stay with me. You agree?”
I nodded. I didn’t have a choice. Not a smart one at least. “I agree,” I said, ignoring the slight panic.
Alexander dipped his own chin, and those damn purple eyes burned over my face one more time, making me wonder again just how rough of shape I had to be in. His voice was low, serious. “You’ll be under my protection for the rest of your life. You understand?”
The rest of my life? “You mean until we figure things out?”
He shook his head, gaze intent. “They’re never going to stop looking for you, Gracie.” He nailed that coffin shut. “You laid on top of me to save me, even though you knew nothing they could have done would hurt me. For. The. Rest. Of. Your. Life.”
The urge to cry was so strong, it took everything in me to keep it together. “Okay. I promise not to take advantage. I’ll try and get something figured out as soon as I can,” I swore, trying to hold on to my sanity as thunder cracked overhead, sounding closer.
I had no choice. I was out of them. Again.
But—I swallowed hard—I was alive, and I’d agreed to this. That was my choice.
I wasn’t alone either.
I had this butthole. My new friend.
Life was never going to be the same again, and I just had to deal with it.
I wasn’t sure how any of this had happened. How he’d landed in my yard of all places. How exactly the cartel had found me after I’d been so, so careful. But all of this had occurred, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Nothing but figure out everything as it came.
And it just so happened my only ally was a member of the Trinity. A man who could crush part of an engine into dust effortlessly. Who had been shot in the shoulder and only gotten a hole in the hoodie he had on. A being who could run barefoot over rough terrain and pine needles for days without a single scratch or complaint.
It could have been a hell of a lot worse to have someone else feel like they owed me.
It definitely could have.
I didn’t want to live with him. I didn’t want to take advantage. I definitely didn’t want to owe anybody.
But there were a hell of a lot of things I’d had a lot of time to think about while I’d been freezing my ass off, thinking my life was over. There was so much I wanted. And all of it outweighed what I didn’t.