Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 62197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62197 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 311(@200wpm)___ 249(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
With a sigh, I laid my head back and closed my eyes. I’d survive this. One day, the loss of Ransom wouldn’t hurt so much. I wouldn’t reach for my phone to text him something several times a day. He wouldn’t be the first person I thought of when I had to share good news, a funny story, or a weird fact I’d found while doing book research.
A deep ache stretched and spread inside me instead of easing. It seemed even the idea of healing from his loss was just another layer of misery.
Even in slumber, my body sensed the danger. The other presence in the room. Knowledge that I wasn’t alone. It was my racing heart that jolted me awake. Fixing my eyes on the ceiling, I tried to calm my breathing while disoriented and confused. Had I been having a nightmare?
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. On instinct, I turned to get the bottle of water I left beside my bed at night.
A shadow in the darkness moved from the far-right corner and sent me bolting upright in the bed as a scream tore from my chest. The thought that I might still be dreaming, locked inside of a nightmare, crossed my mind. Regardless, this felt real. My eyes scanned quickly for anything other than a water bottle and my cell phone to use as a weapon, but went right back to the figure drawing closer. I had nothing. No way to defend myself.
I’d had nightmares since the encounter on the street with Ransom. The man he’d stabbed kept showing up in my dreams to finish what he’d started. Blood dripping from his mouth as he came to seek his vengeance. Those awful dreams hadn’t felt like this, however. Even while sleeping, I had realized they weren’t real. This … this felt very real.
The sound of my heart thundered in my ears, and I scrambled back, tangling myself further in the covers.
The intruder stepped into the moonlight spilling through the curtains, and his face was illuminated. For a moment, the world froze. I stopped slapping at the covers and simply stared. No longer praying this was my imagination or a fleeting terror in my sleep. But rather the opposite.
“Ransom.” His name fell from my lips in something akin to a prayer.
If this were a nightmare, it had taken a very pleasant turn.
“Who else has access to your apartment?” His husky voice filled the room, and I let out a relieved laugh.
He was here. I wasn’t about to die from some stranger in the shadows. But he did hold the power to rip my heart out.
Was he here to continue causing me pain? Shred what was left of my soul?
Stiffening, I straightened, and the smile on my face vanished. He didn’t get to do this. Show up in the night. Coming into my apartment, uninvited.
I had stayed up until dawn that night waiting on him. Believing that he’d come here after showing up and saving me. That he was in town to see me. He’d been following me, hadn’t he? I sat on the sofa, fully dressed, and watched the sun rise through the window the following morning. But he didn’t come. He vanished without another word. And then I saw the picture of him with another woman on Instagram the next day. I had sobbed for this man, on the floor, in the fetal position.
“Is this your thing now? Ignore me and only show up for brief moments to mess with my head, then poof,” I said bitterly, “disappear from my life again until you get bored and want to show back up?” I hated that my voice cracked as I said it. But in my defense, I’d just woken up, and I’d gone to sleep, crying on my pillow over the damn man.
His silence only made me angrier.
“Or were you just here to watch me sleep like some creeper, then leave without me knowing you had been here?”
The realization that a part of me wanted him to have snuck in to watch me sleep probably meant I was deranged. At least we had that in common. We both needed our sanity checked.
He had been with another woman! Her photo was on their Instagram account. She wasn’t some random hookup.
“I was going to wake you,” he replied. “Eventually.”
I watched as he stopped at the edge of the bed, and as much as I wanted to fling myself at him, I had enough pride to jerk the covers up over my body and scoot farther away.
“No. You don’t get to do this. Show up in my room at night. Show up on the street like … like Superman and save the day, then vanish!” I shouted the last part, then sucked in a breath. And go home to another female. I wanted to shout that at him, too, but I wasn’t sure I could say it without breaking down in front of him, and I’d be damned if he saw me cry.