Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Theo was a criminal.
A…murderer.
My mind spiraled as fast as my spirit.
Alicia. The little girl. The way Theo had seemed to freak out when they came outside so Lucy could play in the snow.
What was happening?
Air ripped from my faltering lungs.
Theo tightened his hold, and he dragged me closer to the raging fire of his body. “Need you to listen to me, Piper.”
My eyes squeezed closed as if I could guard myself from his plea.
“Please.” The word he released was gravel.
Fear sloshing through my veins, my eyes slowly peeled open, and my attention traveled back to the other cabin.
Alicia was limp and being held in River’s arms.
Sobs ripped out of her.
But she wasn’t fighting him.
She wasn’t trying to escape.
It looked like she was weeping in relief.
Confusion bound me.
A clash of dread and want and failing hope.
Hope I’d been a fool to fall into.
“Look at me, Piper.” Theo’s desperation drew me back to him.
My eyes locked on his brutally beautiful face.
“We aren’t who you think we are.”
A maniacal laugh bubbled up my throat. I choked on it as it got stuck on the barb of razors that had formed.
He’d already told me, hadn’t he?
Warned me?
“Told you I wasn’t close to being a good man.”
“Want to make it clear that if you’re afraid of something or someone? I’m the exact kind of trouble you need.”
“You just have to trust that I can handle anything and everything you’ve got. No matter how dark or ugly or horrifying it is, it’s no contest to the lengths I will go for you.”
“And who are you?” I croaked.
Edging me backward, he pushed me into the shadows on the far side of the porch. My back hit the wall.
I was trapped.
His presence overpowering.
I should scream.
Beg for help.
But I was stuck. A prisoner to his will.
He grabbed both my wrists in his right hand, and he forced them up over my head and tacked them to the wall behind me.
Then he lifted his left hand and flexed it between us. The one with the stacked Ss with the dagger running through and an eye in the middle.
The skull on the top now made so much horrible, terrible sense.
And I was still the stupid fool who wanted to find safety in him.
“Warned you I wasn’t a good man, Piper, and I meant it.”
He paused, and his throat trembled with reservation.
“But it was worse than just being less than good. I was a bad man, Piper.” It was a coarse confession. “A fucking horrible beast.”
I shivered, and it didn’t have anything to do with the cold.
“Maybe it was formed in my years on the street as a teenager. Or maybe it was just who I was from the beginning. But I got to the place where the only concern I had was for myself. Consumed by greed and self-satisfaction and that unyielding quest for survival. Until I met my crew. River and Otto and Kane and Cash. Raven. These unlikely people who became my family. But beyond them? I had no care, Piper.”
He inhaled a haggard breath, and his teeth ground as he kept forcing out the revelations that I really should deflect.
Fight him off and get out of here before this got any worse than it already was.
But I couldn’t move.
The pain that oozed out of him had me locked tighter than the strong hand he had bound around my wrists.
Grief clouded his moonlit eyes. The spark dimmed in shame.
“Because of it…I lost—” He clipped off whatever he was about to admit, but my spirit was sure it had everything to do with whoever he referenced last night. Whoever he thought he couldn’t love and had failed.
“It became clear I couldn’t keep living the way that I was, and I guess maybe it all came down on my crew at the same time. This sinking realization that we were nothing but monsters. That we’d long outlived our desperation to survive and had become the beasts that we tried to endure when we lived on the streets. None of us could go on that way.”
Hesitation brimmed in him, the effervescence that wisped right before a pot came to a full boil.
“What I’m about to tell you can’t go beyond you and this family, Piper. Even if you turn and walk away from me right now, I am trusting you with this.” Theo ground through the words.
It was a burden I wasn’t sure I could withstand. But I couldn’t reject it, either.
Erratically, I nodded my head.
Theo’s tongue stroked out to wet his lips. “That life was destroying us, Piper. Stealing every good thing that we had. The mistakes we made coming back at us full force. Fiery arrows shot directly from Karma’s hands.”
Theo swallowed hard, and I shook beneath the weight of what he was confessing. “One night, River stumbled on this woman whose husband was coming at her with a knife. River took him out. God knows it wasn’t the first blood that any of us had spilled, but it was the first time it was done for the right reason. For protecting someone who couldn’t protect themself.”