Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64366 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64366 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
“Why? Because of what you just said in there?”
“No, because of this.” He flipped my visor down in front of my face, aiming the mirror right at me, and what I saw in my reflection made me gasp out loud.
There in bright blue marker were Kage’s fingerprints, along with a splotchy partial rendering of his fingers. Apparently the marks hadn’t been visible in the dim blue light of the pantry, so Kage hadn’t noticed them until we were already in the living room.
“Dammit.” I glared at him. “You just had to mess with that fucking marker, didn’t you?” I scrubbed at my mouth, but none of the ink came off. “God, do you know how embarrassing this is? I just stood there looking like a moron with your hand print on my face, Kage.”
He shrugged, holding up a marker-stained hand and looking contrite. “Well, at least it’s your color. Have I mentioned how much I like you in blue?”
Chapter 6
(JAMIE)
AFTER Kage left for Vegas, I was lost again. He was going to be attending a training camp to help get Jason Kinney prepped for a fight coming up in two weeks, and I was stuck trying to pay attention in class. The school thing was getting old when all I wanted to do was spend time with my boyfriend.
Those things that he’d said about talking to my father and about marriage had really hung around in the forefront of my mind. I was giddy with thoughts of what a future with Kage might be like. And honestly, at that point I couldn’t have imagined a future without him. It was as if he’d walked right in and taken over, embedding himself in the most crucial spot, becoming the heart of my existence. I loved him so much that it didn’t even occur to me anymore that he might not feel the same way.
He’d never actually said those three little words that everyone wants to hear, but he’d done so much more, and said things that touched me in ways not even those words could. I cherished everything about him, even his flaws. And that was really saying something, because the guy was forty kinds of fucked up. There was so much about him that was still a mystery, it blew my mind to think that I’d given myself over to him. Kage was like a roller coaster ride— thrilling, but scary as hell. So how was it that he could make me feel so damn secure?
I knew the rest of the world didn’t see him the way I did. Very few people could get past the rough exterior, because he didn’t let them. It made me feel special that I got to see the vulnerable boy behind the mask. The one who wanted to impress my father, and who cried in his sleep from nightmares about his brother. I hurt so much for him, and yet I couldn’t help him if I didn’t know what the problem was.
In his last nightmare, he’d woken up saying he’d just killed his brother. I knew that couldn’t be true, that it had to be some distortion in his dream, because that’s what dreams did. They took real things and distorted them like in a fun-house mirror. Obviously I had never jumped off the top level of a cruise ship, and I hadn’t died from my feet touching the ocean floor, but for some reason my dream just kept serving up that same old story. If it had any basis in reality, I couldn’t imagine what it might be. So I knew it had to be the same with Kage and the death of his brother. Maybe he just couldn’t deal with the loss in his conscious mind, so he kept seeing it through the fun house mirror of his dreams.
He was going to have to let me in one of these days, though. We couldn’t have a lasting relationship if I didn’t know the most fundamental events that had shaped his life. There was really nothing significant to know about me. I was boring. Yet I’m sure at some point we’d get around to talking about my summer-camp days, my childhood insecurities, and who I took to my senior prom. But Kage had skeletons in his closet. Hell, he might even have a whole graveyard in there. If he couldn’t eventually open up to me about those things, it was going to cause major problems.
At that moment, he was busy with Jason, and I had to admit I was jealous. They were training hard, and Kage had a tendency to get caught up in training and forget to call. I’d gotten used to his disappearances and sketchy communication style, since he’d been that way from the start. He was just as obsessed with me as he was with fighting, and I knew that.