Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 129681 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129681 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
She hadn’t.
Dread sank through my spirit.
Because I had.
I had found him.
Had found him too late.
And there was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do.
The walls spun.
It had been Salem in that house.
Salem and Juni.
And her son. Her son.
Gripping my head, I bent in two.
“Oh, fuck. Salem. No.” Agony clawed through my being. Enough to drop me to my knees.
I managed to stay standing so I could move for her. The only thing I wanted was to wrap her in my arms. Hold her and protect her.
On a yelp, she put her hands out in front of her. “Stay away from me, Jud. Don’t you understand? If you didn’t do this? It was him. It’s a set up. He found us. He’s going to kill us both.”
“No. Won’t let that happen.”
“You killed his brother, Jud.” The plea spilled from her mouth. The truth of what all this really meant.
“I did.”
Terror filled the void between us.
Rippling and shivering.
“I was a fool for coming here. For losing sight of my purpose. I have to go. We have to get out of here before it’s too late.”
“Let me—”
She shrieked when I reached for her, and I felt it then. The blame. The hate. The truth of what I’d caused. What I should’ve stopped but had been too blind to see.
She backed out of the doorway. “Stay away from me.”
“Salem, please.”
“Stay away. I mean it.”
THIRTY-FOUR
SALEM
Panic flooded my bloodstream.
A surge of terror that rose high and swept me under, but it was the heartbreak that would do me in.
Jud.
It seared me in two.
Cleaved me in half.
Jud had been there that night. He’d been there, and he’d tried to stop it.
As soon as I’d accused him of working with Carlo, of tricking me into falling for him, I’d known it was wrong. I felt Jud’s agony just as sure as I felt my own.
Those aching pieces of myself that were barely held together were obliterated in his pain.
In this torment that I couldn’t fathom.
Couldn’t process.
It was gutting.
Shattering.
It only spiked the anxiety farther. The rush of adrenaline—of awareness—that promised I had to get out of there.
Leave it behind.
That for me and Juni, there was no such thing as home.
Jud couldn’t fix this. It was only going to destroy us all.
My mind spun with every horrible possibility. There had to be a bigger reason I was there in Redemption Hills. A bigger reason I had found Jud. A reason we had come together.
It spiraled with every gut-wrenching scenario of how Carlo had found us.
I knew it. I knew he had. I knew he was there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Sickness clawed and crept and seeped all the way to my bones.
A cold dread that shivered and froze.
This time when I pressed down on the accelerator, I forced myself to ignore everything else around me.
Every call and every claim.
I couldn’t give thought or reason or purpose to Jud’s pleas as he chased behind us. As he tried to break through the disorder the same way as he’d done last night, although right then, I knew we’d already ended before we’d ever really begun.
Our destinies had already been carved in stone.
“Salem…just listen…you can’t leave like this. Fuck, please, don’t do this.”
Juni whimpered from the backseat, more afraid than I thought she’d ever been, while I mashed the accelerator to the floor. The SUV fishtailed as I skidded out of the Iron Ride parking lot and onto the street.
My hands cinched around the steering wheel as I prayed. As I prayed for a moment. For a break in time. For a fighting chance.
For escape.
Tears blurred my eyes as I sped down the street, barely slowing as I took a sharp right.
I flew past Absolution then took a left at the next intersection.
Prayed these wings would give us flight.
I barreled down the roads of the small town, spinning it into chaos, the brightening sky ominous as the sun lifted on the mountain.
As the glimmering rays gave way to a new day that I was terrified would be our end.
How could this happen? How could I let this happen? I’d known not to come here. Not to become complacent. Not to fall.
I took the few quick turns before I made the last left onto the sleeping neighborhood street. My aching heart was lodged in my throat, and my stomach was twisted in knots of terror as I quickly approached the narrow driveway of the small house that had come to mean so much.
I knew Darius and Mimi had wanted to give us this home, while home had begun to feel like it was in the arms of a man who I’d left behind on the other side of this city.
This sweet, hopeful town that now felt like a trap.
An ambush.
I rammed on the brakes and came to a jarring stop.
Juni cried out through the bottled fear. “Mommy.”
“I know, sweetheart, I know.”