Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
If only I hadn’t fallen so deeply for a girl who wasn’t mine.
I admit, she had me fooled.
Ever since she finally opened up to me and let me kiss her, I thought we had something between us. Something more than what could be contained by these bars.
But it turns out it was all a ruse.
A game she played just to break out of here.
And I fell for it. Hard.
I push up again and again while droplets of sweat roll down onto the ground, not giving a shit about how much my muscles are aching. I like the pain. It makes me forget.
Forget she even exists.
Because dammit, how much I need to forget about her right now just to be able to live.
Fuck.
I can’t even look at her without feeling uncontrollable rage. Rage because she took something of mine that I wasn’t willing to give.
My fucking heart.
On a platter.
Swallowed whole.
Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two.
I count out loud in my head because it’s the only way I can make the maelstrom stop. At least, it used to be before she came into my life. Before I let her take over my soul.
God, why can’t I stop thinking about her?
Even when I know I should, I still can’t get her teary-eyed face out of my mind, and it’s humiliating.
She’s only led me on and made me believe something that wasn’t even there.
I should’ve used her as a toy, just like my owner wanted me to, and left it at that.
I blink, and in that one split second, I glance over at her sitting in a corner, crying her eyes out. A pang of guilt shoots through my veins, and my elbow flops under the weight of my own body.
Fuck.
On the floor, I breathe in and out deeply, trying to get rid of whatever this feeling is that’s nagging at me, but it refuses to go away.
“Why are you crying?”
She brushes the tears away. “Because … I’m sorry.”
My nostrils flare. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do,” she says.
“It doesn’t mean anything coming from a liar,” I say.
But that same pang hits me hard in the gut.
She weeps again. “Stop.”
I frown. “Stop what?”
“You call me a liar, but I didn’t lie.”
“Yes, you did. You never told me you only wanted to fuck me to get out of here,” I say.
“I didn’t give you my first time just to get out of this cell!”
Her entire face suddenly turns red. Much redder than it ever was before.
Why do I have the feeling she did not mean to blurt that out?
“Never mind,” she says, hiding her face again.
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
But I couldn’t bring myself to kill her either.
I should’ve let her go.
I turn my head away, unable to look at the girl. If I’d done what I was supposed to, none of this would be so damn difficult. But even my own thoughts elude me sometimes.
“If you hadn’t, I’d be dead,” she suddenly says. “But in this cell, am I really better off?”
“Maybe,” I reply, rubbing my sore arms from all the exercise.
“You made that choice, not me,” she says.
“Would you have chosen differently?” I ask.
We look at each other, and for a moment, I feel that same serenity I always did when I looked at her … before I realized how stupid I’d been.
“Does it matter?” she replies.
“Yes,” I say. “To me, it does.”
Her cheeks stain red again, and for some reason, a smile tips up her lips, something I didn’t expect at all.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?” I stop massaging my arms.
“For not killing me.”
I frown and stare at her for a moment, the beauty in her eyes catching me off guard.
No one has ever thanked me, especially not for failing to do what I do best. And the sound of it is so unfamiliar, I don’t know what to do with it.
“I was born to kill,” I say. “But I didn’t choose this life, just like you didn’t choose to be here.”
She nods. “But you don’t want to be stuck in this cell the rest of your life either.”
I shake my head.
“Then you know why I told Lex that,” she says. “And I’m sorry that I grasp at straws to get out of this cell. That I ever even thought of hoping you could trust me enough to help me escape,” she says. “That I let you kiss me. Touch me.” There’s a pause. “That I gave you my first.”
I swallow and take in the weight of her words.
Maybe she isn’t just crying because she got caught.
“Why?”
“Because it hurts,” she says. “It hurts to see you look at me like that.”
I swallow down the rage I felt before.
It doesn’t seem so important anymore.
“Do you feel something for me?” I ask, planting my hand against my own heart. “In there?”
She nods, and it sparks the fire I thought was doused.