Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
If I don’t go to the police, then I’m under the thumb of a monster who is going to blackmail me into doing what they want.
Money.
I don’t have money.
The club does have money, but there is no way I could ever get it.
Colt would never forgive me.
Nobody would ever let me live if they found out I stole from them.
I don’t know what to do.
I just know I’m trapped. Stuck in a box, unable to breathe, unable to do anything as the walls close in around me.
I should have died that night, it’s the only way any of this would have been fair.
Sobbing, I scream into my hands as my body trembles.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
14
Pacing back and forth, I try to figure out how the hell I’m going to break the news to Colt. How I’m going to tell him the truth about what happened with Chloe and Jeannie. He is going to be here any moment, and I have to tell him the worst possible news of his life, and really, I don’t have any proof. I believe what I’m saying, and I’m certain that I’m right, but without that diary, can I ever truly be sure?
Deep in my soul, I know she did it.
“What are you pacin’ like that for?”
Spinning, I see Colt standing at the base of my stairs, looking up at me. He’s not wearing his usual leather jacket, instead, he has no shirt on, and his jeans are hanging low, like he has just finished working and come over when I called. My eyes rake down his well-muscled form, and it takes everything inside me not to jump down these stairs and straddle him.
I have to remind myself what I’m here for.
“Did you forget your clothes?” I ask.
“Was workin’ on my truck when you called.”
Right.
“I need to tell you something, and I’ve been avoiding because I don’t know how to say the words. Can we sit?”
His brows furrow together as he leans against the railing. “I’ll stand. Talk.”
I bite my bottom lip, and then I decide I’ll sit on the top step. Putting my forearms on my knees, I lean forward and exhale. This is hard. So damned hard. Nothing can prepare you for delivering this kind of news, no amount of time and pep talking can get the soul ready to crush someone’s world. I know it’ll devastate him, but the issue I’m having is I don’t know how he’ll react.
“I know why Chloe left town.”
For a moment, the silence hangs in the air between us.
I dare to look up him, and he has that stony expression, the one he pulls up to stop anyone seeing a single bit of emotion in his eyes.
“If I wanted to fuckin’ know that I would have read the diary. Have you not heard a single fuckin’ word–”
“Colt,” I cut him off, “if I didn’t think you needed to know this, believe me, I would have listened.”
“I’ve pieced my life together, Myla. Don’t want to fuckin’ hear whatever pathetic excuse she had to get up and leave when I needed ...”
“It was her,” I blurt, cutting him off again.
He pauses, his eyes narrowed, confusion flittering across his gaze.
“She hit Jeannie, Colt.”
If the air could crackle and explode, it would.
The way his face changes. The way his body jerks and his lips part, a pain crossing his features that I never want to see on another person for as long as I live. It’s a broken, betrayed, horrified look that is quickly replaced with a blank stare, a numb, empty stare that has my heart aching. I push to my feet, wanting to say something, anything, but no words come out.
“How do you know that?”
His words are forced as he stares at me, anger ready to be unleashed.
I tell him everything I know, all of it, and pray it’s enough to make him believe it.
For the longest time, he just stands, face turned to the ground, fists clenched by his sides. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t show a single drop of emotion. Finally, he lifts his head, and, without, a single word, he turns and begins walking away. Pushing to my feet, I rush after him, reaching my hand out to take his shoulder.
He spins on me, and in the most lethal, horrifying tone I’ve ever heard him use, he barks, “Do not fucking touch me.”
I drop my hands to my sides; tears burn under my eyelids, but I try to stop them falling. I can’t cry right now, because I’m not the one hurting. He is. I can feel it, radiating off him, and even though he tries to hide it, his face is scrunched in a way that breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. He loved her, and he just found out she did the worst thing imaginable.