Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
“I’m supposed to protect you,” he says, his voice taut with guilt.
“Against people like that?”
“Yes, against people like that. He’s more than a club owner, Samantha. At least that’s not all he is. He’s a loan shark. The dangerous kind. One who makes sure his debts are paid with money or with blood. He doesn’t give a shit about doing the right thing.”
A shiver runs through me. “How do you know him?”
“I run a security firm. It’s my job to know these things.” He cups my jaw. “Even if it wasn’t, I would make sure to know every single danger within a hundred-mile radius. You’re too important to risk.”
Determination hardens my tone. “You tell me you want me to make my own decisions as a woman, and then you take them away.”
He pulls back, and cool air rushes into the space between us. “Because you lied to me, Samantha. Something could have happened to you, and there’d be no one to protect you, no one to even know where you went. That’s not a grown-up decision.”
I look down where he’s holding my hips in place. It’s like prying metal, watching him lift his fingers one by one. Each loss feels like a chain link snapped.
He pulls his hands away with an audible groan. “I’m not going to touch you again.”
Hurt licks against my skin like flames, but I try to act casual. “Right.”
“If you want to go out, of course you can. I’ll send Josh with you.”
“Is that an order?”
“Absolutely,” he says with burning green eyes.
Despite the hunger in his voice, there's no trace of vulnerability in his expression. He's made of stone and water, as unconcerned as air. Gone is the man incandescent with desire. How am I supposed to be interested in the boys who are dancing in clubs when this man has kissed me? How can I be satisfied with warmth when I know how it feels to burn?
Chapter Thirteen
Violinist Lindsey Stirling has over 10.5 million subscribers on YouTube
SAMANTHA
A message blinks on my phone when I get home from school.
The picture shows a mane of wild red curls, the kind I would have happily traded for my ordinary brown hair. I met Beatrix Cartwright many years ago, back when we were both children.
Our upbringings couldn’t have been more different.
She came from a wealthy family, her mother a famous pianist, her father a tech industrialist who doted on his family. Meanwhile my father had to be reminded that my Sergio Peresson violin was on loan from a music society, and we couldn’t sell it because they knew who had it. That didn’t stop him from threatening to whenever he was particularly broke.
Her parents invested in her musical education and were supremely interested in her feelings. My father only agreed to let me play in the London concert because the queen herself would be in attendance. He spent most of the concert on the phone in the lobby, coming up for air only to glad hand during the reception.
On the surface it seemed like we had very little in common, but Beatrix and I had something in common—we were both children with unusual talent in a world ruled by fierce, egotistical adults.
Somewhere between practice and performance we became fast friends.
Maybe it was fate, which knew we were both on the same dark path. The death of her parents changed the course of her life. I gave her what support I could over e-mail as I followed my father from desert to jungle to tundra, only to begin all over again.
And then my father died, giving us one more thing in common.
Orphans, both of us.
I’m excited about the tour, her text says with a string of green-faced emojis, each of them about to throw up. She’s always had a dry sense of humor and a weak stomach.
You’re going to be amazing, I text back.
Her anxiety goes beyond stage fright. For many years after her parents’ deaths she didn’t even leave the penthouse in the hotel where she lived. Only recently did she begin to venture out, but it’s still difficult for her to deal with crowds.
I only agreed to it because you’re coming, she says. When do you get here, anyway? Can it be now?
Words appear on the screen even though I don’t feel myself typing them—I’m afraid to leave. I don’t want to. What if I never see Liam again? What if he never forgives me for lying to him? The thoughts are too private to be read, even by me.
I hold down the Backspace button until they’re gone.
Soon. I punctuate the word with a string of sobbing emojis. Three months, to be exact. It’s the closest I can come to revealing my true feelings, the same way the green-faced emojis revealed hers.
How is Liam doing?
Oh you know. The same. Stoic and strong and serious.