Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 106948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Honestly, I’d thought by now she’d have forgiven me.
Instead, she got worse every day.
After telling her how Mark had trained Honey to open the door to the fridge using a towel, and grab him a beer, I went to touch her, and like always, she flinched away before I could make contact.
That, that flinch, was the only thing that gave me any hope at all.
If my touch still had the power to hurt, it also had the power to heal, but Judith had warned me not to push things with Hannah, and for now I was listening to her advice.
Fuck it all if I knew how to fix this breech between us.
Hannah was miserable, sad down to her core, and so hurt it made me bleed on the inside for her.
My phone vibrated and I saw a text from Fernando, asking me to meet him in the game room.
Delaying as long as I could, hoping she’d at least look at me, I finally gave up, drinking in her beautiful profile, still as a statue, like a starving man. “I have to go, Hannah.”
Her long, dark hair gleamed as she cracked her neck, then went back to ignoring me, the brief glimpse of life slowly seeping away like grains of sand running through my fingers until I was left with only her shell.
With a heavy heart, I left her alone again, knowing as soon as I was gone she’d relax, then stretch out and go about her day, trapped inside of a cage I never intended her to be in.
I ignored everyone as I stalked through the halls of the Cortez manor, the urge to bring Hannah home with me tugging at my mind. I needed her in our bed, in our house, where she’d remember everything we had together, how good we were. Leaving her here was getting harder and harder, no matter how much Judith said Hannah needed space to heal.
I think Judith felt guilty about what happened between Hannah and myself, and her role in it, so she was treating Hannah with kid gloves.
I passed through the large, arched entryway to the game room, basically a massive finished basement that held shit like pool tables, poker tables, video games, and just about every grown-up toy known to man.
Fernando sprawled out on the far side of the room, a beer dangling from one hand, a joint burning in the other.
He’d managed to gain back some of the weight he’d lost, but he still looked ill and his diet of mainly alcohol wasn’t helping. The pale red shirt hung off his broad shoulders and the hollows of his cheeks were still deep enough to give his face a hauntingly gaunt look. When his reddened eyes met mine, I inwardly sighed.
He was wasted.
“Gotta tell you something, bro.” Fernando took a hit of the joint, then put it out and set the almost full beer on the table.
Okay, maybe not wasted. His voice and hands were steady, and his clothes were clean. To my surprise, I noticed he’d trimmed up his beard and that his teeth were brushed. The air of sadness still clung to him, but not the stench of depression.
“What is it?”
“First, let me say you have every right to be pissed. What I did was out of line, no matter how good my intentions.”
A sinking feeling dropped my stomach to my feet. “What did you do?”
“Last week, I told Hannah you brainwashed her into loving you, and that her feelings for you weren’t real.”
He had just enough time to register the mistake of sitting too close to me before I was on him, my hands wrapped around his neck, determined to choke the life out of him.
Unfortunately, Fernando, when he was sober, was a ruthless fighter who was more than my match because of his freakish flexibility. With a grunt, he broke my hold then kicked me back, his foot to my gut almost knocking the wind out of me.
So pissed I couldn’t even breathe without growling, I launched myself at him again and we rolled around the room, breaking shit, throwing shit, and having a no-holds-barred brawl.
My nose was bleeding freely by the time someone heard the chaos and broke us up.
Fernando’s formerly clean shirt was splattered with blood, and I was pretty sure his once pretty nose was also broken, thanks to a table leg to the face.
Furious, I tried to shake off the men holding me back, but we must have been fighting for a long time because my body was already filled with the post-adrenaline-rush shakes.
“What in the hell is going on in here?” Jose roared.
Fernando and I snarled at each other, right up to the point when Jose smacked first me, then Fernando, in the back of the head.
“That fucking bastard betrayed me!” I roared at Fernando.