Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
My chin quivered, and tears sprang to my eyes. “You came back,” I choked out, scrambling to my feet. I raced toward him, not thinking or considering, just needing to be in his arms. Distance had separated us; time had divided us. But we were a team. There was nothing we couldn’t face as long as we were together.
He was gone before I got anywhere close.
“Ramsey,” I called after him as he swirled like a tornado bumping into the walls, heading straight for his bedroom. “Wait for me.”
He didn’t.
He slammed his bedroom door, clicked the lock, and then killed the light.
It was my house. My home. My safe haven from the cruel outside world. Yet I’d never wanted to be somewhere less. He was only one door away, but that door might as well have been an entire universe.
With open hands, I pounded on the door. “Let me in. Take me with you.”
I tested the door handle, knowing it was locked. Shaking it hard, I tried to break it off the damn hinges. Sobs racked my chest as I gave up and slid to the carpet with my back against the wall.
I cried myself to sleep in that hallway. Broken, shattered, and more lost than ever before.
Twelve hours, fifty-eight minutes, and thirteen seconds.
That was how long Ramsey and I had lasted as friends.
Like a coward, I hid in the bathroom.
Bedroom door locked.
Bathroom door too.
I couldn’t listen to her beg or plead for a second longer. If I didn’t get the fuck out of there, I was going to peel out of my own skin. I didn’t have my phone, so I couldn’t call Nora. I’d contemplated climbing out the window and making a break for it. Not that I had anywhere I could go.
But truth be told, I couldn’t leave her.
I’d never be able to forget the marks on her neck and the tears in my Sparrow’s eyes.
“Stop, Ramsey.”
I’d heard her the first time. It just hadn’t felt real. To have her again. To touch her. The heat of her sweet body pressed to mine as she begged me to kiss her. I could have had her. A few flimsy layers of my denim and her cotton had been the only things dividing us.
I wanted her hard and fast.
I wanted her naked and crying my name.
I wanted to plunder her mouth and worship her body.
But I didn’t want any of that for her.
One touch—that was all it had taken for her to drive a fucking bulldozer through my resolve. Those damn brick walls I’d spent over a decade building might as well have been made out of tissue boxes when she’d told me there had never been anyone else.
I was so overcome with the feral need to reclaim her that I’d forgotten the unspoken truth.
There had been someone after me.
And it hadn’t been her choice.
What I’d done to her, throwing her down and dry-humping her like a rabid animal, was the lowest of lows. She’d already lived through hell; she didn’t need my emotional breakdown adding to it.
She didn’t deserve that.
She didn’t deserve a man like me.
I was breaking, emotionally and physically. I couldn’t keep my hands off her, but I couldn’t keep her, either. It was wrong on so many levels. I didn’t even know where to start with the self-loathing.
No, wait. Yes I did.
I’d made her cry.
Again.
When the tears had fallen from her eyes, it had felt like the tip of a knife dragging across my skin. I loved Thea. I’d spent almost half of my life in prison for killing the asshole who had dared to touch her.
But maybe I wasn’t any better. Maybe I was the animal who belonged in a cage.
I buried my head in my hands and leaned back against the bathroom door, the winds of guilt and regret storming inside me like a hurricane.
Why the fuck was this happening? I’d done everything I could for her. I’d heard the saying, If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, it was meant to be. But Thea had never actually gone anywhere. Nora had never mentioned her dating anyone, but I’d figured the physical stuff had happened at least once. A drunken night. A one-night stand. A friend with benefits. Something. But no. Thea was still mine. And it fucking broke me, because God, did I want that.
“Kiss me, Ramsey.”
An icy chill rolled down my spine. Soft as a feather. Hard as a sledgehammer. She’d been so close. Her every breath as it had floated through her parted lips taunted me. One taste and I would have snapped. Planting myself between her legs. Putting a ring on her finger. Making babies. Ruining her fucking life all over again.
That’s not how you treat a person who saved you. I flat-out refused to repay her for the happiest six years of my entire existence by tying a boulder around her ankle and shoving her into the ocean.