Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
“No, it’s just—” He quickly pulled the door shut. “Let’s sit out here.”
I glanced around his porch. It wasn’t big by any means, but it would have comfortably fit two rocking chairs or a bench swing. As it was, it was empty, not a potted plant or woman’s touch to be seen. Not that I was checking for that or anything. It was just an observation.
He scrubbed his hands on his faded jeans and then pressed a palm to my back, ushering me toward the stairs. There was something so comforting about his touch—a familiarity my body recognized immediately.
As if teaching me how to sit, he slowly sank down on the top concrete step, and then he peered up at me expectantly to follow his lead.
Fucking hell, this was not where I wanted to drop this bomb on him. Not that inside the house—especially that house—would have been any better, but privacy would have helped.
He patted the space beside him. “Come on. The fresh air will be nice.”
Yeah. Until that damn producer pulled up, bombarding him with arrows disguised as questions. Shit. Truett would have been a sitting duck on that front porch.
Nerves reignited inside me. I swung my head from side to side, searching up and down the street. “Can we sit on the back porch? Or stand in the backyard? Or…behind the bushes? Or…” I didn’t realize I was knotting my hands until he reached up to still them. For some reason, that too felt comfortable. I had no idea how to process that.
His eyes bored into me with a tangible intensity. “What’s wrong?”
I considered myself a damn good actress. God knew I’d had enough practice hiding my emotions from Jeff through the years. You didn’t survive a narcissist if you didn’t master the ability to smile even when they were breaking you.
But not with Truett. I’d never had to hide with him, and it seemed my body remembered that on instinct too.
Telling him this was going to feel every bit as good as kicking a puppy.
But why me? Why did I have to be the one to break this news? I didn’t have the best success rate when it came to Truett. Too many times, I’d tried to keep him from falling apart. Too many times, I’d failed. Too many times I’d sacrificed parts of myself in the name of helping him. Yet there I stood, cracking open the history books all over again, when I’d sworn all the pages had already been shredded.
“Gwen,” he prompted, his patience waning.
Rip off the Band-Aid, Gwen. Just rip it off.
And then get the hell out of there and back to real life in the present.
I didn’t sit down next to him. That would have taken too much time, and I feared if I didn’t spit the words out right away, I’d be trapped on that porch forever. “A producer named Taggart Folly visited me today. They’re filming a documentary on the Watersedge Mall.”
“What?” he snarled, shooting to his feet. His brown eyes flashed a scary shade of dark as he took the step up, closing the space between us.
My breath hitched and my nose stung. This was so fucked up.
So fucking fucked up. Eighteen years later and we were back at that house, facing the repercussions of that damn mall.
My body hummed as he loomed over me—tiny sparks prickling my skin as if it had fallen sleep and finally awoken. I told myself it was nerves and had nothing to do with the man in front of me. Lying to myself was far easier than processing that clusterfuck.
I tried to keep the shake out of my voice as I answered him. “He said he’d spoken to some of the survivors. Then he asked if I still kept in contact with you.”
“That motherfucker.” Truett stabbed a hand into the top of his hair, the muscles on his neck straining the fabric of his black T-shirt. “What kind of questions did he ask you?”
“Nothing really.”
Murderous, he stared down at me. “That’s not an answer.”
Eying him cautiously, I hesitated. I’d expected this to go over like a knife to the gut—surprise, pain, panic. But the all-consuming rage emanating from him was unexpected—and oddly intoxicating.
“Start at the beginning,” he ordered. “No more of the ‘nothing really’ shit. I want to know every word he dared to speak to you.”
My brain fired off roughly four million smartass retorts in response to him ordering me to do anything. But when I spoke, my traitorous mouth overrode my brain. “He knocked on the door and asked if he could talk to me.”
“Were you at The Grille?”
“Yeah.”
“Alone?” He ominously inched closer—and truthfully there wasn’t a whole lot of close left for him to inch.
His proximity clouded my thoughts, but I managed to shake my head.
“Did you let him inside?”