Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 162003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 810(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 162003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 810(@200wpm)___ 648(@250wpm)___ 540(@300wpm)
She wanted to know if I had any idea she was in the car that night. I didn’t. I’d never told her because it was irrelevant. Regardless of my lack of knowledge, there was no justification.
“You knew Brayden would come straight to me,” she pressed. “If he came to California.”
“I did.”
She waited anxiously, and I searched her pretty face with my eyes. I was afraid to tell her these things. Afraid she’d only ever see me as a monster who couldn’t be redeemed. Squeezing her hand in mine, I anchored myself with her warmth as I tripped around the words in my brain.
“I forwarded Brayden’s number to my phone before I left that night,” I told her. “Then had maintenance disable the elevator from reaching the top floor and lock the stairwell.”
Her face remained a mask of stoicism as she processed my words. I hadn’t a clue what she was thinking. The sadist in me demanded I put a stop to this bullshit at once. Her mouth had so many other beneficial uses than dredging up the past. It was fear talking, okay? Don’t write me off completely.
“So Brayden wouldn’t be able to contact me,” she reasoned out loud.
I closed my eyes and allowed my head to fall against the headboard. I’d prefer her impassivity over disappointment any day of the week.
“I really did have a business dinner that night,” I explained. “Mick was tracking Brayden through his phone. Neither of us anticipated you’d be there with him.”
“So he didn’t know I was in the car,” Brighton whispered. “Is he the one who ran us off the road?”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “I called Nicole during dinner, and she told me you were in bed asleep. She’d never lied to me before, so I had no reason not to believe it. Then Mick called me an hour later and told me he’d done what I’d asked. I met him there.”
Brighton shook in my arms as all of my vile admissions spewed from my mouth like lava. I couldn’t stop them now. She’d asked for it. I wanted her forgiveness. I needed her to wipe my slate clean and anoint me with her purity again. I clutched her tighter, terrified to let go. She was too small and fragile.
“I had no fucking idea, baby girl,” I choked out my desperation. “I swear I didn’t. I’d never do that to you. You have to believe it.”
“But you’d do it to Brayden,” she answered. “You wanted to.”
“Yes, I wanted to.” There was no point denying it.
“So why didn’t you?”
I opened my eyes and gazed into hers. Even brimming with tears, they were the most exquisite colors I’d ever seen. The sadist in me thought the tears only made them more so. Crystalline blue tinged with balmy gray and honeyed amber. They held an entire landscape within them- where the mountains met the sea in a collision of drizzling rain and thunder. Nothing else in the world rivaled them. The windows to her soul, they often conveyed her thoughts so openly. But not this time. She was keeping her emotions very close to the vest, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“I don’t know,” I answered finally. Honestly. I didn’t know why I couldn’t pull the trigger that night. “I kept looking at him and thinking about you. About how much it would hurt you.”
“And what if you’d done it?” she asked. “Then what would have happened? What was the plan then?”
“I didn’t have one,” I admitted. Everything I’d planned was only about that moment. The rush I’d feel in those brief few seconds when justice was exacted, and all was right with the world again. I wanted to taste Brayden’s agony. To feel its presence choking the life out of him like I’d felt that night. He was the only one who could pay up. The only one left to settle the score.
“So you weren’t going to try to cover it up?”
I hadn’t a clue why this mattered, but I answered anyway. “No.”
“You would have just gone to prison, lost everything.”
“If that’s what ensued, then yes.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she scoffed. “You’ve built an empire. And you would just let all of that go, just to kill Brayden?”
“My company was built out of necessity,” I replied. “I needed resources to do what I planned. Money, power. It was all a piece of the plan. Not the other way around.”
“So you spent five years working yourself to death, planning all of this… and now you’re ready to let it go?”
Her voice was tinged with doubt. I didn’t blame her. She told me earlier she believed me, but she’d always have her reasons not to trust me. We’d probably come back to this dead horse time and time again.
“I already have let it go.” I grazed her throat with my lips and inhaled her scent tangled with mine. My chest inflated with male pride that she smelled of me. That she looked so beautifully ravaged and thoroughly fucked, by none other than yours truly. It did things to me. And again, the importance of her presence in my life socked me in the gut.