Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“Probably not,” he agreed. “But we’re going to do it again.”
I winced. “We crossed a moral line.”
His eyes felt like they were lasering into me as he said, “Do I look like a man that gives a fuck about moral lines?”
I bit my lip.
“You, maybe not. Me? Do I look like a woman that doesn’t care about moral lines?”
His hand curled around my head—yes, I do mean my entire head…he had big hands—and he pulled me to him until I was inches away from his mouth.
“How about you let me worry about your morals for a little while?”
I hesitated. “I don’t want you to go back to jail.”
It was purely selfish. The reason I didn’t want him to go back to prison had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. I knew that I wouldn’t like not seeing him.
Sure, I’d be worried for him if he had to go back, and honestly, that was pretty big too.
However, I just plain didn’t want him to go, because I would miss him.
“Not going back to jail, sweetheart,” he told me bluntly. “Got out on good behavior. Saved a guard from getting himself dead. Trust me when I say, I’m not going back.”
I pursed my lips. “If you weren’t going back, what’s with all the business of anger management with me, or the fact that you have to see the parole officer?”
He pulled me in closer—which I didn’t think was possible—and spoke only millimeters away from my lips.
“Bureaucratic bullshit,” he admitted. “They have to play the part. The man I saved, though? He was someone important. Didn’t know it at the time, but now I do. We’re talking the nephew of the goddamn president important. Why he was working in a prison, I still have yet to find out, but whatever. I was seriously minutes away from getting pardoned completely when I told them I didn’t want the easy way out. They gave me this.”
“But why?”
The thought of him getting out, completely unscathed, for something that he’d done was appealing. Who wouldn’t want to be pardoned? That was like getting a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I’d have taken it in a New York minute.
“Because that’s cheating,” he admitted. “And I’m no cheater.”
I bit my lip and looked at him.
He was so close my eyes almost had to cross to see him clearly.
However, the only thing touching me was the warm, huge palm of his hand that was still curled around my head, and nothing else.
Just as I was about to reach out and touch him, he stepped away, dropping his hand from my face as he did.
“I talked to your father.”
And that was the one true way to turn everything off inside of me.
I looked away from his intense gaze. A gaze that was taking everything about me in, and missing nothing. Not one single thing.
He saw the flinch that I couldn’t stop.
He saw the way my face paled, and my forehead instantly broke out in a sweat.
He also noticed the way my hand automatically went to my hair—or where my hair would’ve once been.
“How many times did he cut your hair like that when you were younger?”
I shrugged. I’d lost count.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “A few.”
A lot.
But who was counting?
“I can count eleven instances,” he said. “And that was when I was home.”
I started to study the planks on the wall, trying to think about anything but what he was saying.
Eleven.
I wanted to laugh.
It was more like forty-five, but again, who was counting?
Not me. No, sir.
I was a lying whore.
I knew the exact number of times.
I looked down at my arm.
I remembered sliding that cool piece of metal over my wrists.
I’d never broken skin. No, but I remembered the slide. The slight sting. The way there was a red mark there for days as it slowly faded to nothing.
“Then I started to think about the times that you weren’t at church, or with your father when he was out and about in town,” he continued as if he weren’t breaking my heart. “I remember that time at the town Christmas tree lighting when you were a senior in high school. I’d seen you that morning. I’d said hi. You’d told me how much you were looking forward to watching the tree lit up…then you never showed. I looked for you.”
That time…yeah that had been a bad one.
I remembered seeing Tate that day. He’d been wearing a green long sleeved Carhartt t-shirt, brown boots, and faded blue jeans that were dirty as hell. He’d been working on his car or something, because he’d had grease all over every available surface of his clothes.
He’d been home on leave, and I’d been so freakin’ excited to see him that I could barely keep the excitement out of my voice.