Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
She shakes her head and walks away from me.
I always look for an excuse to beat someone up, and I think I just found one. Wren is mine to use and abuse. No one else gets to touch her but me.
Fuck trying to concentrate this afternoon. I can’t get the memory of Wren’s bruises out of my head long enough to do anything but seethe. Forget going to class. I doubt I could sit still long enough. My blood is simmering, on the verge of a boil.
Who the fuck does this guy think he is, whoever he is? What did Wren say about him? A friend of her roommate. Anybody living in that shitty little apartment is probably a loser, which tells me that’s the kind of person I’m looking for. Losers attract other losers.
My bruised little bird might not know anything about him, but that roommate of hers will, whoever he is. Something tells me he’s not going to be busy at this time of day. Call it a hunch. I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to visit their apartment building again, but some things are worth the hassle. The stench of piss pretty much everywhere as I enter and jog up four flights of stairs before knocking on the dingy front door.
“Yeah, yeah, calm your tits.” The voice on the other side of the door makes me snicker. It soon swings open, and I’m faced with a bleary-eyed, mullet-wearing guy in a stained T-shirt. Several feet stand between us, yet his odor of beer and cigarettes manages to outshine the piss in the hallway.
“Are you Wren’s roommate?” I ask, eyeing him. For all I know, he could be the asshole who hit her.
“Who’s asking?” He looks me up and down and has the nerve to sneer. Like I couldn’t snap him in half. As it is, he keeps squinting, like he sees more than one of me. It would be nowhere near a fair fight, not that I’ve ever been concerned with that.
“Somebody looking for the fucker who gave her that black eye,” I tell him.
It’s like a lightbulb goes on behind his bloodshot eyes. He even stands up a little straighter, though he still has to lean against the door for support. “That son of a bitch better never show his face around me ever again. I wasn’t kidding when I warned him about my shotgun.”
He looks me up and down again, and his lips twitch under an unkempt mustache. “What, are you her bodyguard?”
“Not exactly.” Though what I’m going to say next sort of counters that. “But I do need to know where I can find him. Brandon.”
“Yeah, all right. I’ll tell you where to go.” I pull out my phone, and he gives me an address. “I think that’s where he’s staying now. He was supposed to be crashing here for a while, and I can only think of one other person he knows who would bother letting him stay.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Uh, a little taller than me. Sort of longish, black hair, a little curly. Mean eyes,” he adds, narrowing his, “and he’s got a snake tattoo on his right biceps.”
“Good enough.” I look past him into the apartment. It’s pretty dark in there with the curtains pulled—the guy is probably dying from a hangover. How much would a habitual drunk need to drink to have a hangover like that? I only have Dad to go by as an example, but I try not to pay close attention to him and especially when it comes to drinking. Or anything else.
“Who are you, really?” he asks. “Her boyfriend or something?”
The thought makes me want to gag, but I manage a small smile. “Or something. Would it be okay if I stop in her room real quick? I wanted to leave a surprise for her while I’m here.”
“Yeah. Go ahead.” The guy is either hurting too much to care, or he’s the most trusting fucker who ever lived. He steps back and lets me in—which is when I realize he’s not that dumb. If I showed any confusion about which room was hers, he might have a reason not to believe me. Good thing I’m already familiar with the apartment’s layout and have left DNA in one of its rooms.
I plan to do it again, going straight into Wren’s bedroom and closing the door. What I hear in the living room can only be the creaking of couch springs—either that or someone is torturing a cat. He turns on the TV, something I’m grateful for, since it means he’ll be distracted.
I’m already half-rigid thinking about how much fun it will be to teach this Brandon prick a lesson about not touching things that aren’t his. All it takes is looking down at Wren’s bed to get me the rest of the way there. Remembering her reluctance, her hatred.