Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
“And you did to him what you did to Nate.”
She nodded and replaced the book. “That was how he knew to ask me the night Nate was killed.”
There was a subtle hesitation about her, a fiddling with her hands. Then she turned to him.
Her face in the firelight was a different kind of eternity altogether, something that was, to him, so beautiful that it was as if he had memories of looking at her that spanned his whole life.
“I’m glad you suggested coming here,” he said hoarsely.
“The clinic is wonderful. But not…”
“Private.”
Rahvyn nodded. And then her voice deepened. “I truly have this strange sense that time is running out. I cannot shake it.” As he cocked a brow, she shrugged. “I find myself wondering what would have happened if you had not come out and found me in that field earlier.”
“I would have kept looking for you.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t leaving things like that between us. No way. Even if you didn’t want to be around me, I had to apologize.”
“I am glad you sought me out.” She smiled a little. “You took a gamble and won.”
“I just wanted to go back to a moment I didn’t fuck up. Get some inspiration, you know.”
There was another pause from her. “I can think of another time you didn’t…”
“Mess up?”
“Yes.” She laughed. “That verbiage is a bit more my style.”
When her face grew serious once again, the air between them changed, thickening with an anticipation that he prayed he wasn’t misinterpreting. But he’d already put his foot in his mouth once tonight. He had no intention of making things epically worse by reading her wrong and throwing a pass at—
Rahvyn went over and touched the soft bedcoverings, her fingertips running over the duvet that had been folded up at the foot of the platform’s mattress. “I feel better that I told you… everything.”
“Me, too.”
“It is more honest that way.” She glanced back at him. “To keep my deeds from you is a kind of manipulation.”
“I’m still here—”
“Did you mean what you said. Did you truly mean what you said unto me.”
Lassiter nodded. “Yes, I did. I love you.”
“Even with all that I—”
“I’m not afraid of you, Rahvyn.” He shook his head again. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Sometimes… I feel as though all I do is worry. And I am afraid of you, you know.”
Jerking back in surprise, he looked around. Which was dumb. Like there was someone else she was talking to? “Why? I’m not going to hurt you. I might be an idiot from time to time, but—”
“I love you, too,” she whispered. “That is why you scare me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
As Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, stepped out of the mourning family’s mansion, he had a thought that he was going to need to go back and retrieve the gurney at some point. Not that it really mattered. Who the fuck cared about a piece of equipment, given the circumstances.
Still, he was thinking that that mahmen and sire weren’t going to want the thing kicking around their basement somewhere, considering the memories attached to it.
As he took out a hand-rolled to light up, he glanced back at Rhage, who was just emerging.
“We left the gurney,” the brother said.
“Was just thinking that.” V put the cigarette in his teeth, but he left his lighter where it was, in his ass pocket. “I sure as shit wasn’t going to ask them for it.”
“No, me neither.”
Tohr joined them. “You guys talking about the gurney?”
“Yup.”
“Uh-huh.”
Behind them, the door was shut softly by a doggen whose eyes were so swollen, you had to wonder how he saw anything at all, much less a brass doorknob. The other fighters who had come to pay their respects had already left to go back to the Brotherhood mansion, and not just because the long night was grinding to an end and Last Meal was getting organized: Wrath was looking for a report, and once condolences had been shared, they’d gone along to update the King.
“That poor kid,” Rhage said as he ran a hand through his blond hair. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Tohr stayed silent on that one. Then again, he’d lost his Wellsie and unborn son in a similar situation, regular life turning into a goddamn nightmare at the drop of a hat. The turn of a car wheel. The choice of one club over another.
V checked the time on his phone. “We gotta go.”
As the other two nodded, they all dematerialized. When they re-formed, it was just up the street about a quarter of a mile, at the Audience House—
The second Vishous resumed his corporeal form, his instincts started firing and he palmed one of his guns.
Fritz, who, like him, always checked this place at the end of the night, was standing frozen in the open doorway into the kitchen, his foot poised on the top step like he was about to leave… his attention fixated on the hedgerow on the far side of the driveway.