Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
To that, he just grunted as I pressed my hands to my eyes, trying to press hard enough to keep the tears from streaming down my cheeks.
He said nothing else as I tried to breathe through the adrenaline surging through me, making it impossible to think straight.
When I was finally breathing more slowly, evenly, I glanced back over at William.
He watched me for a long second, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“I think it’s time to call my nephew.”
“Levee?” I asked, brows drawing together. “No.”
“Yes,” William shot back.
“No, he doesn’t need to be involved in this.”
“Hate to admit this shit but he’s the only one who can deal with this.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Call him.”
“I wouldn’t even know what to say,” I said, my heart aching at the idea of admitting just how much I’d been keeping from him.
William exhaled hard and his wheelchair made a mechanical buzzing sound as he moved forward toward the coffee table.
He reached for my phone and typed in a number I was shocked he knew by heart.
“You need to get here now,” he said, cutting off whatever Levee might have been saying. I could hear the murmur of Levee’s voice, making William look at me. “Alive. Just barely,” he added, then ended the call.
Then, without another word, he turned around and went back to his station just inside the door.
We sat there in tense, awkward silence, neither of us knowing what to say to try to ease the mood.
The mood I imagined would only feel even more strained when a very out-of-the-loop Levee arrived.
As the moments stretched on, I seemed to come back more into myself. Which made me more aware of the sensations going on in my body.
Namely, the suddenly sore throat. Like that first day of the flu when each swallow felt like you were choking down glass.
Was that what happened when someone got choked?
My nose was throbbing.
And the whole area around my mouth felt tender from the hand clamped there.
Small complaints in the big scheme of things.
But I could think of little else as my little clock that featured a different wild bird at each hour loudly clicked away the minutes.
Until, finally, there was a frantic knocking at the door.
“Jade!” Levee called through the door as his uncle moved away from it, then reached to open it.
Levee rushed inside.
“Seems like you two got a lot of shit to tell each other.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Levee
The second I heard my uncle’s voice on Jade’s phone, I knew shit had hit the fan.
The only thing I could think to ask was Is she alive? As my stomach cramped, as my heart dropped.
As soon as I had that information, I was running.
Out of my room, down the stairs, into the kitchen, where several heads turned to me in unison.
“What’s—“ Eddie started.
“Call Cato and Seeley. Tell ‘em to meet me at my uncle’s place.”
With that, I was out of the house, on my bike, and speeding like fucking hell to my old neighborhood. The whole drive, my mind raced with a million possibilities of what kind of trouble she could have gotten herself involved with, what could have happened to her.
Whatever it was, I knew it couldn’t be good if my uncle, of all people, came to her rescue.
I mean, I once saw him look the other way while a group of men street harassed a girl who couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
Sure, that was back when I was around that age too. Maybe the years had softened him a bit. Even if I hadn’t seen any signs of that myself.
He probably just had a soft side for Jade.
Who wouldn’t?
Except, of course, whatever fuck had put his hands on her.
Rage burned in my gut, made its way up my chest and throat.
By the time I pulled up at my old apartment building, I’d swear there was a hole in my esophagus from the heat of my anger.
Sure, I’d seen proof of someone putting their hands on her once already. I’d seen part of the nasty message on her whiteboard.
But it didn’t make it any more fathomable that anyone could put their hands on someone like her. Someone full of sweetness and sunshine. Someone who always wanted to do good for everyone else.
Whoever this person was, they were a fucking monster.
The time of night didn’t matter, there were always people milling around. I recognized that one tall, skinny kid I’d seen Jade talking to. His gaze, especially, was on me as I jumped off my bike and literally ran in the fucking building.
My heartbeat was hammering in my chest as I rushed down the hallway toward her apartment, pounding my fist on the door.
“Jade!” I yelled when the door didn’t immediately open.
There was the buzzing sound of my uncle’s electric wheelchair as he moved out of the way to open the door.