Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
If there were someone hiding in this apartment, would they have stocked my pantry with my favorite snack? No. They would not have. My experience with criminals was that they didn’t care if you ate or not. I was being ridiculous. I must have bought them and forgotten they were there.
That or I had early-onset dementia.
Could you get that at twenty-three? I mused, then decided to run my bathwater.
Seventeen
Oz
I closed the door softly, then did a once-over of the living room and kitchen. No candles left burning tonight. Relieved to see she had gone almost two weeks without that mistake, I made my way over to the pantry to check and see if she had opened the Goldfish box I’d left in there last night. She’d been sick this week and forgotten to run to the store and restock her favorite snack, so I had done it for her.
A grin tugged at the corner of my mouth when I saw the box. Good girl. She was eating again.
Thursday, she hadn’t seemed to have much of an appetite yet. There had been no dirty dishes in the sink or dishwasher when I got here to check on things. Seemed her appetite had returned. That had been a nasty fucking virus. Kids were little germy shits.
Shifting my eyes toward her open bedroom door, I headed to her room, but stopped to peek in the bathroom first and make sure that the candle she kept by the bathtub hadn’t been left lit either. Although she had never forgotten that one. It was always the living room one she would leave lit. The small room was dark, but she had left a towel on the floor. Walking inside, I picked it up and hung it up neatly on the towel bar, spreading it out so that it would dry properly, like she normally did. It hadn’t only been a Friday for her, but a rough week.
The scent of her coconut-honey body wash filled the room. Fuck, that smelled good. I picked up the bottle and inhaled. She was getting low. If she didn’t get a new one in a few days, she was going to be out. I should check into where she got this. It looked expensive. Possibly the only splurge the woman did for herself. The rest of her things were minimalistic. Even her damn food. It was real hard not to go fill her refrigerator up the nights it was basically bare. But that would likely scare the shit out of her, so I refrained.
Stepping into her bedroom, I walked soundlessly over to the side of her bed to look at her. This had become my obsession, or perhaps it was an addiction—I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t meant to start this. Bringing her home, putting her in bed, and exiting her life had been my plan. But I’d made the mistake of standing here and watching her, like I was doing now. Peacefulness settled over me in the quiet as her wide, bowed lips slightly parted and her bare shoulder moved ever so gently with each breath she took. The elegant bone structure of her face and flawless complexion had all pulled me in. I had always enjoyed art, and she was a masterpiece. One that I needed to see every night.
After it had been clear I couldn’t stop this, I’d taken her key and had a copy made so I didn’t have to continue to break in. It was quieter this way. My fourth night here, she had left that damn candle burning in the living room. That shit scared me. What if I hadn’t come? What if she’d been caught in a fire? The idea of her not existing had struck me hard. So, that was my reasoning, my justification, for being here nightly. Someone needed to check on her. She’d been through a lot. Fucking bastard brother had put her emotions through a wringer.
I’d been ready to kill him, and I would have done so if Linc hadn’t stopped me. But after watching her, seeing the nights when her eyes appeared puffy, as if she’d gone to sleep crying, I was real fucking grateful to Blaise that he’d ordered I not kill the son of a bitch. That would have broken her, and I didn’t like to see beautiful things broken. In my head, she had become my beautiful thing.
It had been fourteen days since I’d stood over her to see swollen eyes. She was handling things better. Adjusting to this new life, where her brother was behind bars. I’d gone to Blaise and asked if he could make sure Perry was placed in the closest federal prison to Madison. She’d want to visit him, and I didn’t like the idea of her making a long drive. There was always the chance I might be in the middle of family business and not be able to follow her. If that day came though, I wouldn’t handle it well. I didn’t want her in a damn prison without me. Even if she didn’t know I was there.