Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 110549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
And I didn’t want that.
I turned back to what I was doing. I could hear West moving out of bed, and the sound of her soft feet padding across the floor eventually reached my ears as she moved closer to me.
“Lincoln,” she softly called.
I looked up at her. She was standing a couple of feet away from me, just within arm’s reach. She ran her beautiful green eyes over my face. “I know I blocked you out all those years ago, pushed you away, didn’t let you see me while I was inside, but I never stopped caring about what happened to you, Lincoln,” she told me quietly. Her words wrapped around me, squeezing me in their comfort. “I had to do all of that to survive, Lincoln. I know that’s hard to understand, hard to grasp, but that’s how I cope. It’s how I fucking survive.”
I heaved a tired breath and ran my hands down my face. “West, I’m not mad at you,” I told her. “Cutting me off hurt, yes, but fuck, I get it. I cut off everyone when I came home from overseas. Jessie was the only person that gave a fuck enough to keep coming around, to keep pushing me to open up. So, yeah, I get it.”
“Please tell me what’s bothering you,” West begged me as she stepped a little bit closer, brought temptation a little bit more within my reach.
Damn Jessie for putting these fucking thoughts in my head. Now that he had planted the seed, I wanted to water it so fucking badly.
I’d never stopped wanting West.
When I had seen her standing in the garage with Jessie a little over a week ago, I felt like I had been punched in my gut.
“West, just drop it,” I begged her.
She shook her head. “You used to always push me to talk,” she reminded me. I gritted my teeth, hating the younger me at that moment. “You never let me get too lost inside of my head, Lincoln. So, please tell me what’s going on.”
I gritted my teeth even harder. “I still have feelings for you, West,” I bluntly told her. Her green eyes widened in shock, a soft gasp leaving her lips as she stared at me. I stepped closer to her, waiting for her to back up from me, but she stayed rooted to her spot, her eyes now nervously watching me. “I thought I had buried them, but when I saw you again, it hit me just as hard as it did the first time,” I confessed. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped wanting you, West.”
Her bottom lip trembled, her beautiful eyes shining with tears, but I knew she would never let a single one fall. “Lincoln, I’m with Jessie now,” she whispered, her voice shaking. I swallowed thickly, taking a step back from her. “I can’t lose him. It’ll fucking destroy me all over again.”
With that, she spun on her heel and disappeared into the bathroom. The only sound in the apartment was the sound of her locking the bathroom door behind her—locking me out, locking me away from her.
Jessie was wrong.
This shit would never work.
She would never be ready for this.
And that just proved it.
13
Jessie
West was unusually silent on the way back to her mom’s place. As I had thought, she had requested to live at her mom’s so she still had her independence. I hadn’t put up a fight, no matter how much I wanted her with me so she could better be protected from Jay.
But something was on her mind. At first, I thought it was because she was coming back to Farley, but no. It was definitely something else.
And I had a feeling that ‘something else’ had to do with Lincoln. She and Lincoln had been avoiding each other all day, and she was all too eager to leave when we had all of her things loaded up in the truck.
I watched West as she jumped out of the passenger seat of my truck and disappeared inside the house, moving so quickly, I barely had time to get out of the truck. With a shake of my head, I jumped out of my truck and quickly moved after her to go find out what was going on in my woman’s head.
If she got to think too much, she self-destructed. It was one of her toxic traits.
I found her lying down on the bed in her old room with her face buried in the pillows. I softly closed the bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, crossing my arms over my chest.
“West,” I called out.
She groaned. “Go away,” she grumbled. “Jessie, I’m really not in the mood.”
“Don’t care, baby,” I told her. She released another groan. I almost cracked a smile. She could be so grumpy when she wanted. “You don’t get to suffer in silence anymore and hold all of your shit in. You need to learn to talk to me now. So come on; tell me what’s going on. What’s got you and Lincoln avoiding each other like the plague?” I asked her.