Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
By the time I pulled onto the shoulder and threw my car into park, JJ was striding behind me, the gun aimed at the back windshield and, of course, me. I was glad to see he was at least smart enough to use the vehicle as a shield if bullets began flying.
Jesus fucking Christ, Cass. What the fuck do you care if his instincts are working?
I ignored the voice in my head and yanked on the door handle so hard that I was surprised it didn’t rip right off. JJ continued to call out his warnings for me not to move or he’d shoot, but I didn’t care.
Just like I didn’t care that I’d left my own weapon on the passenger seat.
“I will shoot you, Cass,” JJ warned as I began walking toward him. His voice held the smallest of tremors in it.
Gone was the cop he’d once been and in his place was a man who knew he was the one in danger despite the loaded weapon in his hands.
Fury overruled any pity I had for him. That voice in my head was back. It was screaming at me that this was JJ. JJ, Sully’s little brother. JJ, the kid who used to look up to me like I was some kind of hero or something. JJ, the man I’d felt dying in my arms as I’d screamed for help.
JJ, the man who’d condemned me to life in a prison cell. The man who was responsible for me needing to be aware of everyone and everything around me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. The man who’d believed that I would ever hurt him.
“Not that man anymore,” I whispered to myself as I forced the reminder of prison away. JJ began taking steps backward.
“Cass, stop! Stop!”
The fearless man who’d stood in front of my car with a gun aimed at my head less than sixty seconds ago was now an uncertain former cop who knew he’d started a fight he wouldn’t win.
JJ’s hand wavered even as he kept his finger on the trigger. The closer I got, the more desperate his tone became.
“I will shoot you!”
I didn’t stop until I had my chest plastered against the barrel of his gun. I should have been worried that even though I knew JJ wouldn’t intentionally shoot me, his shaking hand could easily cause the gun to fire.
I wasn’t worried. I was too caught up in taking in every part of his face. Coal-black hair with matching arched eyebrows. Long, lush ebony lashes that brushed his skin whenever he blinked, straight nose with the tiny scar on one side from when he’d fallen off his bike at the age of nine, and full, sumptuous lips just begging to be kissed. But it was his eyes that had always mesmerized me the most. One was a striking shade of dark green while the other was hazel with flecks of gold scattered around the iris.
He still looked as young as he had the night that had changed everything. God, that night was supposed to have changed everything but not like it had.
We shouldn’t have been standing on a quiet stretch of road high in the Hollywood Hills with his gun aimed at my heart.
But we were there. He’d put us there.
The fury returned, making it easy for me to take the gun from him, release the clip and eject the bullet from the chamber before dropping the useless weapon to the ground. JJ hadn’t even registered that his gun was in pieces on the ground when I grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket and practically threw him onto the trunk of my car.
“I think you and I need to have a little chat,” I growled as JJ struggled to catch his breath.
“Fuck you,” he managed to choke out.
“I think you can do better than that, sweetheart,” I drawled.
“Fuck you, you murdering piece of shit!” JJ snapped. He took a half-hearted swing at me, but I was heavier than him and had been trained by the best when it came to subduing people, not to mention maiming and killing them.
The United States Marine Corps.
“That little girl was only ten years old!” JJ continued. “Did you make her watch while you put a bullet in her mother’s brain or was it the other way around? Did her mother have to watch her child—”
That was all I let him get out. I brought down my right fist hard on the trunk right next to JJ’s head. Pain radiated from my hand outward to my arm.
“You of all people,” I snarled before snapping my mouth shut. I let the sting of his words drown beneath the sharp pain in my hand.
“Leave no witnesses, right, Cass? The Marines teach you that? Did they teach you how to toy with your victims first or was that just you?” JJ continued, seemingly uncaring of the danger he was in. His breathing had improved since I’d eased some of my weight off him.