Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
I hated that it made me long for more of that care. Tristan had never been this attentive when we were together. He just took care of me, but I had been hopelessly in love with him back then. So in love that I overlooked how bad of a boyfriend he was.
“Here,” Tristan gruffly spoke up, holding out two pills and the now opened bottle of water.
Silently, I took the medicine because my head was hurting too bad to refuse him, keeping my eyes steady with his. I didn’t care how he made me feel. I was here because of him. That much was clear. I wanted to know why the fuck I wasn’t with the Sons of Hell. With Joey. “Well?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “I found out that for the last three years, you’ve been with Joey’s crew,” he informed me, anger twisting his handsome features into a snarl, but he didn’t intimidate me. Instead, I only grew angrier at the fact that he thought he had any right to be pissed about what I’d been doing with my life when he was the one that brutally ripped my heart and soul apart and left me fucking stranded.
“I brought you back here where you belong.” I opened my mouth to snap at him, but he kept going, not giving me a chance. “Why the fuck were you with Joey’s club?” he snarled down at me.
“Because three years ago on my fucking birthday, Tristan, you fucking ripped my goddamn heart out,” I bitterly reminded him. His face paled slightly at my words, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I wanted you to hurt as much as you’ve hurt me,” I admitted angrily. “So, I fucking betrayed you by joining the one fucking crew you can’t stand,” I lied. In all reality, Joey had offered me a night of fun, and I’d taken it with both hands, just wanting to forget about my heartbreak.
But later that night, when he had gotten ready to drop me off at home and saw where I lived, he just shook his head and drove back off, not even letting me attempt to get out of his vehicle.
“I’m not letting you stay in a fucking trap house. Not when you’re of legal age now,” Joey had told me. “You’re coming home with me.”
“What the hell?!” I shouted at him as he drove off so fast, my back slammed against the seat. “Joey, turn back around! I’m not going home with you!”
He turned those dark eyes on me, settling the unease in my gut. I didn’t know how he did it, but those dark eyes had been soothing me all night. “Pretty girl, you’re eighteen now. Any man in that house could now take you, and you’d probably lose the rape case because men get away with that shit all of the time. I won’t let you be a victim.”
I helplessly tossed my hands up in the air before letting them drop down to my lap with a loud smack. “Well, I don’t have anywhere else to go, Joey,” I bitterly reminded him. That horrible fucking place was all I had.
He smirked at me, melting my insides. “You do now, pretty girl.” He rolled to a stop at the end of the street and reached over, cupping my cheek in his hand. My heart flipped in my chest. “You have me, pretty girl.” My bottom lip trembled, tears burning in my eyes. His words were so sweet, and I was doing my best not to cling onto them, but it was so hard. He was giving me so much without asking for anything in return. Had anyone ever done that for me? “You’ll always have me.”
He glanced behind us at the house we had left behind. “Besides, with how tormented your eyes have looked all night, I have no doubt in my mind that you’d lose yourself inside of every drug you can find in that house, and I won’t let you do that to yourself.” A tear slid down my face.
I had actually planned on doing just that. How had he known?
He leaned forward and brushed his lips to my cheek, catching the tear before it could meet my own lips. “I’m going to teach you how to breathe again, Adelaide. Just give me time.”
“Did Helene know?” Tristan demanded, dragging me out of my head and out of that sweet memory I shared with Joey. The muscle in Tristan’s jaw was ticking with his outrage.
A smirk twisted my lips, my heart squeezing painfully in my chest. “She told me it was a fucking great idea,” I retorted, lying straight through my teeth, but he didn’t need to know that. Helene had thought Joey would be a good rebound guy for me, nothing more. She hadn’t expected nor wanted me to get in so deep with him and his club. “She hated you for doing that to me,” I told him, and that was the fucking truth. He had always loved his sister. I knew that much. They used to be two little peas in a pod. But something between them had broken when he turned his back on me.