Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 148(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 148(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 98(@300wpm)
What can I actually tell them, though? That Conrad called in a fake bomb threat of which I have absolutely no proof? That he deceived me by pretending to protect me, while the whole time he was stalking me? Again, I have no way of proving that either. And was he never actually not protecting me? He never let me out of his sight–that is, until I tricked him at the pier. And I did feel so safe around him…
My God, what am I even thinking right now?
My nipples are hard beneath my shirt. I’m still soaked from our encounter on the Ferris wheel. And despite the chill in the air, I’m flooded with heat. I take one more glance up at the officer behind his desk and think about how our conversation would go, then turn my back on him and pull out my phone.
“You are such an idiot, Belle…”
I scroll through my recent calls until I find Fitch’s contact. I hesitate. If I make this call, things will get very complicated. Not like they already aren’t, but this will change how the rest of my life unfolds. There will be no going back if I do this.
“What I can do is take you into the shadows behind one of these shops, pin you up against the wall, and put my cock back where it belongs–inside you.”
His words ring in my head, making me aware of just how badly I wanted that back at the pier. How badly I still want it. I feel like years have passed with Conrad. I don’t even know who I am anymore. My thinking is no longer rational. I’ve fallen for him, utterly and completely. But I’m also terrified by him.
So what do I do now?
I want to believe he won’t hurt me. In fact, I know he won’t. But how can I possibly think that? Am I just being as naïve as I was when I first fell for him? Despite all my anger from being lied to, my fury for being manipulated, my fear from realizing he’s been stalking me, I still cannot resist his passion, his strength, his dominance that he asserted in the way he commanded me.
He makes me feel wanted. A feeling Fitch has never given me. A feeling my own parents have never given me, who are happy to sell me off like an old dairy cow. But none of this changes the fact that he lied to me. He hid who he truly was from me, and who knows what else he has yet to reveal?
He’s going to have to understand that.
He’s going to have to feel the way I feel now before I let him take me back. You can’t build a house on a weak foundation, and if Conrad and I are going to have any kind of relationship at all, we need a foundation that can hold the world.
I look down at Fitch’s name on my phone, take a deep breath, close my eyes, and press it with my thumb. He answers on the first ring.
“Hello, Belle? Is everything okay?”
I’m on the verge of a panic attack. But somehow I’m managing to keep it together.
No. Everything is not okay. But I keep my cool and even put a smile into my voice when I reply, “Everything is not okay.”
9
CONRAD
Everything is collapsing.
I’m a wild beast, foaming at the mouth, suffering with desperation, possessed by a singular, desperate goal: find Belle.
I searched the whole pier and couldn’t find her. I called her countless times, but it goes straight to voicemail, and every time I hear her recorded voice, a distant ghost of the real thing, it’s like a venomous sting to my heart.
She’s sharp. She used her little challenge back there with the punching machine as a ploy to get me to take my eyes off her for a split second, and in that second, she made her escape.
I should have expected it. I never should have turned my back on her.
My lungs are on fire from sprinting up and down the pier. I went back to the manor and checked every room under the pretext that I was just doing a final inspection for any possible explosives. So what if I drew some strange looks from the staff? I don’t care. All I care about is finding Belle. Now.
She wasn’t at her parents’ house either, but that didn’t surprise me. She knows I’m looking for her and that would be one of the first places I’d check. So it makes sense she wouldn’t be there. I nearly swerved off the road into her neighbor’s fence when I peeled out and pulled an aggressive U-turn to head back to the pier. There’s still a small chance that she found a shadowy place to hide and wait until she felt it was safe to leave.