Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75478 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75478 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I’m okay,” I said, freeing one of my hands to reach for the hot chocolate.
“Hot chocolate. Noted,” he said, reaching for the coffee himself.
“I like them all,” I told him as I took a small sip.
“But some situations just call for chocolate,” he said, nodding. “This particular one might call for a shot. At ten in the morning.”
“I don’t really drink,” I said, shrugging. “So this will do.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Okay.”
“What message did you have to give me?”
“That’s the thing,” I said, glancing over at him. His bright-eyed gaze was on me, and I couldn’t help but worry about my likely splotchy skin, my swollen lids, my messy, greasy hair.
Which was extra crazy since, even if this was a normal situation, a man like him wouldn’t want anything to do with a girl who had to switch pizza places because my favorite one stopped having online ordering, and I could never talk myself into calling to place an order.
“What’s the thing?”
“There was no message. He told me that I was going to bring you a message. But there was no actual message. Just… the vest.”
“Message enough, I guess. But is there anything you can tell me about the man? What did he look like? Sound like? Where did he put that vest on you? Anything.”
“He had a ski mask on. He sounded… like anyone else.”
“Okay. That’s alright,” he told me, his voice soothing as he pretended to shrug that off. I might have appreciated his desire to be casual about it, but I wasn’t stupid; there was no way he felt as blasé as he was acting right then. “What about the other details? How did you end up with the vest on?”
“I don’t know that part,” I admitted, my belly twisting. I had a lot of fears. But most of them stemmed from this feeling of being out of control. I got serious dental work done while fully awake because anesthesia freaked me out. I couldn’t fly or use trains because I needed the illusion of being the one to control my fate, even if—logically—driving meant you were at the mercy of everyone else on the road. I’d never been able to have sleepovers with friends or, older, with a partner because I didn’t like being unconscious around someone, no matter how much I thought I could trust them.
So having no idea what happened between the parking lot at work and waking up with the vest already on was enough to make the bile start to make its way back up my throat, to make my breathing begin to get fast and shallow again.
“What’s your favorite rom-com?” Sully asked, making my head whip up, brows scrunched.
“What?”
“Rom-com. What’s your favorite?”
“Oh, um, I guess You’ve Got Mail. Or maybe While You Were Sleeping.”
“The ‘90s had some of the best rom-coms ever,” he agreed, nodding. “Anyway, what do you remember?” he asked.
It was then that I realized he didn’t struggle with his attention span or anything like that; he’d been trying to pull me back out of my anxiety spiral by asking me something completely out of left field.
I sucked in a steadying breath.
“I was leaving work.”
“Where do you work?”
“Fur Seasons Spa.”
“Four Seasons?”
“No, fur. Like dog. It’s a grooming place.”
“Okay. And you were leaving work… alone?”
“My boss had plans, so I stayed late to clean up. I was walking to my car. The light was out in the lot,” I added, suddenly wondering if that wasn’t just happenstance. “I had just gotten in my seat when the door opened and then… nothing.”
“You got hit in the head,” he said, climbing off the bed. “Can I look?” he asked, turning the light on.
“Okay,” I agreed.
My head was still hammering, but I’d been blaming the crying and stress, forgetting all about a possible head wound.
Sully moved to bend over me, his hands gentle on my head as he pulled my hair apart. I felt the stickiness that I must have assumed was sweat, but had to be blood, as Sully probed around the spot.
“Is it bad?”
“It’s… not too bad. I think you should maybe let me clean it for you once we’re done talking. And you’ve got a nice goose egg going on. And we’re gonna have to talk about a possible concussion, too. But let’s stick with one thing at a time, yeah?” he asked, taking a step back and balling his hands into fists. But not before I saw my blood there.
“The next thing I knew, I was waking up because of the pain in my head. I was in a basement. And the guy was there, telling me to stop moving because I wanted to touch my head.”
“And he had a ski mask on.”
“Yeah.”
“What about anything else? Height, weight, maybe any tattoos?”
“He was fully covered,” I recalled. “Gloves even,” I added. “But he was shorter than you. And on the stocky side. His clothes were too small for him. Everything was stretched tight.” Which sounded like a sensory nightmare to me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe if my clothes were too tight. Or the necks were too high.