Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I was barely a page in when I felt Sarah lean against my arm. Glancing out of the corner of my eye, I found her watching me as she bit nervously at her fingernails.
Taking her hand from her mouth, I threaded my fingers through hers and held her hand in reassurance as I read the rest of her new chapter.
“Well?” she asked once I’d finished.
“It’s good.” It was. Her writing always was.
“But?”
Christ, she was starting to know me well. “I think you’re giving too much away about Colton.” I referred to one of her red herrings. We’d already discussed at length Sarah’s plans for the book, so I knew the red herrings and I knew who the real villain was. “There’s almost too much information about him here. I fear readers will decide for that reason alone that he isn’t the main guy.”
She leaned against me, nibbling her lip. “Aye, I did wonder that myself.”
“You would have caught it on your read-through.”
We talked a little about which lines to cut and which to keep.
Then I prodded at something I probably shouldn’t, but as soon as I’d read it, I’d felt a gnawing curiosity and suspicion. Honestly, I wanted Sarah to allay my suspicions.
“The scene where the attacker hits Juno … you describe that well. What it feels like to be punched in the face and gut. It isn’t the first time in the series that Juno is physically attacked and … there’s a realness to it …”
Sarah met my questioning gaze. “Have you ever been punched in the face and gut?”
“My father backhanded me a few times as a child,” I told her with an indifference I tried to feel. “There were a few tussles at school because I was quite an angry little shit. And I mistakenly slept with a married woman a few years ago and her husband found out and gave me a well-deserved beating.”
“You didn’t know she was married?”
I shook my head. “We met at a pub. He found some texts on her phone and tracked me down to said pub and clocked me in the face. Caught me unawares so I hit the floor and he kicked me in the gut before someone pulled him off.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t deserved, Theo. You didn’t know. You wouldn’t sleep with a married woman.”
I glanced sharply at her. “How would you know that?”
“Because you wouldn’t do to someone else what was done to you.”
My throat tightened and I found it a little harder to breathe. Pushing through it, I shook my head. “You changed the subject. I asked you the question.”
“Did you?”
Angry now, but not at her, I bit out, “Do you know from experience what it’s like to be punched in the face and gut?”
I already knew the answer.
She’d told me her mother was abusive. But seeing how well she described it on the page and knowing her like I knew her now, I knew this had happened to Sarah. It seemed unimaginable that someone could take their hands to her.
“I told you she slapped me in front of the police.”
“But there was more, wasn’t there?”
“Mum slapped me around a bit, yes, but …” Sarah swallowed hard. “I … A few months before Ardnoch opened, just before Adair started hiring his staff, I was still working at the Gloaming. We went for a staff Christmas night out in Inverness. There was a guy who’d started working with us who kept coming on to me, and I wanted nothing to do with him. He got drunk and wouldn’t leave me alone, so I decided to leave the bar without telling anyone.” Sarah let out a shuddering breath, and dread sickened my stomach. “A man, a stranger, followed me and tried to pull me down a dark side street. Thankfully, a few girls who were out for the night saw it and came after us to chase him off, but not before he’d punched me in the face and gut to try to incapacitate me.”
Unexpected rage welled within and I looked away, scrubbing a hand over my mouth to stop the reaction from spilling out.
“Those girls saved me from God only knows what.”
“Oh, I think we both know what they saved you from,” I snapped, turning to look at her.
She flinched at the fury in my expression and remorse filled me. I reached out to stroke a thumb over her cheek, unable to bear the idea of what might have happened to her if those girls hadn’t been there. I softened my tone. “Did the police get him?”
Her cheeks flushed and she lowered her gaze. “I didn’t tell the police. I … if I told the police, then Grandpa would find out and it would just upset him, so … so I let the arsehole get away with it, and now I have to live with the fact that he’s probably done it to other women.”