Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
No.
This town was still mine.
Mr. Marsden’s house was only a few minutes away. My tires crunched on the dirt driveway as I arrived, and then I came to a stop and cut the engine.
All I had planned to do was drive past the house and take a look at it.
The rage inside me had other ideas.
I got out, fueled only by spite.
Draven’s truck was parked further up on the dirt drive. A big black pickup, because apparently he needed his truck to be the same dark color as his hat and his hair and his heart, as far as I could tell. The last of the summer cicadas rattled through the humid air, and I squinted as the sun glinted off of its paint in the afternoon light.
I rounded the corner of the house.
When I was a kid, my friends and I sometimes ended up here during bike rides, on summer days just like this one. When Mr. Marsden still lived here, he used to tell us to be careful with the rose bushes he had in the front and back of his ranch house.
“They’ve got thorns,” he’d warn us.
Then he’d clip off a few stems with his cutters, carefully strip away the thorns, and send each of us kids home with one red rose.
The rose bushes were the only things that were still the same about this place.
The little horse stables on one edge of the land had been empty for years, but now I could see that one of them was in use again for Ember, with hay and fresh water at one end.
Not just the son of a wealthy dynasty who likes to play dress-up in black hats.
A real cowboy.
This property used to seem so vast when I was a kid, but now it seemed small. I had a sense for its limits. The back end butted up against the football field at the high school, and the other end was fenced off just before a tiny river that only flowed after a big storm.
The best-looking feature of Mr. Marsden’s old property had always been the backyard. It had a sizeable patio made with inlaid red brick that probably needed to be redone, but at least still looked good. Like a little Italian villa, the patio was situated in between lots of green grass and clusters of trees, shrouded from the rest of the land. The perfect place to have a get-together.
If the house still belonged to a normal person, at least.
A set of windowed double doors opened up toward the back patio from the master bedroom, opening up toward the tree-lined yard.
The cicadas seemed to get louder as I slowly walked around to the backyard. I had the distinct sense that I shouldn’t be here, but then again, Draven shouldn’t have been at my house, either.
As I rounded the back and crossed over to the patio, I saw that the doors were open right now.
I stepped off the gravel path onto the soft grass, which was way too long and needed a good mow. Apparently Draven had already cleared out all of the old furniture that had once been inside. In the afternoon light I could see through the windows into the living room, which was completely empty.
But as I approached the two open doors that led to the master bedroom, I saw that he at least had one piece of furniture. He’d put in a bed.
And then as I got closer, I saw the outline of… him.
My heart lodged in my throat as I turned and the full view of the bed came into focus, sunlight shining in on Draven through the open doors.
He was naked from the waist down, sprawled back across the mattress.
And he was wearing nothing other than a dark, tight T-shirt, which was currently hitched up a little past his stomach, exposing the ridges of his lower abs.
An impressive tattoo stretched upward from the top of his thigh and snaked its way up his hip, landing just below the V-shape on his lower torso. Inches and inches of black and red ink on his skin.
His cock was out. Prominently on display. And hard.
His fist was wrapped around it, and he was jerking off with the backyard doors open wide.
The faint sound of whatever video he was watching came from the small speaker on his phone. My spine tingled when I heard my own voice.
“That’s how we do it in Tennessee, baby.”
He was getting off to one of my videos. A flare of pride ripped through me so quickly I didn’t have time to be shocked by it.
You’re jerking off to videos of me?
Now who’s really the one in control?
He still hadn’t spotted me and I knew if I moved slow, I could still make a break for it.
But as I took a step backward my shoe hit a branch on the grass and it snapped.