Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Because he never felt like your brother, whispers a little voice in my head. And it’s true. I felt an intense attraction to him—to the stranger—but my emotions for him weren’t familial in any way. Maybe deep down, I knew he wasn’t really related to me. I guess that’s why I allowed myself to go so far with him.
But what if I’m pregnant? Pregnant with a murderer’s baby? All that crap he told me about how I probably couldn’t get knocked up unless he was “knotting” me must be a lie too, right? And then saying I was one of his “people”—whatever that means—while I was kicking him out. Another lie. All of it, lies.
I feel like I might puke.
By the time I leave the shower, Charles is gone. At least he locked the door behind him. I’m guessing he and I are over now—not that I care. I just hope he doesn’t start spreading rumors about me around town. What would the rest of Singing Rock think of me if they knew I’d been fucking a man I thought was my brother? My life here would be over.
I have to stop thinking like this. I wish I could stop thinking at all. I take out the bottle of sleeping pills I usually only use once in a while. I pour a whole handful out into my hand…
Then I put all but two of them back. I’m not going to let this break me! Other women have been fooled by con artists before. I watched a whole documentary last week about a woman who sent her entire life’s savings to some guy who contacted her on FaceBook and pretended to be in love with her. She didn’t get a cent of it back, but she didn’t kill herself.
“I’m not going to let this break me,” I say out loud. “I will get through it.”
I take the two pills and get into bed. I’m not going to cry, I tell myself. I’m just going to go to sleep. When I wake up tomorrow, it will be a new day and I’ll be fine.
But the bed feels so big and empty without him—without the stranger who pretended to be Kane. He was only in my life for a few days—less than a week—so why does it hurt so bad now that he’s gone? Why does it feel like he carved out my heart with a dull knife and took it with him when he left?
I can’t help myself—I start to cry. I sob myself to sleep, wishing I was dead, knowing I’ll never see him again.
31
CONNOR
The trip back to Fairlane is a bleak one and it passes in a kind of dark blur. Part of that is because I’m driving at night but part of it is because I’m so fucking depressed. The Wolf inside me howls mournfully and insists that we’re leaving our mate behind. We have to go back –we have to go get her!
I try to shut him up but it’s not easy. How can I explain such a complicated problem to the most simple and straightforward part of myself? I can’t—the Wolf is miserable, even more miserable than me, if that’s possible.
I can’t help thinking of my time with Sunny—running through the few precious days and nights I spent with her over and over in my mind. How could I fuck it up so badly? Why didn’t I tell her right away that I wasn’t Kane? I should have explained everything right from the start. Hell, I should have explained it in my very first letter.
But it’s too late now—it’s all too late. She’s gone and there’s no getting her back—I’m fucking sure of that.
When I finally get back to the mansion, I just sit in the driveway for a while. This is my family home—a beautiful Georgian Revival style set on top of a hill with rolling parklands all around. There’s a stable on the grounds—my mom and my sister both loved riding—as well as an Olympic sized swimming pool, a tennis court, a movie theater, and a two-lane bowling alley. It’s opulent…but empty—I have no one to share it with.
At last I get out of the truck. I fumble with my keys before remembering that we had just changed the locks to face ID scanners before I went to prison. I look into the camera for a long time and from several different angles before the lock finally clicks open. Yeah, I know I look different. I didn’t have the scar on my face the last time I was here. Or the scars on my heart.
Inside everything feels musty and unused, even though I know that Branson has maids comes in once a week to air the place out. All I see are ghosts—ghosts of my Mom and Dad and of my little sister, Bethany. They’re all gone now—I have the place to myself, only I don’t want it.