Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
He shakes his head, lips curling in a shadow of a smile. “Sweetheart, you don’t get to rewrite the script just because you don’t like the ending. I was honest about what I was doing. I paid you handsomely for it. That’s more than most people ever get. How many girls give it away for free, only to regret it later? At least you have a big number in your bank account now.”
I can’t take it anymore. I scramble to my feet, dizzy and off-balance. My legs give out and I hit the coffee table, scattering beer bottles and empty mugs. I’m crying so hard my vision is smeared.
I run—up the stairs, down the hall, into the first room I find. I slam the door and collapse on the floor, sobbing into the crook of my arm.
I can hear him moving around downstairs, unconcerned. A chair scrapes, a door opens and closes, and then nothing. It’s like I never existed.
For the first time since I got here, I wish I never had.
13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – ESCAPE AND AFTERMATH
Kat
The woods are an animal with a thousand glass eyes, all staring, all waiting for me to stop running.
I trip over a frozen rut, go down on both knees, and the pain is white-hot, clean, like a needle. The trees shudder in the wind, branches spidering overhead, scraping the gray sky for answers. I want to scream, but my throat is clogged with snot and my own useless pride. All I can manage is a whimper as I scramble to my feet, hands and jeans already caked with mud.
I don’t know where I’m going. I just know I need to get as far from the cabin as possible, from the dark-lit rooms that smell like Talon’s sweat and the ghost of last night’s betrayal. I can feel his eyes on me, even though I left him standing in the embers, beer in hand, mouth set in a line so thin you could slice bread with it.
My vision is a mess—tears, wind, the sharp sting of cold air. Everything blurs into a smudge of motion, bare branches and the flash of my own white hands as I crash through the brush. I slam my thigh into a sapling so hard I see stars, but I don’t stop. My lungs are burning, my hair is a halo of snags and debris, and my boots leave clumsy tracks in the rotten snow.
I’m nobody, I think. I’m a fuck-up, a cliché, the girl who thought she mattered when she never did. The pain in my chest is worse than the ache between my legs, worse than the raw skin on my knees. I want to find a cliff and jump off it, but all I find is more trees, more air, more cold.
At some point, I lose track of time. The world narrows to the sound of my breathing and the slap of twigs against my cheeks. My pulse is so loud it drowns out everything else, and I don’t notice the smell of woodsmoke until I’m practically on top of the hermit’s hut.
Erasmus’s place is even smaller than I remember. The porch sags, and the roof is a patchwork of tin and tar paper, but the chimney is pumping out fat blue ribbons of smoke. I stagger up the steps, legs wobbling, and collapse against the door.
For a long time, nothing happens. I think I might actually die here, freeze solid, and they’ll find my corpse in the spring, one of those “tragic local news stories” that never makes it out of the region. I start to laugh at that, a mad, broken giggle, when the door jerks open and I nearly tumble inside.
Erasmus doesn’t say a word. He just looks at me, one gray eyebrow raised, face set in lines so deep they look like dried riverbeds. He’s wearing the same checked shirt as last time, the sleeves rolled, a scarf twisted tight around his neck. His eyes scan me from head to toe, taking in the state of my face, my clothes, the scrapes on my hands.
“Inside,” he says, and it’s not a question.
I trip over the threshold, knees giving out again, and he half-catches me, steering me toward the battered armchair by the stove. The cabin resembles a hobbit hole: tiny, cluttered, every surface covered with books or tin mugs or little carved animals. The heat from the woodstove is so intense it makes me dizzy, and I bury my hands in the wool blanket thrown over the chair, trying not to shiver.
Erasmus moves around the room like a man used to caring for stray creatures. He stirs the fire, pours water from a kettle into a chipped mug, then adds a big spoonful of honey and a sprig of something green. He hands it to me, and the mug is so hot it nearly burns my fingers.