Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
What if that hadn’t been a robbery?
What if someone had been looking for me?
And when they hadn’t found me, tried to find any evidence of who I was?
I didn’t keep any documents in the motel rooms, though. It was out of pure paranoia about someone breaking in or the staff taking it.
I had a small safety deposit box where I kept our important documents and a little bit of cash. Just in case.
They wouldn’t have found a single thing with my name on it. Let alone anything else about me.
But if that had been them, they knew where I lived. Maybe they’d just been biding their time to catch me alone again. And thanks to Coast, I hadn’t been for days.
Something niggled at me until it surfaced fully.
Just an hour or so ago.
Standing in the lot of the motel talking to Carter.
He’d looked at something over my shoulder and had gotten tense.
Could it have been them?
Watching me?
Following me?
Waiting for a chance to sneak up on me?
If either instance could have been them, then there was no way for me to go back to the motel.
Brooke and Tasha were there. Along with their kids. I couldn’t bring a dangerous situation there. A possible shoot-out at a place with paper-thin walls.
I couldn’t afford to go anywhere else for the night. It just wasn’t an option.
Which only left me one place.
Somewhere I really, really didn’t want to have to go.
But for Lainey?
I could endure it.
I had to.
“Want to go meet your father, Lainey?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Zoe
It wasn’t a long drive back to Miami.
But I swear each mile I drove had my stomach twisting tighter and tighter until it was just one big knot with no hope of untangling.
I tried to keep my mind on the current moment. But it wasn’t long before I was the woman I had been just two years ago.
So young.
So inexperienced.
So hopeful.
And wholly, indisputably, unbearably freaking naive.
I could see how I’d been tapping on the steering wheel, belting out some pop song I would quickly grow to hate. How I would keep checking my reflection in the mirror at red lights, fixing any flyaway hairs or smudged makeup, wanting to make my best possible first impression.
Growing up with a single mom who’d just barely been getting by, all I knew were the lower-class suburbs of my hometown.
So as the navigation had me turning onto a street of mini-mansions, I’d been full of wonder.
So wide-eyed.
So easily impressed.
Too starstruck not to know it was all smoke and mirrors, that everything was an illusion, a carefully curated image.
This time, driving down that same road, all I felt was a sick sort of disgust. For all the time I’d spent there, for running myself ragged for someone else, for allowing someone to whittle me down until I was the exact shape they wanted.
Then the second I could no longer fit that picture-perfect image, I was useless. As easily discarded as last week’s trash.
Even if the man throwing me away was the father of the damn baby growing in my stomach.
“God, I hate this place,” I told Lainey as I turned into the driveway.
I hated that as I drove over them, I knew the pavers that made up the horseshoe drive cost fifty thousand dollars. That the gardener who kept all the hedges shaped and the weeds at bay received a wad of cash each week from Travis while he refused to send a dime my way.
I hated the lush green lawn.
The bright spotlights, so people could admire the grandeur even at night.
The crystal-clear pool out back.
The endless hours of my life I would never get back, standing near that pool, getting screamed at by the man who was supposed to care about me.
I shook those thoughts away.
I choked back the sick feeling in my throat.
I squashed my pride.
This wasn’t about me.
This was about Lainey.
I could do anything for her.
Run for our lives. Twice.
Run over a man.
Beg her father for help.
Of all of them, though, that last one was the worst.
A chill was making its way down my spine as I carried Lainey toward the towering house. I couldn’t help but wonder if someone was watching me right then. None of the windows in the house had blinds, let alone curtains.
Heaven forbid the ‘perfect light’ wasn’t spilling in at all times.
As I stepped up to the front door, I looked down at Lainey. She was watching me with those big, trusting eyes.
Normally, I was sure I was doing what was best for her, for us. Right then, though, everything in me was saying this was a bad idea.
The problem was, it was my only one.
Sucking in a steadying breath, I pressed my finger into the doorbell.
I listened to it sing through the house, and there were several long moments of silence before the front door slid open.