Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
The color returned to her face, maybe even a little too much because her cheeks had pinked with anger. “Henry said you did some shady stuff?”
I nodded. “I told myself I was protecting her from Sam, but I absolutely did. I took Sam off her visitor’s list while she was in rehab and gave him the runaround at one of her concerts so he couldn’t get backstage. Nothing crazy, just…dishonest.”
“Great,” she whispered.
Christ. How did that one word hit me like an arrow falling from the sky?
Oh, right, because it sounded a hell of a lot like the seed of regret already sprouting in her chest.
But I couldn’t stop there. If she wanted my colors, she needed to know, that they were all dark and weathered—nothing vivid or clean.
“So yeah. I showed up at her house drunk out of my mind one night. She was hosting some kind of lavish white party, but I thought it was her wedding. And I lost it. Control. Myself. Reality. I swung at Sam. Henry stepped in the way. Carter put me on the ground. And then Levee fired me, and nobody in the industry would come near me, and I couldn’t blame a single one of them for it. I used my one and only get out of jail free card when I moved to Guardian. So yeah, Leo finds out about you and me, I’m up in smoke.” I stared deep into her eyes, finally able to tell her a truth I was proud of. “But I don’t give a shit about any of that. I’ll work as a rent-a-cop at a grocery store if it gets me you, and that has not one fucking thing to do with Levee Williams or any pattern that you think exists.”
I chanced a step forward, and thankfully she didn’t retreat. Pressing my luck even further, I caught her pinky with mine.
She closed her eyes but didn’t pull it away. A small victory that filled my chest with hope.
“I was gonna to tell you. I swear,” I whispered. “I’m so damn sorry for putting you in that position with Henry tonight. But I need you to know, that the way I feel for you, this thing we’re growing. It’s not even in the same stratosphere as that shit with Levee. Because it took finding you for me to realize, I was never in love with her. What I had with her was a stumble. A man who didn’t watch where he was going, lost his footing, and went down hard. It was humiliating and it cost me big and I spent four years making sure I never put myself in that position again.”
Our fingers still linked, I gave them a tug, until her lids fluttered open. “But, babe. Please hear me when I say this. You are the whole damn fall. There is no comparison. There is no pattern. Because I have never been here before.” I lifted her hand to my mouth, kissing each and every knuckle while saying, “Circumstances didn’t create this. I’m not even sure what did. But I will never stop being grateful that those walls failed me. Because it got me you.”
Her chin trembled as she shook her head. “And then once you got me… you lied. Just like Sebastian.”
My whole body locked up tight. “I’m nothing like him.”
“Really?” She tugged her hand from mine. “You think every time he came home, he announced that he didn’t cheat on me? Made a whole proclamation that he didn’t get anyone pregnant? Lied straight to my face?”
My jaw clenched, that hope turning to nausea, rolling in my gut.
She took a long step away from me, the space she created speaking louder than her words. “He just didn’t say anything at all.”
“I wasn’t cheating on you,” I bit out.
“No,” she agreed. “But you were keeping something from me. On purpose. Since day one.” She took another step away, like she needed the distance to finish it. “And maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you. Maybe to you it’s just timing, or the past or whatever you’ve been telling yourself. But to me?” Her voice dropped to an eerie whisper. “It’s a crack in the foundation of the one person I trusted most. You.”
The word hit me like a bullet. Clean shot straight through the heart. And I couldn’t even defend myself because she wasn’t wrong.
A crack.
Jesus Christ.
That was what I did. That was what I’d always done. I found the weak spots, the fractures, the things people didn’t even realize were about to give out—and I handled them before they became a problem. Quietly. Efficiently.
So no one else ever had to feel it.
Except this time…
I wasn’t fixing the crack.
I’d carved it there myself.
And worse—I’d seen it forming. Known this was coming.
And I’d done absolutely nothing to stop it.