Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 182075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 910(@200wpm)___ 728(@250wpm)___ 607(@300wpm)
“Thanks, but someone needs you more than me. And these guys won’t harm me.”
Not physically anyway.
Emotionally, that was a whole other story.
They can only hurt you if you let them have that power.
After Monica left, Spencer came and sat on a chair to her left. Slade took the other seat, reaching out to touch her hand. He let out a pained grunt as she tugged it back, away from him.
What did he expect?
That she was just going to forgive him? Them? Was that why they were here? Wait. How had they known she was here?
“What are you doing here? How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“Maggie came to see us,” Slade told her.
She had? Why would she do that? Shit.
“Thank God she did,” Spencer said with tears in his eyes. “Princess, fuck, he hurt you.”
“It wasn’t the first time,” she said in a dull tone.
She tried to pretend that the pained noise Spencer made didn’t affect her.
But it did.
“I’m going to kill the fucking bastard,” Slade said darkly.
Right. Sure.
Slade started swearing. “I know that seems too little too late. We should have . . . fuck, we should have listened to you, should have given you a chance to talk. We almost didn’t listen to Maggie when she came to the club.”
“Turns out we have a habit of doing that,” Spencer added dryly.
She winced. “Yeah, you don’t have to tell me.”
“I know, Princess. I fucking know,” Spencer said. “What do you want me to do to make it up to you? Anything . . . I’ll do fucking anything.”
“I don’t think there is anything you can do,” she told him honestly.
She wasn’t sure they could repair this chasm between them.
Not when she felt like she’d been torn to pieces and patched back up with rough stitching, so her edges never quite met.
Spencer flinched and she hated that she felt bad when all she wanted to feel was anger.
Slade let out a pained grunt. “We deserve that. We know we fucked up, Boo. Fuck, in the biggest way we possibly could have. We don’t deserve your forgiveness and you shouldn’t give it to us.”
Spencer let out a noise of protest and Slade shot him a look.
“Not unless we earn it,” Slade added. “And we will. All you have to do is give us a chance.”
Did he think she was an idiot? Like she was going to do that.
And did the others even want that? Rock couldn’t look at her and Quaid seemed so . . . removed.
Quaid moved so he was standing at the end of the bed, looming over her. He looked every inch the dark fallen angel.
Her gray-eyed boy.
Except he wasn’t hers, was he?
He’d always been vengeful and protective. If anyone went against his family, he destroyed them.
She’d never expected him to turn that darkness on her.
“Maggie told you all of it?” she asked in a hoarse voice, staring at Quaid.
The expression on his face didn’t flicker.
“Maggie told us that Billy . . . that Billy abused you,” Spencer managed to get out.
“And that you never stole anything from us. That it was Billy, that he followed you to the apartment. That he somehow doctored the video feed from the cameras?” Slade added with a question in his voice.
“Yeah, he followed me in, threatened me, and then he drugged me.” She stared down at her hands which were clenched together. “I had no idea that he’d even taken anything from your home office until you guys told me when I came back weeks later. I . . . I should have found a way to tell you, I guess. But when we got back to his apartment he . . . he hurt me.”
There was a deadly silence in the room.
And when she found the courage to look up, they were all staring at her. Except Rock.
“Hurt you. Fucking hurt you. Hurt. You.” Slade stood and started to pace as he muttered those words over and over.
She turned to look at Spencer. “Is he all right?”
Spencer shook his head, staring at his feet. “No, none of us are. And we never will be again.”
16
“That day that you came to the penthouse,” Quaid said, drawing her attention. “When we wouldn’t let you explain why you were there or that you had never taken anything, you were coming to us because you had left him, weren’t you?”
“Yes. The first time I tried to leave him was the day after our lunch at your father’s house,” she said to Slade who nodded. “I didn’t realize he was tracking me through my phone. He forced his way into the penthouse behind me and drugged me. I woke up in a car to him telling me all the ways he was going to hurt me.”
One of them grunted but she wasn’t sure who it was.