Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
He wanted to protect me.
“Why are they looking for me?” I managed, my voice thick with tears.
“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his hand up and down my spine as if to try to ease the upsetting reality of those words. “My best guess is they found out you’re linked with us somehow.”
And wanted to punish me for going behind their backs.
Thank God I had a hiding space.
Because there was no way there wasn’t some awful torture in my future if they’d located me.
I expected the tears to drag on and on like they had the night of the delivery. But maybe my system was adjusting to the fear, the uncertainty of my life now. Or maybe the meds were evening me out, letting me get more control over my emotions faster.
All I knew was that I didn’t completely soak through Kylo’s shirt this time. Though I probably did smear him with the dirt and grime from the crawl space.
“You don’t smell bad.”
“I… what?” Kylo asked, his hands pausing in their path up and down my back.
“Teddy said Huck said you smelled bad.”
A weird, short snort escaped Kylo at that.
“I guess I did for a few days. I’ve taken showers since then,” he admitted. “You talked to Teddy?”
Neither of us moved to pull apart.
And I was choosing to let myself think it was because I was still scared and vulnerable. Even if I knew the truth; it just felt good to be held by him again.
“He came to the shop.”
“To talk to you about the plants?”
“No. Well, that was mentioned in passing. But no. He came to talk to me about you.”
“Me?” Kylo asked, fingers tightening on my back until he forced his hands to relax. “I’m sorry, Rue. That wasn’t his place. He should have left you alone.”
“No. No, I’m glad he came,” I admitted. Even if I hadn’t gotten a chance to make up my mind about what he’d said.
“Rue…” he started, then stopped, the words failing him. Then, after a breath so deep it must have burned, “Rue, I’m so fucking sorry.”
My heart squeezed.
“I hated lying to you. I should have just… told Huck to go fuck himself. I never should have screwed you over like that.”
“It was a job.”
“Darlin’, you were not a job. Yes, it was a job to meet you, but nothing that happened between us was a job. That was all real.”
“You followed me,” I said, not willing to let him off the hook just yet. “For days. You wrote down everything I did and relayed it to your boss.”
“Not everything,” he said, arms squeezing me quickly, like he was willing me to believe him. “There were things that weren’t his business and I didn’t tell him.”
“None of it was his business.”
“No,” he agreed. “No, it wasn’t. But I thought you’d feel less… exposed if it was me instead of one of the other guys. I knew you’d feel more betrayed, but maybe not as horrified by someone else knowing… everything.”
It was the same point Teddy made. It wasn’t wrong.
“The hotel…” I said.
Kylo inhaled hard, his head falling forward a bit.
“I know,” he said, voice small, rough. “I know. I told myself over and over that you never would have made the choices you did if you knew the whole picture. I knew it was wrong. But then… no. No, there’s no excuse. It was wrong. I knew better. You should have been given a choice with all the information included. I didn’t give you that. And I’m sorry. I don’t have anything else to say about it other than I’m really fucking sorry.”
His head pressed to the side of mine so when he spoke again, his breath was warm on my ear. “But I also don’t regret it,” he admitted. “Being with you… I could never regret it. That was… I don’t know. It was everything,” he told me, making my heart swoop. “I’m just sorry it can’t feel that way for you, now that you know the truth.”
But it could, couldn’t it?
If I let it.
If I released the betrayal, if I trusted in the truth of his words.
It could just be a rough bump in the road leading to somewhere amazing.
All I had to do was believe him.
All I had to do was put my faith to rest in the fact that it hadn’t been fake for him, even if he hadn’t been completely truthful with me.
“Did you lie to me about anything else?” I asked. “Other than why you came to the shop? And that you were following me?”
“No. No, anything I said when we were alone and getting to know each other, that was all real. Except I danced around my job and why I lived partially at the clubhouse. Everything else was real.”
“Did you tell the club everything I told you?”