Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 54899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
One hand keeps my wrists captive. His other gently encircles my neck, thumb hooking beneath my jaw to hold me immobile.
I wriggle beneath him, but I’m utterly helpless.
At his mercy.
I glower up at him, my eyes burning into his with pure rage.
His eyes…
One is the same dark brown I’ve fallen into so many times in the last few weeks since I met him as Rand.
The other is blue.
I must’ve knocked out his contact lens when I hit him with the clock.
He wasn’t just wearing the slutty little glasses to conceal who he really is. The contacts are fake, too.
His eyes are blue.
The exact same hue that haunts my nightmares.
The way he’s holding me is achingly familiar. It always has been.
The truth clicks into place.
I go utterly still.
“Brandon?”
10
KAROLINA
He recoils as though I’ve burned him, releasing me from his careful but unbreakable grip.
I sit upright and peer at him, studying the impossibly handsome face of my professor. He looks nothing like the boy I loved.
Except for the blue eye peering at me.
And the guarded way he’s looking at me tells me I’m right.
I’ve figured it out.
He’s been lying to me for so much longer than the last few weeks in York.
Rand is Bones. And Bones is Brandon.
My first love.
My dead first love.
My hand cracks across the perfect plane of his cheek, and my palm smarts.
He’s real.
He’s alive.
He blinks hard.
I can’t stop staring at his blue eye.
“You’re alive?” I choke out. “All these years, I thought… And you’re alive?!”
He grasps my hand before I can slap him again.
“Say it again.”
“You’re alive.” I hurl the words at him. “You let me think I killed you.”
“No, not that. Say my name.”
I narrow my eyes at him, anger warring with soul-deep relief.
“You were going to share me with Carter,” I accuse. “You betrayed me.”
He cups my nape, drawing me closer. “Never. I don’t know how he found out about us, but I would never share you. You’re my Karolina.”
I can’t suppress a shudder, and it’s not an involuntary reaction of disgust; the reverence with which he says my name is as intense as ever, even if his voice is a bit deeper now, gravellier with age.
How did I not recognize it before?
“You’ve been lying to me for years. Why should I believe you about this?”
Because I want to believe him so desperately that it scares me.
Here he is: changed, but whole and breathing.
Not dead.
I didn’t murder my first love.
I can’t help myself; I caress his face, tracing his high cheekbones and the granite outline of his square jaw. My fingers slip through the blood that oozes sluggishly from the cut on his forehead. He leans into my touch with a low groan.
I withdraw immediately. “I hurt you.”
He captures my hand and presses my palm to his blood-slicked cheek. “Don’t stop. Nothing you could do would hurt me. There’s nothing you could do that would ever make me leave you.”
He’s said it before as Rand.
It means so much more now.
Years of anguish weigh heavy on my heart.
The man I was coming to care for is actually the boy I’ve always loved. Even when I thought me betrayed me to Carter, I still loved the memory of him.
But he’s not just a memory. He’s not the same teenager he was back in our foster home, but he’s here with me now.
Solid and real and vital.
“Brandon.” His name leaves my lips on a shaky exhalation, a prayer for forgiveness.
He brackets my cheeks with both hands, and he tugs me closer. His lips descend on mine, taut with years of pain and longing.
The kiss is familiar, even though his lips are fuller than they used to be. I didn’t recognize him in our moments of passion in the last few weeks because it seemed impossible that he could’ve survived that gunshot to the face.
And I’ve never kissed anyone else. I didn’t know to discern a difference between the teenage boy who held me with harsh passion and my possessive, protective professor.
Here he is: both the same boy from my foster home and the same man I’ve come to know since moving to York.
It’s jarring, even as it feels so right that my heart aches at our reunion.
A shudder wracks my chest: desire, relief, and a hint of horror.
The depths of his deception are even more insane than I realized.
His obsession makes so much more sense now, but that doesn’t excuse his lies.
I turn my face away, forcibly breaking our kiss. His hands firm on my cheeks, clinging on to me as though he can’t bear to be parted from me ever again.
I stare into his eyes. That blue eye.
I want him to take out the other contact lens. It’s beyond disquieting to look into Rand’s eyes and Brandon’s eyes at the same time.
“Why?” I ask, a rough plea. “You let me think you were dead all these years. And then you lied to me as Bones and as Rand. Why did you do that?” My voice goes ragged with pain. “How could you do this to me?”