Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
He turns slowly away from me, opening the cabinet under the sink. “We are not talking about this. Not until I say it’s time.”
“So what do we get to talk about? I want to help you.”
“Stop asking questions then,” he mutters as he goes through whatever is under there. As if that’s important at a time like this. What, is he going to scour the sink while we talk about the cult he grew up in that I’ve never heard anything about until now? Yet another thing he couldn’t share with me.
Does this make me selfish? Maybe a little.
But I’m only human.
And there I was, thinking he was back in my life. Willing—eager—to dismiss the fact he kidnapped me, all because it means we at least get to be together. And being together is all I’ve cared about for so long.
I’ve been willing to forget that. To ignore what he did to my family.
And for what? To find out there’s so much he chose to hide?
Even now, when he’s the one who brought it up, there’s still so much I’m not good enough to hear about?
“I only want to be a part of your life,” I whisper, trembling, staring at the back of his head. What is he thinking? “Why won’t you let me in? Why are you pushing me away?”
All at once, he straightens up, swinging around to face me. “Enough!”
Sirens begin wailing in my head.
I went too far.
But the thing about going too far is you never know you’ve done it until it’s too late, and there’s no going back.
There’s no going back now; that much is for sure.
Not when he looks like he wants to kill me.
The rage written all over his face freezes me to my core. Gone is the warmth and tenderness from earlier. All that’s left is a hard, blank look in his eyes. There isn’t even a scrap of desire in them. There’s only resentment. Even hatred.
“Ren?” I whisper. No, it’s more of a burst of air coming out of me all at once and shaping itself into his name.
“I fucking warned you, didn’t I?” He lunges for the table, and I let out a high-pitched shriek when his palms slam against it. “Didn’t I?”
“Yes.” I half sob, gripped by terror that only tightens its hold when he grabs the edge of the table and flips it to the side, sending it flying against the refrigerator. I jump, screaming, covering my ears against the crash.
“You push, and you push, and then you have the nerve to sit there and act afraid.” Before I can react, he’s on me, his hands wrapped around my arms, hauling me out of the chair. “Like none of it is your fucking fault. Poor Scarlet, the victim.”
I can barely hear him over the rapid beating of my heart. This is all wrong. This is not the Ren I know. “Why are you doing this?”
“Oh, right.” He squeezes my arms until tears spring to my eyes. “Now you’ll cry about it when you’re the one who started this with your stupid fucking questions.”
“You’re hurting me,” I whimper, which only makes him squeeze harder. Not the reaction I wanted. Since when does he hurt me worse instead of stopping in his tracks?
“You think that’s worth crying about?” He bares his teeth in a snarl that leaves me shrinking back in fear before he drags me across the living room and back into the bedroom.
Oh my god. What’s he going to do to me? Usually, the idea of Ren dragging me to bed and throwing me onto it would get my heart racing for a different reason. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve imagined this very thing happening.
Except the situation was different in my fantasies.
In my fantasies, I wasn’t scared out of my mind.
He wasn’t staring down at me like he wished he’d never set eyes on me.
Like he wanted me dead.
“Why are you doing this?” My words fall on deaf ears, obviously, since he’s not paying a bit of attention while using what he fished out from under the sink: a length of rope, rough and thick, which he wraps around my wrists and cinches tight.
“Won’t listen…I fucking told him so,” he grunts, yanking my arms up by my bound wrists, tying the end of the rope to the bed frame.
What the hell does he mean by I told him so? Is he talking about River?
“What else am I supposed to do?” he growls.
It’s just like before, when I first got here, only worse. I was scared then, but he wasn’t acting this way. Enraged, full of hate.
“Well?” he demands, turning the full heat of his glare on me. “Tell me. What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I-I don’t know.”
A dismayed moan stirs in my throat when he takes hold of my jaw and digs his fingers in. “You don’t know? What the fuck do you know? Huh? What are you good for?”