AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you for showing me this, for giving me access to it. I can tell how much this place means to you, how difficult it is for you to share it. How difficult it is for you to share anything.”
Flexing my hands at my sides, I clench my jaw, fighting my body’s reaction to her proximity. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Callista.”
One of her brows rises. “Don’t I?” She advances a single step, bringing with her the scent that will now cling to every inch of the library. “You may be the one watching me on the cameras, but I see you. I see things I shouldn’t in a man with a reputation like yours, things that make me wonder what’s reality and what’s all a façade and why the hell you’d have it there in the first place.”
Too smart.
Too observant.
I should have known she wouldn’t back down, even after seeing the cemetery.
“It seems my warning the other day didn’t take.”
She doesn’t respond to that, merely tilts her chin higher and squares her shoulders, refusing to back down. The challenge she lays down without a single word makes my cock stir behind the zipper of my jeans.
Fucking hell.
The way she looks at me has shifted in only a matter of a week—from abject terror and resentment to something that scares me when I should be the one terrifying her.
Chapter Seven
WESTON
Figure it out.
The text message might as well be a physical slap in the face that I absolutely don’t need.
After a week of bending over backward and sending desperate pleas to try to get Callista off the mountain—while simultaneously avoiding her and the library where I know she’s been holed up every day—those three words on a tiny screen are the final ones.
At least, they’re meant to be.
I can read between the lines to what it really means—an order from someone sick of hearing my appeals on Callista’s behalf. No amount of requesting or demanding her freedom from her father’s debt has gotten me anywhere.
But I can’t stop trying.
Because I cannot have the woman in my house anymore.
Not for a single day more.
I can feel her presence everywhere.
It lingers in the air, along with her sweet scent, making it impossible for me to concentrate or relax like I normally would, especially in the library. The one space I might normally find some solace, all I get at night after a long day of working out here is a reminder that she’s been there.
Smiling.
Running her soft fingers across the spines and using them to flip the pages as she finds something to lose herself in.
Enjoying the simple pleasure of accessing all those worlds, all that knowledge, and being able to pretend the real world doesn’t exist outside it.
If only it were so easy for me.
No amount of felling trees, chopping wood, or destroying anything else I can get my blade on is making it better. And my pleas for relief have gone ignored—over and over again. Tossed aside in favor of messages like the one currently causing The Beast to wake from his slumber deep inside me.
Another text comes through, and I scowl as I read the reminder of my predicament—the same words that have been sent to me multiple times since she showed up on my porch in those damn heels with nothing but attitude to use as a defense.
I told you she stays for however long it takes.
It’s been two weeks, but it feels more like two years.
