Total pages in book: 170
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160166 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 801(@200wpm)___ 641(@250wpm)___ 534(@300wpm)
Declan grabs me, cold and cruel. He turns me around and pins me close, a hand over my mouth, the other pinning my arms down. “He killed her!” I try to scream, but I can’t. “Declan! Please!” My words are muted, my body hot and my entire being filled with terror even though Declan’s here. My mind is a whirlwind that won’t stop.
Help her, is all I can think. Even though I know she’s already dead. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes as my throat goes raw with my cries.
Declan turns my head in his hand so I have to look at him. His grip is brutal and it’s shocking when I see his face. His eyes hold a deadly anger and everything stills.
Very, very slowly, he removes his hand from my mouth. It’s not comforting. He’s still holding me too tight. Tight enough to crush me. It’s hard to catch my breath. My mind spins back through what just happened.
Scarlet is dead.
My friend. I saw her die. Nate snapped her neck. Killed in cold blood.
“Declan.” His name, a plea from me, is barely audible. I can’t breathe enough to put my voice behind it. “I’m scared.”
“My little pet,” he says, and his voice is brutal. I thought I knew fear before but ice spills through my veins. “You should be fucking terrified.”
I’LL KISS YOU TWICE
PROLOGUE
Declan
My oldest brother told me once there was a moment when he realized he’d ruined it all. Not just for himself, but for everyone he loved. Carter said it was like time had slowed down, yet it played before his eyes too fast to stop it just the same. He saw everything that would happen — the devastation, the pain, the brutality that lay ahead. And it was all too late. He’d damned us all leading us down a path with no return.
Whiskey slurred his words that night as he leaned against the stained glass window of the church. I vaguely remember carefully taking the nearly empty bottle from him and wishing Jase would drive faster so I wouldn’t have to be alone with my eldest brother. He was drunk and nearly belligerent until he spiraled, and that night was hell incarnate for us. The blood that drenched his clothes substantiated that claim. I was only seventeen at the time. Half terrified of what had happened, but more afraid of what my brother would do next.
I remember thinking, never in my life would I allow myself to get to that point. A decade would prove me wrong.
With the motel room’s sole small window wide open and the only woman I’ve ever wanted staring back at me, that moment Carter described comes back to me with a lifetime of pain and realization.
Braelynn is crouched in the windowsill, looking small and weak, in a nightgown far too thin for the cold evening air. The red, white, and blue lights from the streets several floors down below flash across her face. Only moments ago, I held her in the bed that now stands between us. I was going to make things right, but it’s far too late. I didn’t see this coming. With everything that happened, I could have never imagined this. All I want is to take it all back.
Braelynn’s deep brown eyes are reddened, her cheeks tearstained, and the breeze blows wisps of her curly dark hair around her shoulders … all I can think is at least Carter knew the hell that waited for us. He knew the moment he’d gone too far. I didn’t.
The only thing I know as truth now is that everything’s my fault and it’s all too late.
Pleas for her to not jump ring out through the air as the metal cuffs dig into my wrists, pinned behind my back. Two men grab me to keep me from running to her, one with the barrel of a gun pressed to the temple of my head as the scream tears up my throat. Pain and adrenaline are nothing when she looks at me like that. Like she’s saying goodbye.
She trembles on the ledge and I can’t do a damn thing but shout for her to stop. With the police surrounding us in the cramped room and the ending to our story so close, I know she loves me. Her dark eyes hold obvious pain and misery, coupled with so much regret, but more than anything I know she looks back at me, her grip slipping, because she loves me.
She has no idea how much I love her, though.
Or how much this moment kills a part of me I thought was dead until she came back into my life. Something I thought was snuffed out long ago.
Her lips barely move as she whispers to me and a gunshot blasts through the moment.