The Bequest (Book One of The Guardians Series): A Romantic Suspense Novel by Hope Anika

Author:Hope Anika [Anika, Hope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Cigarette smoke curled through the screened-in porch, and Cheyenne inhaled deeply, even though it hurt her throat. She’d smoked once, long ago, and still missed it; for her, the scent was tantalizing, like the lure of freshly ground coffee or baking bread. She’d long ago accepted it would always smell good. And it would always tempt her.

That was the thing about addiction: it never went away.

Moonlight streamed into the small room. She could see Will seated on the wooden porch swing, his elbows on his knees, the coal of his cigarette glowing like an unearthly jewel in the darkness. He was shirtless; the plane of his muscled back was washed white by the moonlight, and her gaze was drawn to the brutal scar on his left side, a thick, ridged rupture of uneven tissue in the shape of a sunburst. She remembered how it had looked that afternoon in the bright sunlight. He had marks all over him—knife wounds, bullet wounds, even a burn scar not unlike her own—and a large, black tribal tattoo around one bicep. A scorpion on the back of his neck and a round, intricate symbol she didn’t recognize stamped on the carved muscle of his belly. His left nipple was pierced with a slender silver bar.

Seeing him like that had affected her. Witnessing his scars had made her own less, somehow, and freed something within her. Something wild and reckless.

Something she didn’t trust.

Her throat hurt, and for a long moment she stood motionless, rubbing what would be a ring of dark, ugly bruises in the morning. She knew Will hadn’t meant to damn near break her neck—knew better than anyone—but she wasn’t dumb. She had a strong sense of self preservation, and it was in full alarm—are you fucking stupid?—mode at the moment, and she had to stop herself from turning tail.

But she couldn’t run. Circles were closing—irony and karma and goddamn fate—and she understood her place within them—for once—and she was beginning to understand that paying something forward was a process, not an event, not a person, not merely one moment in time. It was a tapestry woven of past meeting present, and a conscious weaving of the future. It required diligence and sacrifice.

Again and again and again.

So she didn’t run. Because this was not her first trip down bad memory lane—it was just her first time on the receiving end.

“I’ll be gone by morning,” Will said harshly, rocking the swing back and forth, a jerky, agitated motion that made the chains which anchored it to the ceiling creak in protest.

Cheyenne walked along the back of the swing, circled it, and when it swung toward her, caught the chain in hand and halted it. Then she sat down beside Will and drew her knees to her chest.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and the pain and regret and fear she heard made her chest ache.

“When I was seventeen,” she told him quietly. “I stabbed a man. A good man. A man I never, ever wanted to hurt.

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