A motor-mouth southern belle tries playing detective only to collide with a dangerously sexy biker.
Ellie Robinson takes it upon herself to secretly vacay to Sunny Valley, Alabama, on her best friend's behalf. There, Ellie uncovers a shocking truth...
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Her eyes are like the wood logs of a fire's hearth, but everlasting, the reason flames burn so brightly, the reason my skin lights like a match.
Right now though, there's only numbness as she looks at me, her eyes still holding that lively warmth but widened, glazed over in dazed confusion. I'm too focused on the cold, seeping numbness that sinks into the very fiber of my being. I have to disconnect myself, pull away, and flick off the switch that has been linking us since the moment I met her. I have to in order to deal with the thick residue of evil that still lingers and festers in me.
I turn my back to her, snapping that last strand. My eyes search the darkness as the memory clouds my mind, putting me in a thick fog. In fact, that night had been coated in mist after a light rain. The ground had been soggy and wet, making my boots shine with glistening remnants from the strokes of each slick blade of grass.
"I came out here... after," I tell her. "I felt nothing but a deep emptiness in me. I was like a zombie, slowly walking, dragging my way here but when I reached this clearing..."
My chest tightens and I puff out a rough breath. My thoughts are all jumbled together and I can't figure out how to word vomit it all out or even how to, or where to start. My eyes close and the blurry memory of Adonis' solid figure crumbling hits me hard in the chest. It's as if I sucked in the coldest air and it freezes the inside of my lungs, spreading, blasting its icy burn into the bones of my chest.
"When people talk about a gunshot, or when you see it in movies, you think if you hear it fire you still have a chance, you can still live, duck before the bullet meets it target." I lick my lips then swallow. "That's not true. At a close distance range, the bullet hits first and the gunshot catches up." My head turns slightly as I say over my shoulder. "The first thing I heard was the bullet meeting the flesh of Adonis' cheek. It sounded..." I try to push that lump in my throat down. "Like when I had dropped a small watermelon as a kid, a loud crack then the juices spilling out."
I pinch the bridge of my nose with trembling fingers. That frigid cold air in my chests now cracking it.
"Why did you do it?" Her voice is small, fearful.
The old man's smug face flashes in my mind. His green eyes, darkened by greed and wanting to see Adonis suffer, his screwed expression untwisting, lifting a brow and cocking his head saying, "Go on, boy, prove yourself. Be a man."
I stare right into the heart of darkness, trees mingling with one another in the breeze. The branch limbs, how they twist and hit one another remind me of Adonis being hoisted up, bloodied, beaten, and limp.
That godforsaken night takes over, rewinding in my brain, jumping around like someone trying to find what spot to restart a movie.
"A gun had been handed to me." I start. "Its weight so heavy, the metal cold against my roughened palm. I was a good shot but that day I had to be the best." My eyes glance down at my hand, curling into a fist. "My arm lifted the gun, only a slight tremble that I could feel rippled through it. Adonis stared straight through the barrel, there had been no head nod or acknowledgment. I pulled the trigger, quick. I couldn't hesitate in the slightest or else the old man would've known, called me a coward, shot him himself."
