Read Online Bound by Rapture by Megan D. Martin - Free Book Online Page B

care. I was always the last person to know anything, apparently. Vic had talked to Cole about watching me. My fucking stalker. He didn’t know I had cared for him. He didn’t know how hard it was for me to walk away from Cole that day in his office. I hadn’t shared any of those intimate details with Vic. They were too raw, too honest. And when I told him the truth, that Cole had stalked me, followed me, followed all of us for years, I had expected him to come to my rescue and help me forget. But he hadn’t. 
    It had hurt me at the time, but now it hurt even more. He’d called my stalker and asked him to protect me. It sounded like some sort of bad joke.
    “You’re both assholes.” I glanced between them, both were breathing hard, staring daggers at each other, and then at Chris. His shoulder length blond hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and a light growth of beard was on his cheeks. “But not you, Chris.” I gave him a weak smile, acknowledging he was probably the only normal man in the car. The only guy I wasn’t tempted to punch in the face right now.
    “I completely agree with you.” He smiled back. “They are both assholes.”
     
     

    I sniffled into the handkerchief Cole had pressed into my hand some twenty minutes ago. It was already soaked, covered in snot and smeared mascara. I knew better than to wear make-up, but I had anyway. The funeral was over and we stood outside in the hot sunshine in the cemetery. The group of pallbearers had just unloaded Mandi’s casket. 
    It was surreal to be standing here at all. Living, breathing while she laid in there. Just an empty shell of the vibrant woman I’d come to call a friend. There weren’t many people there, not like I expected there to be. She was young. There should have been a hundred people or more to tell her goodbye, but instead there were a sparse few, maybe fifteen people at the most. I could tell several of them were reporters because they kept scribbling furiously into notepads. 
    Cole stood to my left, his shoulder only inches from mine. He hadn’t said a word since the incident in the limo, and neither had Vic who stood on my right. 
    The casket was a silvery gray that sparkled in the sunlight, making my heart catch in my chest. “This is all my fault,” I whispered to no one in particular.
    Cole reached down, snagged my fingers within his and squeezed. “Don’t.”
    “But it is.” I swiped my hand under my eyes. “She was such a wonderful person.” I thought back to the time we spent together, just the two of us. When Cole walked out of my life and she was all I had—her and Gran. She’d spent the night with me multiple times. The first time I’d ever really felt like I had a true girlfriend. She was so understanding, always there for me. “She didn’t deserve any of this.” Fresh tears trailed down my cheeks. 
    Cole pulled me into his side and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “You couldn’t have helped it.”
    “Are you kidding me? I slept through her murder. I—”
    The image of it all. Waking up to the horror. That wasn’t what scared me, what pressed at the inside of my skin with revulsion. It was knowing how terrible it must have been. How horrendous and scary for Mandi. She had been murdered while I laid there sleeping, probably pleading for her life, begging me to wake up.
    But I never did. And now she was dead. In a casket. About to be lowered into the ground. I turned away from the sparkling tomb and pressed my face into Cole’s jacket. Great sobs exploded from my chest like someone was ripping them out of me. I tried to get it together, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop. All I could see was her face. Her pretty face smiling at me, laughing. And then knowing she would never get to do those things again. She would never laugh. She wouldn’t cry. This was it for her. 
    And it was all my fault. 
    I tried to reason with myself, to figure out what I could have done differently. I should have never