Read Pulled Within for Free Online

empty, so I flipped it around and clutched it against my chest like a shield. “Hart Booker,” I whispered. It was so loud in that room from all the chatter and the clanking of chips. But he nodded, and I knew he’d heard me. Then I dared to look at his face…finally. A few days’ worth of medium-brown scruff covered his cheeks. His eyes — the lightest blue, almost silver — glimmered back at me. They weren’t always that color, but when they were, they could be the most honest eyes I’d ever looked into.
    It felt like I’d been swept up in a storm of moments from my past, a whirlwind of every memory from every year we had been apart. The heat from those memoires turned my face red. Sweat covered my body. Lightning flashed around my cheek.
    I couldn’t stop it.
    I didn’t want him to see me like this…in this outfit, in this casino. So scarred.
    Where the fuck was my umbrella?
    “You’ve been walking by my table all night,” he said. “You look so different…I wasn’t sure it was you at first. But I’m glad it is. I was hoping I’d see you while I’m in town.”
    You look so different …
    Hart had graduated high school and left Bar Harbor when I was a sophomore. The scar came my junior year. It was a part of me he hadn’t seen, a part that hadn’t existed the last time we were in each other’s presence. The way my body was angled, he could see the whole thing, and I couldn’t change that now. I was frozen. I hated that he still did that to me.
    He’d broken me.
    So how was it possible he could still affect me like that? Or that I would allow him to, after all these years?
    “You’ve worked here for a while?” he asked.
    Did it really matter? I wasn’t sure why he was talking to me now…he hadn’t even told me he was leaving Bar Harbor. I found out from his friends…and from him not returning any of my messages. No good-bye, no explanation. No call after all this time. And now he wanted to ask me questions about my job ?
    What about me ? What about what I felt?
    “Rae?”
    “Yes,” I said. What had I just answered? “I mean, no, I haven’t.”
    He was several inches taller than me, but he was somehow able to look up at me through his lashes. His gaze was more than intense. It shook me. It wrapped its power around my limbs, my body. It felt as if the ground beneath me was convulsing and quaking.
    “Are you living up here in Bangor?” he asked.
    I held the tray even closer against my body as my stare traveled from his eyes to his lips. They were pale red, full, and hinted at the grin that used to melt me—that was melting me now, in spite of everything. “No,” I finally said. “I’m still in Bar Harbor.”
    “Do you have a place in town or — ”
    “Boss man just walked in,” Christy said in my ear, standing directly behind me. She pressed close to my side as I forced my attention toward the entrance. She was right; Kevin had just walked in and was scanning the room. “He’s going to check your tables and make sure all the players have drinks. Just wanted to warn you.”
    “Thanks,” I whispered over my shoulder. A gasp came through my lips when I reconnected with Hart’s stare. He was stirring up emotions that I couldn’t control. I had for so long, and I wanted to now…or maybe I didn’t. I was too swept up to know. But I couldn’t lose this job before it had even really started. “I’ve got to go.”
    “Okay. I’ll catch up with you later.” His lips remained apart, like there was something more he wanted to say. But he didn’t. He didn’t turn around, either.
    So I did.
    And I instantly regretted it.
    As much as he’d hurt me—and as much as I needed to check on my tables so I didn’t get fired on my first night working—something was pulling me toward him. But when I turned around to tell him I’d find him after my shift, he wasn’t there anymore. I did a quick search of the other aisles, the chairs, the backs and fronts of everyone nearby. I found