Novel & Cerita Four Minutes Book

Kian’s eyes were red as he stared me down. “Four years. You’re actually alive?” His eyes raked over my faded linen dress. They landed on my mud-caked boots. Disgust twisted his features. “Why the hell are you dressed like this?” he blurted out. That sentence, that look of entitled disgust, threw me right back to that freezing night four years ago. The Crescent Moon pack was about to hold its “Beta Elite Trials.” To get him a nomination, I stood outside the camp for a whole night in forty-below weather. My legs nearly froze solid.

“Someone who actually reads. Who’s been broken before and didn’t turn careful forever. Someone who… sees me. Not the version I put on dating apps. The real one. Messy and scared and all of it.” The words hung there. Vulnerable. Too much. Callum went very still. His hand moved to his jacket pocket. He pulled out the wrapped book and set it on the table between them. Sloane stared at it. Her throat felt tight. “Who was it for?” she asked, voice small. He rubbed the back of his neck. “My date. She mentioned Zaha Hadid once. I spent three days hunting this down. Essays on beauty in architecture. Stupid, right?”

Blank except for four words in the centre, written in handwriting I had never seen before in my life, careful and deliberate and slightly formal in the way of someone who had thought about what they wanted to say and had arrived at the conclusion that four words were both sufficient and the most they could responsibly offer. Four words. I read them once. I read them again. I set the photograph face down on my desk. And I sat completely still for three full minutes while the city moved forty floors below me and my assistant answered a call in the outer office and the quarterly review waited patiently at the edge of my desk and those four words stayed exactly where they were on the back of a p

"That is the right answer." The bus stop was where we met. But this, his bed, his arms, his heartbeat under my ear, this was where I belonged. Forty three minutes on a cold October night. And now we had a lifetime.

So, Rafael doused the place in some of my perfume. Rafael had been direct this time around. Tried so many times to touch my hand or hold me close. But there was a barrier between us. Something that stopped me from fully giving in just yet. It would take time but he had made it clear that time was all we had. Slipping into the fourth gate, I swiveled my head around. Only a few other people came into the atrium. Grabbed for their bags greedily. None of them took notice of my presence. I was a wallflower. Dressed like one as well. I had opted for comfort instead of fashion.

"Then let me order you another food." "I don't think that's really necessary." "I insist." After a while he said, "Don't protest please." Her new order arrived. He did order the same thing he was eating, the kimchi fried rice and rib-eye steak and they eat their food in silence. When they finished. He said with a grave expression. "You want me to forget about you?" Paige nodded. "Then let me have four dates with you. That's all I ask." "What?"

Maybe he still believed that if he lowered himself enough, I'd forgive him—just like I had, again and again, across three lifetimes. But this time, he was wrong. I looked at him and said clearly, "There's nothing left to say between us. It's over. The man I'm marrying is Jace." I had given him three chances—three lives. And each time, he had used that love to destroy me. Even to kill me. This time, I only wanted peace. I only wanted Jace. Something in my certainty seemed to break Lance. He lowered his head, shoulders trembling like a scolded child.

He looked at me, his expression serious, like he knew his answer was going to hit me hard. “Four days,” he said, his voice quiet, trailing off like he was trying to soften it. Four days. The words landed like a blow, knocking the air out of me. I stared at him, my mouth open, words stuck in my throat as my mind scrambled to make sense of it. *Four days?* How could I have lost four whole days? My heart raced, a frantic beat that made my chest ache, and I felt like everything was slipping away from me.

Amber said to him in a tone she didn’t recognize as her own. She didn’t wait to see his reaction. Hoped she’d fucking hurt him as she pulled the hood down over her head. Instantly, she felt suffocated, plunged into a deep darkness. She couldn’t breathe! This was how it all fucking ended, not with a bullet, but in this suffocating darkness… Chapter 41

Olivia’s POV I sat down in my room, flipping through a book absentmindedly. I tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position, thinking it would help me concentrate, but that didn't help, nothing did. I had been in the room without going out for days, and I was feeling really restless. I knew I really needed to go out, or I might go mad. I put the book down on my lap and looked at Maya who was also reading a book. She was so engrossed in it I wished I had her level of concentration.