IN THE HANDS OF TIME

IN THE HANDS OF TIME

peteralfred

5.0
Comment(s)
4
View
10
Chapters

"What do you think you're doing?!" Raye asks the moment the door closes behind them, her vision glazed with controlled fury. The corner of his mouth tilts to a smile, unfazed by her outburst "Getting you back". ~~~ Raye and Kohen are childhood friends turned lovers, but obstacles threaten their adolescent love and an unresolved misunderstanding drives a wedge between them for good-or so they think. What happens when their paths collide once more and they're forced to confront the past?

Chapter 1 Beginnings

Rachel Sawyer was perched with her legs crossed on the Anderson mansion's library soft carpet. With her was 'The Secret Garden.' She took advantage of the collection of books in the mansion while her mother tutored the family's son.

A shadow fell over her page and she looked up, annoyed.

"Do you mind telling me what you're reading?" asked the boy with a head of curly brown hair of which green eyes peeked out curiously, standing right above her.

"Don't you need to be in your study room?" Rachel asked, clutching the book to her chest.

Kohen shook his head, "Nicole allowed me to spend some time off, so she can take a break." He always referred to Rachel's mother by her first name. "What are you reading?" He repeated the question.

"Nothing of your interest" Rachel answered unbothered.

"How can you be so sure of what might attract my attention?" He sat down next to her without waiting for an invitation. "You don't even know me."

"I know that you are overindulged," Rachel snapped back as she moved away. "And that you made Mrs. Peterson quit last month by putting frogs in her purse."

A grin spread on his face showing the dimple on his left cheek. "They were toads." In an effort to hold back, Rachel could feel the corners of her mouth pulling back into a smirk. "That makes it worse." "I'm bored," Kohen said, lounging on his back. Rachel chose to ignore him and his idle chatter, focusing back on her book.

After a stretch of silence, Kohen sighed "You're really no fun".

Rachel squinted. "I am plenty fun. I simply think putting amphibians in people's possessions does not merit as entertainment."

"Prove it," he said, leaning closer. "Prove that you are fun."

That challenge made Rachel feel something she couldn't explain. A certain kind of determination. But it was a challenge that needed to be undertaken. She kept her book open and pushed it aside.

"All right. Let's go."

Twenty minutes later, the two of them found themselves dangling from the limbs of the huge oak tree that graced the Andersons' backyard, their laughter on the summer breeze.

"I told you that I could climb higher!" Rachel shouted down at Kohen who was struggling several feet below her.

"That is because you weigh nothing," he puffed, trying to hoist himself up another branch. "I bet in a strong wind you would float away!"

Rachel gave a roll of her eyes. "Excuses"

As Kohen reached for the next branch, he made a slip with his foot. His very breathable moment of hanging from the limbs of the tree with his legs in the air seemed like an endless one.

"Kohen!" Rachel shouted after him. Her voice was taut with worry.

He grunted and swung his legs to reclaim a steady position on the branch and grinned at his victory. But his delighted smile vanished through the grimace Rachel exhibited.

"Did you actually care about me, Sawyer?" he beckoned playfully, a fusion of sarcasm and adoration present by calling her surname in a peculiar manner.

"No," she said and frowned; her heart still racing. "I just didn't feel like explaining how you broke your neck trying to show off to your parents."

His grin returned. "I wasn't showing off."

"God you're always showing off." She replied while beginning her careful descent. "And it is so annoying."

Once safely back on the ground, Kohen playfully nudged her shoulder. "So same time tomorrow?"

Rachel tried to maintain her serious expression but wasn't able to. "Maybe. If you can try to keep up."

"Oh, I can keep up," he replied confidently and smiling the whole time. "In fact, I bet at the end of summer, we'll be best friends"

Rachel rolled her eyes "I already have a best friend."

There was a brief pause. "You don't." Kohen responded with the casual confidence of someone stating that the sky was blue. "You read books instead of making friends. But that is fine, now you have me."

"I never agreed to that. I don't become friends with individuals who don't respect my books," Rachel objected, though there was no opposition in her tone.

Kohen shrugged. "You didn't have to. I decided for us. And my parents believe fiction is a waste of time."

Rachel's eyes widened, visibly scandalised. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

Kohen looked shocked for a moment before he was swept with laughter.

As she made her way to the house, Rachel battled a smile.

"For a person who's homeschooled, you're not very smart," she said reflectively.

Kohen's jaw fell open in mock offense. "Take that back!"

"Oh, catch me," Rachel teased, then took off for the house, laughing as she went.

Kohen ran after her, his longer legs easily covering the distance. "Just wait, Sawyer! This is war!"

It was six months since Rachel and Kohen had first met. In spite of their opposite views of the world, the two were fast becoming friends, a relationship that would shape their destiny for better and worse.

But for now, they were merely Rachel and Kohen-the pampered son of the more affluent class Andersons and his tutor's daughter.

Continue Reading

You'll also like

The Curvy Ex-Wife's Revenge: The Divorce He Gave, The Regret He Earned

The Curvy Ex-Wife's Revenge: The Divorce He Gave, The Regret He Earned

Nieves Gómez
5.0

Nicole had entered marriage with Walter, a man who never returned her feelings, bound to him through an arrangement made by their families rather than by choice. Even so, she had held onto the quiet belief that time might soften his heart and that one day he would learn to love her. However, that day never came. Instead, he treated her with constant contempt, tearing her down with cruel words and dismissing her as fat and manipulative whenever it suited him. After two years of a cold and distant marriage, Walter demanded a divorce, delivering his decision in the most degrading manner he could manage. Stripped of her dignity and exhausted by the humiliation, Nicole agreed to her friend Brenda's plan to make him see what he had lost. The idea was simple but daring. She would use another man to prove that the woman Walter had mocked and insulted could still be desired by someone else. All they had to do was hire a gigolo. Patrick had endured one romantic disappointment after another. Every woman he had been involved with had been drawn not to him, but to his wealth. As one of the heirs to a powerful and influential family, he had long accepted that this pattern was almost unavoidable. What Patrick wanted was far more difficult to find. He longed to fall in love with a woman who cared for him as a person, not for the name he carried or the fortune attached to it. One night, while he was at a bar, an attractive stranger approached him. Because of his appearance and composed demeanor, she mistook him for a gigolo. She made an unconventional proposal, one that immediately caught his interest and proved impossible for him to refuse.

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

Clara Bennett
5.0

I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone. While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward. The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property. I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage. Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole. "You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are." I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

Rollins Laman
5.0

The heavy thud of the release stamp was the only goodbye I got from the warden after five years in federal prison. I stepped out into the blinding sun, expecting the same flash of paparazzi bulbs that had seen me dragged away in handcuffs, but there was only a single black limousine idling on the shoulder of the road. Inside sat my mother and sister, clutching champagne and looking at my frayed coat with pure disgust. They didn't offer a welcome home; instead, they tossed a thick legal document onto the table and told me I was dead to the city. "Gavin and I are getting engaged," my sister Mia sneered, flicking a credit card at me like I was a stray dog. "He doesn't need a convict ex-fiancée hanging around." Even after I saved their lives from an armed kidnapping attempt by ramming the attackers off the road, they rewarded me by leaving me stranded in the dirt. When I finally ran into Gavin, the man who had framed me, he pinned me against a wall and threatened to send me back to a cell if I ever dared to show my face at their wedding. They had stolen my biotech research, ruined my name, and let me rot for half a decade while they lived off my brilliance. They thought they had broken me, leaving me with nothing but an expired chapstick and a few old photos in a plastic bag. What they didn't know was that I had spent those five years becoming "Dr. X," a shadow consultant with five hundred million dollars in crypto and a secret that would bring the city to its knees. I wasn't just a victim anymore; I was a weapon, and I was pregnant with the heir they thought they had erased. I walked into the Melton estate and made an offer to the most powerful man in New York. "I'll save your grandfather's life," I told Horatio Melton, staring him down. "But the price is your last name. I'm taking back what's mine, and I'm starting with the man who thinks he's marrying my sister."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book