by Cassia Leo
I can’t see his face.
This shouldn’t scare me, since he can’t see mine either, but being able to see another person’s face naturally puts us at ease. This is one of the reasons some people despise talking on the phone. And also why I have had zero friends and boyfriends in all my nineteen years on this planet. No one ever sees my face. Ever.
Even when I applied for my job at the gas station. I told the guy on the phone that I had a day job and I’d have to conduct the interview in the evening. Besides, I was applying for the nightshift position at the station. The guy bought it. The day job was a lie. The truth is, I don’t go out during the day. I haven’t been outside during daylight hours in years.
I don’t have one of those diseases that make you break out in blisters when your skin is exposed to sunlight. My reasons for not allowing anyone to see my face in the light of day are much more vain than that, and it started the day I was born. My biological mother took one look at my face and begged them to take me away. I’ve been hiding ever since.
So it shouldn’t make me uneasy that I can’t see this guy’s face, but something about the way his hoodie covers his face and he never turns his head is giving me the creeps.
The gas station is in my sight now. Just a block and a half away. I can make it there.
The streets of downtown L.A. are crawling with all kinds of shady characters at night. It’s like turning the lights out on a filthy apartment and all the cockroaches come out of their hiding places. The drug addicts and whores dominate. The homeless and the lost wanderers, picking through the garbage and looking for a place to lie down for the night. Then there’s the drug dealers and gang members who try to lay low, but they have to come out and stake their claim and make their deals every once in a while.
Downtown Los Angeles is not a place where a scrawny nineteen-year-old girl like me should be walking the streets at night. But that’s exactly why I do it. People see me walking down the street and they smile, thinking I’m an easy mark. They can rob me or rape me, maybe even murder me, and they’ll get away with it. I won’t put up a fight. But they don’t know me. I’m far from easy.
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Other books by Cassia Leo
EROTIC ROMANCE
KNOX Series
LUKE Series
CHASE Series
UNMASKED Series
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
Black Box (stand-alone novel)
Forever Ours (Shattered Hearts #0.5)
Relentless (Shattered Hearts #1)
Pieces of You (Shattered Hearts #2)
Bring Me Home (Shattered Hearts #3)
Abandon (Shattered Hearts #3.5)
PARANORMAL ROMANCE
Parallel Spirits (Carrier Spirits #1)
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Cassia Leo loves her coffee, chocolate, and margaritas with salt. When she’s not writing, she spends way too much time watching old reruns of Friends and Sex and the City. When she’s not watching reruns, she’s usually enjoying the California sunshine or reading – sometimes both.
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KNOX: VOLUME 4
by Cassia Leo
http://cassialeo.com
Copyright © 2014 by Cassia Leo
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Cassia Leo.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission from the author; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.