Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88262 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Dominic lied to me for months,” I confirmed.
“Did you hurt him?” Max breathed, his voice barely audible.
I crossed over in the dirt, walking over to the rock and sitting on the bare spot near Max. I clasped my hands together in front of me, staring at a spot ahead, where a stray juniper branch lay on the greyish dirt.
“I’ve never hurt Dominic in my life. I didn’t hurt him then. I wasn’t angry, I was… hollowed out. It was like finally confirming something you’d known your whole life.”
“That your relationship with Lily wasn’t real?”
“That of course they weren’t thinking of me,” I said. “I’ve never felt loved, Max. Nothing changed in that moment other than getting a sharper view of reality.”
“Fuck,” Max said beside me.
“It wasn’t Dom who I hurt. It was Brody,” I said.
My chest tightened.
There it was.
The truth. A glimpse of it. Right there, out in the open.
“Brody was fucking gleeful,” I continued, tipping my head back to look at the sky from under the brim of my hat. “Gleeful. He smiled as he showed me the photos of Dom and Lily together. Didn’t think of how I’d feel. He laughed at it, like he’d just gotten a juicy piece of gossip he couldn’t wait to share with me.”
“Horrible.”
“I remember exactly what he said: ‘Come on, Drave. You always must have known she was a slut.’ That’s when I first punched him in the jaw.”
“Wow,” Max said softly.
“Then, Brody got more descriptive,” I explained, my chest stirring with rage, recalling it. “Brody said that he vouched for me. He didn’t just take the photos and run. He went inside. He told me that he pulled Lily off of Dom, for me. He said that he tossed her onto the ground, for me.”
“No.”
“And then Dominic reached into his bag by the couch and pulled out his 9 millimeter Glock.”
“Jesus, fuck,” Max said, standing up from the rock and looking down at me. “This happened to Lily? In front of Lily?”
“I screamed at Brody,” I continued. “I asked him, over and over again, if he hurt Lily. He balked, saying she fell into a pile of clothes, talking about it not being a big deal. He kept reminding me that she was cheating on me, as if that should have mattered.”
“What the fuck—”
“And then I annihilated him, Max,” I said, my voice low and heavy. “Brody isn’t dead. But he would have been dead within a single minute if I didn’t think of Lily first. I didn’t want to be a murderer, because I didn’t want her to ever have that in her history. I couldn’t be a murderer, even if I wanted to exact every shred of vengeance I could. I had to protect her. From a life where she had been with a murderer. A life where she’d been paid to be with a murderer.”
“I’m going to be sick,” Max said.
I got up from the rock and crossed over to him, grabbing his hand in mine. “Everything is taken care of, Max,” I said, insistence coming out in my voice. “You’ve seen your sister since then. She is fine. Brody was…”
“Fuck,” Max whispered, collapsing down onto the rock again.
I followed him, sitting beside him, draping my arm around him and holding him close.
“Brody was unconscious. He… he was barely alive. Out cold in the dirt. I felt like a monster, but I didn’t regret any of it. And I left him there. I watched him, for a moment, struggling to hold onto life, and then I took off to my father’s property to find Lily. The worst part of it, Max, fuck, the worst part of it was that when I finally walked in that room, where Dom and Lily were together? I didn’t see relief in their eyes. I saw fear.”
“It’s so fucked up, Draven.”
“My best friend, Dominic, scared of me, even when his Glock was resting on a table beside him,” I said. “Lily, a woman I thought I could love, scared of me. Even when I’d nearly killed someone for trying to hurt her.”
I turned to Max and saw a tear rolling down his cheek. I wiped it away, my heart hardening inside me.
This is what I do.
I bring nothing but pain to anyone around me.
Whether it's from me directly or not.
“All of this,” Max said, his voice rough. “All of this was happening to her, and I was in fucking Bestens,” he spat.
“You didn’t know.”
“I was in Tennessee, because it’s always where I’ve been,” he continued, his tone more ragged than I’d ever heard. “Afraid to leave. Afraid to fly. A fucking failure to launch.”
“No,” I told him, like it was a command. “You couldn’t have known, Max.”
“I really was naive,” he said, shaking his head, his blue eyes in a deadened stare out toward the land. “As naive as people used to say I was. I didn’t think things like this happened in the world. Not to people I know. People I love.”