Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 98000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“So it’s always been the three of you?”
“Yes. Others have come and gone. There was a boy I remember playing with when I was young. He used to love to draw and color.” We were fucking babies, but I remember him drawing me. I don’t know what makes me think of him now. Just the conversation and my mood tonight, I guess. Others stuck around, but the bond between me, Cillian, and Rory is different. “Did your parents love each other?” I ask.
“They’re dead.”
“Fuck. I’m an asshole.”
“Yes,” Dean replies. “I like you that way, though…and yes, they did. The only thing they loved more than each other was me.” He rolls to his back, and I can tell this conversation is too much for him, that they’re a painful memory for him to talk about.
“Distract me,” I tell him, and maybe I should have just distracted him, but I think this, Dean being here for me tonight, is something he needs too. If he thinks I’m trying to get him out of his head, he’ll pull away.
The thought of that makes me feel like I’m cracking apart, like everything important inside me is breaking.
This. Us. It’s something we both need.
“Okay,” he says. I expect him to roll on top of me, to kiss me and touch me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he picks up The Count, opens to where we left off, but this time, instead of reading silently together, Dean speaks every word out loud.
I nuzzle in close, feel his warm skin against mine, and let him read to me, until eventually the world goes black…and when I dream, it’s not of pulling triggers or the vile shit my father has made me do…it’s of him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dean
It’s been a few weeks since the night Michael Jensen went missing, and I haven’t slept in my dorm since. I’ve stopped by and seen Ollie a few times. He ended up asking for my cell-phone number too because he likes to check on me. It’s a weird concept. My mom was always so afraid someone would find out who we were and Sloan O’Shea would discover us, I’ve never gotten close enough to someone that they cared enough to want to check on me before.
Now I have my dormmate, who is too fucking good and innocent to want to be friends with someone like me, and I also have Aislin, and Cillian, who is still a dick and cautious about me, though we’ve come to an understanding, and Rory, who sometimes has too much fucking energy and I have to take breaks from him. And Tiernan. I’m unhealthy-levels obsessed with him. He’s in my mind all the fucking time, and I don’t even care. Not anymore. Why care about something inevitable?
I’m not stupid enough to think I’ll be able to keep any of it. No way they’ll let me get away with what I’m going to do. Every fucking day I hate myself more for the fact that I’m betraying Tiernan, lying to him, but I was four years old when I knew I would one day kill Sloan. I can’t give that up. I don’t know who I am without that hate.
Still…this is Tiernan, the man who remembers me coloring and drawing him when we were kids. I can’t wrap my brain around that.
I reach out and brush the black hair off Tiernan’s forehead while he sleeps. We all have class today, so we have to get up soon, but sometimes, I just like to watch him, study him, every dimple, every blemish, every curve and dip and muscle that is him, and when he ultimately kills me, I’ll take that with me to the grave.
He’s lost a lot too…
They’ve all lost a lot. Tiernan’s parents are still alive, but he makes small comments sometimes that makes me wonder what his relationship with his father is like…what kind of things Sloan has made him do. I gathered that he treats Tiernan’s mom like shit, and that’s one thing T doesn’t stand for. He’s always on edge when he talks to his father on the phone, slips out of the room so he can speak in private. His father gets in his head, and that just makes me hate the motherfucker more.
And when they’re done talking, he always comes to me, fucks me hard or gets on his knees for me, like somehow, I make shit better for him. Me. Exactly two people have loved me in my entire life, and they’re both dead. Tiernan doesn’t love me, but I do give him something, and that makes me feel worthy.
When he talks to his mom, he often gets sad. Not that he would ever tell a soul, but he doesn’t have to tell me for me to know it. I feel it, feel him like he’s a part of me, like he always has been and always should be.