Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77120 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
The barn door creaks as it swings shut behind me. I shove my hands into my pockets and start the slow walk toward the house, boots sinking into the mud with each step. Zach trots along beside me, no stranger to the rain. He’s happy just to be at my side.
The air smells like wet earth and something colder beneath it—something older. Regret, maybe. That’s what it feels like. It clings to me heavier than the rain, settles in my chest like it’s lived there a long time.
I don’t look back. I already know what I’ll see.
Just the barn and everything I should’ve done differently still hanging in the silence I left behind.
I fucked things up royally.
I took something that wasn’t mine to take.
And I wasn’t thinking of anything but myself.
I wasn’t thinking about Tabitha, most of all.
But I also wasn’t thinking about Angie and Jason and their wedding in two days.
Now things will be awkward, just as Tabitha said.
And I left her there.
Left her unclothed in the barn.
I’m a piece of shit.
I sigh, turn around, and head back.
I’m pretty soaked through, but the rain has now settled into a fine mist.
I walk back to the door. Tabitha has dressed, but her hair is tangled up, and she looks…
Well, she looks like she just got fucked.
Zach walks to her, and she smooths her hand over his damp fur.
“Come on,” I tell her. “I’ll take you back.”
“I can’t believe you just left me here.” She dusts herself off. “I’m not sure I could get back to the house from here without someone to guide me.”
She’s not wrong.
“Why do you think I came back?”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you felt badly that you just left me here? Or maybe you felt badly that we were just…you know, intimate…and then you took off?”
I clear my throat. “I came back because I knew you couldn’t find your way on your own. Besides, it’s getting dark.”
I hate the words as soon as they come out of my mouth.
I came back because I was concerned about her. I shouldn’t have left in the first place. I’m sorry for what happened between us—not the act itself, but how I went about it.
But none of those things make it out of my mouth.
I can’t.
Not when there’s so much unresolved trauma inside me.
But now I can no longer say I don’t feel guilt.
Because though I don’t feel guilt about taking Ralph Normandy’s life and saving Angie, Jason, and Tabitha, I feel guilt now. It’s an ugly and suffocating thing. My stomach twists. The world doesn’t tilt, it just sharpens. Everything is too loud, too clear, too real. I see what I said, what I did, what I didn’t do, and it plays behind my eyes like a video.
This weight. This ache.
The sinking truth that I can’t take any of it back.
More than that, I don’t want to. I needed her. So I took her.
I just wish it had been…
Oh, hell. I don’t know.
“Come on.” I reach for her hand.
She whisks her arm away. “I’ll just follow you. Thanks.”
We walk in silence—even Zach is uncharacteristically solemn—the dark clouds obscuring the stars. Mist coats Tabitha’s skin, and she looks beautiful.
Her tight jeans.
Her honeyed hair.
And those eyes…
Will she ever again look at me with those eyes?
She says nothing. How can I blame her?
I want to say something.
I want to tell her so much.
But I’ve been an ass. And I don’t know how to change that right now. I don’t know how to separate the Henry who took her roughly in the barn from the Henry who feels so much guilt about it now.
The Henry who is sorry but not sorry.
How do I make her understand?
And then it hits me.
Of all people, she should understand. She was there.
She was there that night with Ralph. With Angie and Jason.
With me.
Maybe she could talk to me about it.
Angie has offered to talk to me about it. She and Jason both. But they’re both so happy right now, and Jason’s back to being a surgeon. They had so much else going on right after the shooting. Jason had his surgery and then rehab. Angie was finishing her semester of medical school.
I couldn’t burden them.
But medical school is out for the summer now. And Tabitha… Tabitha is here.
So I turn to her. I grab her hand, holding it firmly so she can’t pull away. “Tabitha…”
She doesn’t look at me. “Fuck off.”
“I…”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. I think I just said to fuck off.” This time she yanks her hand away hard.
The ranch house is now visible in the distance, and she walks toward it, leaving me alone in the rain.
Right.
Like she was really going to talk to me after what I’ve done.
I feel like the lowest form of life on earth.