Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 77265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77265 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
He taps on his phone screen again. A cold, numb feeling races from the back of my neck down to my toes. It’s trying to cloud my mind, too, but I think the anger and fear are too overpowering.
Whatever he did to Kaitlyn, he just tried to do to me.
But, unlike her, it didn’t work.
I’m not a mindless zombie.
Seth is still a monster.
I give him a blank look and then smile. “What would you like for dinner tonight, honey?”
His eyes narrow as if to seek out any untruths. I blink at him, seemingly unbothered. He relaxes slightly.
“I can order pizza,” he says, voice rough and tired.
“Whatever you want.” I flash him a warm grin. “Scoot along. I need to tidy up the bathroom.”
It takes impressive acting skills to approach this man and kiss him on the lips.
Luckily, he buys the lie.
For now.
While I clean up his pubes, I make a plan to escape.
Seth Portman is a bad man. I don’t know how I couldn’t see it before, but I know it to be true. I’ll have to keep my mind sorted long enough to execute said plan. Kaitlyn and my unborn child are counting on it.
I have to keep them safe.
Caius
I can’t shake the feeling that something’s off.
I’m in my house, at my desk, and staring at my laptop screen. There’s work to do. I know this. Yet I can’t focus on any of it.
What’s wrong with me?
That’s the question I keep asking myself over and over again. There’s something beyond reach that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s there, but it isn’t. It exists, but it doesn’t.
This feeling is maddening.
It’s not like I woke up like this either.
I’ve been drifting for months and months, doing my best to contribute to the workload of CUP, but I’m unable to settle on a feeling of normalcy.
Everything feels wrong.
Like that Disney movie I watched once with… I frown because I can’t remember. It was a movie about a girl named Alice, who fell down a rabbit hole. Her world was turned upside down. Everything was inside out.
Who did I watch it with?
My sister?
I’ll ask her. Anything to get out of this office. It makes me feel like a failure.
As I walk past my bookshelf, a book catches my eye. Something about it niggles at my memory, but I can’t seem to place the importance of it.
Calista.
A flash of my sister’s name shaded on a paper. Me tossing a note into the fire.
Bizarre.
Giving my head a small shake, I exit my office to seek her out. She’s a quiet girl and spends most of her time drawing on her iPad. The kid’s got talent. Her art is impressive and well beyond her years. Perhaps she’ll attend a prestigious university to further her art skills or maybe she’ll go right into having her own illustration business. The options are plentiful.
I stride down the hallway to her room at the end. The door is ajar, which means I’m welcome to enter. Like always, I knock anyway, respecting her space.
“Hey, sis,” I say when she calls out for me to enter. “What are you up to today?”
She eyes me warily and chews on her bottom lip. I’m just glad she’s looking at me again. Something happened to her—something she refuses to speak about—and it makes it difficult for her to raise her eyes from the floor. It’s only been the past few weeks that she’s been meeting my gaze.
I approach where she sits in an armchair by the big window in her room. Now that it’s summer, the trees are a hundred varying shades of green. Her iPad is nestled in her lap and she sips from a small teacup.
“Drawing.”
Her answers are always clipped and soft. I try to remember when we were younger. Was she this way back then too, or did it all stem from the mysterious incident?
If only I could remember.
“Let’s see.” I take a seat in the armchair next to hers and reach over the small table. “I bet it’s awesome.”
She purses her lips like she doesn’t want to share but then hands it over. Her black eyebrows pinch together, clearly worried about what I’ll think.
The image is strange. Abstract. There’s a woven, gray pattern—maybe a rug—with dark red dots that lead to a large red circle. A giant G is in the center.
I don’t pretend to know what the hell this means.
“Interesting,” I mutter, quickly looking away from the unsettling image. “What does it mean?”
Her dark eyes bore into mine, searching my gaze for something. I’m welcome to her finding out the hidden parts of me because I sure the hell can’t seem to do it. After a beat, she relaxes and shrugs.
“Nothing. Just doodling.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “Right. What else you got?”
She makes to pull the device from my grip, but I’m already swiping to one of her other canvases on her drawing app. The picture I find first shocks me silent.