Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 164910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 825(@200wpm)___ 660(@250wpm)___ 550(@300wpm)
What the hell does that mean?
Why would he have to watch his back?
Then it hits me. I like things he could never give me. Their taste, their breasts, their cute little skirts and their sexy hips…And he thinks, just like with his fucking father, he’ll never measure up.
I swallow the bad taste in my mouth, because yeah, okay. Maybe I get it.
My older brothers were too busy working or taking care of the younger ones to expect anything of me except to help work and pay the bills, but I don’t blame them. We were all doing the best we could.
With my parents, I was just a mistake. The beginning of the end.
“Forget it,” he breathes out, sounding exhausted. “I gotta go.”
He climbs off the bed and slides into his jeans, swiping his shirt off the floor.
I’m moving before I even know why. Flying off the bed, I rush him as he opens my bedroom door, and I push it closed again, stopping him. He goes still, and I stare at the back of his head, the heat of his skin against my chest.
I know what it’s like to not feel like you’re at home anywhere.
Not that I was ever abused, but I’ve never felt good here unless I was drinking or screwing.
I let my forehead fall to the back of his neck. I know what it’s like to feel unwanted.
“Every day,” he says in a quiet voice, “I flirt and spend every spare moment acting like I want to get some girl in bed, so everyone thinks I’m something I’m not.” He draws in a shaky breath. “And my mother wouldn’t have wanted me to be like him, but at least he’s still here, and I envy him because he can do anything and not feel like shit. I feel like shit all the time.”
Yeah…
“Except in here,” he whispers. “Or in your car, in my car, in your shower, in my room…”
I don’t let him see my smile as he laughs, but I wrap my arm around his stomach and pull him against me.
Ripping his T-shirt out of his hand, I drop it to the floor and turn us around, gripping the front of his neck as I run my lips up his throat.
He exhales, relaxing in my arms.
I push him down on the bed and lie on his back, threading my fingers through his hair as I run my mouth over his shoulders and down his spine.
I breathe him in, the last remnant of his cologne making everything buzz under my skin. I’ve never told him, but I get hard when I smell him on my sheets.
I trail my other hand down his back. “Maybe it’s better you were so young when she died,” I tell him. “I wish I didn’t remember.”
I wouldn’t hate thinking of my mother so much if I barely had a memory of her. My throat swells with a lump.
Opening my mouth, I hesitate for just a moment. “I was in the house that day.” I lay my head on his spine, moving my hand back up his skin. “By myself.”
He lies there, not moving, and he’s probably afraid to. I don’t talk much when we’re in bed.
“I heard her cry.” I trace a line around his shoulder blade, remembering it like it was yesterday. “I started climbing the steps, and I saw her closed door, and I just stopped,” I choke out. “I was always scared of her. I didn’t know what to do with her, how to act around her…I let my dad and Macon and Army handle the emotional stuff.” I lick my dry lips, closing my eyes. “I wanted her to do it.”
I don’t know why my voice is thick or why it hurts in my throat. I’ve never cried over her.
“I really just wanted it to be over,” I tell him. “She wasn’t fully alive, but she just wouldn’t die, either.”
She had two more kids after me, who were just as big of a mistake to her as I was.
Of course she never said it, and she was never cruel, but we could feel it. Macon, Army, and Iron were her comfort. Her rocks.
I’d only known her at her worst.
“I saw the closed door, and I knew.” I glide my fingers down his arm, smiling at the goose bumps that break out as I blink away a tear. “I don’t even know how I knew. Her door had been closed before, but I just knew.”
And I let her do it. I didn’t stop her. I can say it was a mercy to let her be. She’d suffered long enough, and the stress had already killed my father two months before. It would’ve killed Macon to have to keep her alive as well as the rest of us.
“If she really wanted to die, though, would she have been crying?” I ask.