Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 77961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
“You think it’s dumb?” Her voice is light, but there’s a current of hurt there that makes me feel guilty. “Maybe you’re right and I’m just thinking too hard about things that don’t matter. I’ll probably be gone in a week, right? So what’s the point in asking each other questions?” She starts to walk away.
Fuck. I hold her in place. “No, that’s not what I fucking mean. I like what we’ve got going on. It feels good, and not just the sex. But that doesn't give you the right to my—”
“Right?” She huffs, sounding annoyed. “Nobody has the right to anyone else’s story, but it's not about right. It's about trust. How much do you trust me?”
I'm an idiot sometimes, but even I see the danger signs if I choose the wrong answer. If I want this to go any further, I'm going to have to trust that she'll still be here when I'm done telling her. And if I don't, she’s got no fucking reason to stick around. “You might hate me afterwards.”
“Because of your parents? I find that hard to believe.”
“Because of what I did to my parents.”
She goes still, waiting.
Fuck, I said too much already. Whatever she’s thinking is gonna be just as bad as the truth, if not worse. So now what? I tell her just so she won't draw her own conclusions? That's not trust, that's just fear of being caught out. “Why do you need to know?
“Being here, being around you guys, it’s the first time I’ve ever really considered if I want anything more in my life. I was happy with my work, or maybe not happy, but content. Now I’m wondering if I’m just screwed up, and since you’re one of the people that are making me feel this way, I… You’re right. It’s dumb.”
I look up with a sigh. “It’s not. I’m not good at this.”
Suddenly, her little hand is clasped around my wrist. I can tear myself away anytime I want, but I don’t.
“Please?” Her ash gray eyes are pleading for me to let her in.
Something tears in me. Something that might take a lot of fixing to patch back up again. I pull her with me over to the shade of one of the trees near the clubhouse. “Here. Sit with me.”
“Okay.”
My chest grows tight, a feeling I haven't felt in many, many years. “When I was real little, things were good. At least as far as I could tell, but… something happened to Dad. I think he lost his job, but I was too young for them to bother explaining, so they didn't tell me shit. All I knew for a while was that he was an asshole, but after a while he stopped bothering to hide the bottles, and he went from mostly never home, to there all the fucking time. Looking back, I don’t know if life turned him into an alcoholic, or if the alcohol ruined his life, but it didn’t much matter when he started hitting.”
“Oh no.” She wraps herself around me, but I can’t bring myself to do the same, not until I get it out.
“Age old story, right? It lasted for fucking years. Most of the time it was Mom that took the heat, but when I got bigger, I’d piss him off on purpose to distract him. Sometimes it worked. That bastard made our lives hell. Fuck, I hated her for not leaving. I fucking know in my head she was a victim, but I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for not just picking me up from school and driving to anywhere but home.” I draw a racking breath, hating to go back to the place these memories live. But damn it, she wanted the whole fucking truth, right? “That was my life from when I was probably eight years old until a week after my fourteenth birthday. New Year’s Day.”
She blinks. “Wait, your birthday is Christmas Eve?”
I nod. “Every damn year. He'd blown way more than we could afford on cheap champagne and started popping bottles when—you know how they stream countdowns from around the world? He started as soon as the first fucking tiny island most of the way around the world celebrated. By the time it was dark here, he was fucking smashed. I don't even know what Mom did to provoke him, but he just—shit, he broke and I thought he was really going to kill her.” My heart's racing, I can feel the adrenaline like I'm there again, the images of Dad flashing like a slow motion movie across my eyes. “I broke, too. Grabbed the cast iron pan off the stove.”
Rory’s hand on my side trembles. I can hear her breathing change, but I can’t look at her or I won’t finish.