Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16567 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 83(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16567 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 83(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
"I know I don’t want you makin’ my little sister think she’s going to be seeing more of me," I retort. "I don’t belong in that world. Never have."
"Why not?” she pleads with me. "What is it about it that makes it so hard for you?”
I pause as we reach the last few yards that lead up to the cabin. Truth be told, it’s not exactly a conversation that I’ve had with myself since I left. I’ve been happy enough out here, making this life for myself, not thinking about what I ran from.
"Because they wanted me to marry and take on the next generation of our family," I reply. "My father, my mother, they-"
"They’re not around anymore," she reminds me. "They don’t get a say in what you do. Only you get that, right?”
I don’t reply. She takes a step towards me.
"Trust me, I know what it feels like to lose a parent," she murmurs. "I lost – I lost my mom before I came out here, a couple of years ago. But I had a support system to help me through it, I had my friends, my studio, my-"
"Your studio," I reply, shaking my head. "You think we’ve got something like that here? Where a woman can just...?”
I wave my hand at her, not even entirely sure what I am referring to.
"Can just what?” she shoots back. "Can actually help people? People like your sister, who are going through something bigger than they can wrap their heads around? She’s just lost her mother, Wyatt, you don’t know what that does to a girl. She needs help. So do you and Cade. And you’re likely not the only ones, you just..."
She stares at me, her voice imploring, trying in any way she can to reach me and convince me that there is more here than just her strange mindset overlapping dangerously with this world.
"You need help," she tells me, her voice cracking. "You all do. I’m not saying I can make it all right, but I can...I can help. I can show you some of the techniques I used to make it hurt a little less..."
"Who says I’m hurtin’ at all?”
The words are a lie, and out of my mouth before I can stop them. She steps forward gingerly, as though expecting me to brush her off the moment she gets close, and lifts her hand to my heart. She presses it against my chest, and the moment her fingers dig in to my skin, I can feel something give, as much as I want to deny it.
"I can tell you are, Wyatt," she murmurs. "I’m not saying that you have to go and live by all the standards that your family had for you. Whatever you walked away from, I trust that it’s right for you. I just..."
She shakes her head.
"You don’t have to go living your life acting like none of this hurts," she assures me. "And you still have family here – you realize how lucky you are to have your brother and sister so nearby?”
I flick my gaze back and forth between her eyes for a moment, and then head inside, busying myself with setting up a fire. She follows me in, tenacious. Seems like I’m not going to get rid of her that easily...
"I didn’t ask you to come here and fix everything for me," I remind her, as I toss a few logs into the fireplace and crack a stone against a rough lighting paper to send sparks spraying over the dry wood.
"No, you didn’t," she agrees. "But you took me out of the forest, you helped me, when you didn’t need to do any of that. And if I had to guess why..."
She inches a little closer to me, as though barely daring to let the words cross her mind.
"I would say it’s because you know as well as I do that we need people to keep as alive," she goes on. "Not just...just in our bodies, but in our hearts, too. In our minds."
I don’t look at her. I can’t. I feel as though I will give something away that I can’t take back if I so much as lock eyes with her right now, and I am in no place to do that.
My mother’s final breaths are replaying over and over again inside my head, Lucy’s sobs, Cade’s sullen horror. And I know that I could do nothing but leave, or else the weight of it would hit me so hard I might not survive it.
"Please, Wyatt," she murmurs to me, and, all at once, I feel her hand on my chin. I turn to face her once more as the flames roar up in front of me, and I can see tears glistening in her eyes.
"You still plannin’ on leaving?" I ask her gruffly.