Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 101(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 101(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 67(@300wpm)
A movement outside flashes in my peripheral vision, and my body instantly tenses up.
It’s Mercedes, standing by the bay door like a phantom. A specter of a terrible decision I once made, clutching something with her fake nails. An envelope.
My body moves before I even think about what I’m doing. Instantly, I’m between her and the office, walling her off from Katie.
“Cameron.” My voice sounds rotten from her mouth. “You and I need to talk.”
“No. We don’t.”
She smiles a foul grin, ugly and knowing. “We do. Unless you want Katie to miss out on this.” She waves the envelope in my face, official and important looking.
“What is that?”
“Mom?” Katie appears in the doorway behind me, drawn by her mother’s voice.
“Hey there, sweetheart.” Mercedes’ tone is fake like artificial sweetener. She’s really hamming it up right now. “Look what came in the mail. Your scholarship letter!”
The words echo off the space around us like a bomb being dropped. Katie’s eyes widen, bright with hunger and an ambition I fully recognize—the same hunger she had when she first told me about applying for this.
“I–I got in?” Her voice nearly breaks with surprised joy. “The full scholarship?”
“You got in, sweetie. Books, tuition, housing, even a meal plan.” Mercedes’ eyes are on me as she hands her daughter the letter. “You could start spring semester. Meet people your own age. It would be great.”
The subtext is about as subtle as breaking glass. Mercedes is not here to celebrate with her daughter; she’s here to destroy. To plant a cancer in the relationship Katie and I have built.
“Got in?” I ask, confused. “I didn’t even know you applied.”
Katie traces the envelope with her fingers. She looks at me, and I watch her searching my face for a reaction. “Yeah…I never really mentioned it because I didn’t think I’d get it.”
I do my best to force a smile—I really am happy for her. But she must see right through me, as the joy on her face instantly dims like a lightbulb being turned down.
“It’s…it’s nice, Mom,” she says carefully. “But I work at the garage now. Cam needs me—”
“Don’t.” I shake my head. She’s making herself small again, only this time it’s not for her mother—it’s for me.
Mercedes laughs, happy as a pig in shit. “Well, I’ll just leave you two lovebirds to discuss my daughter’s future—the one that doesn’t involve trapping her in a garage at the age of eighteen.”
She leaves, but her poison still lingers between us.
“Cam—”
“Congratulations.” I force the word from my mouth. I mean it, but it’s so hard to say. “You earned it.”
There’s a brief pause as she looks at me, clutching the envelope like it’s either precious or might explode. “I don’t have to go, Cam. You just started the garage, and—”
“And you’re eighteen years old with a full scholarship, baby.” Each word pains me, costs me, like a tax leached from my flesh. “That’s not something you throw away.”
Katie’s chin lifts defiantly. “I’m not throwing anything away. I’m making a choice. And I chose you. Us.”
Her words should fill me with pride, satisfaction. Instead, they stab into me like knives.
When night falls, Katie lies curved against me, her breath soft as she dreams. The scholarship letter sits on the nightstand like evidence of a crime I’m about to commit. I stare up at the ceiling, countering her heartbeats against my chest, memorizing the softness of her skin and her weight against me.
She could have everything. Classes full of kids who have never had to wash their mom’s puke off the floor, study groups that meet in coffee shops instead of trailer parks and garages. A future that’s more than brake changes and compromise.
I can see her in a classroom now, raising her hand, her brilliant mind finally getting fed by something more than just survival and microwave dinners. She’ll laugh with normal girls her own age about boys from sociology, not older men who kissed them in their mother’s kitchen. I picture everything she could be without me—the old anchor just weighing her down.
Love is not possession. Love is freedom.
The thought burns in my chest, my heart pained with every breath I take.
My eyes stay open until morning arrives like the date of an execution. Katie wakes happily, presses her lips against my jaw and throat, and mutters about inventory orders and appointment scheduling. She’s more than capable of running the garage. Capable of so much more.
I watch her as she stands, slips into one of my oversized shirts, and grabs her hairbrush. Such beauty, beyond anything I could have ever imagined being mine.
“Katie, we need to talk.” The words break the silence like a rock dropped into still water.
She turns, her intelligent eyes sharp as blades. She already knows what’s coming. “Cam, no.”
“Katie—”
“Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” She shakes her head. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to be noble, trying to protect me.”