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)
“You’re eighteen, Katie. With a full scholarship!”
“And a ring on my finger!” She presents it like a weapon, flashing the rock in my face. “Your ring. The one you put there days ago when you promised—”
“You can keep it,” I tell her. “Keep the ring, but go to school. Live the life you were meant to live.”
“That life is meant to be with you!”
“No.” I’m on my feet now, putting distance between us before I break and give in. “You should be in classrooms, not garages, Katie. With people your age. Not with—”
“Not with what? The man I love?”
She’s got a point. I know it, she knows it. The pain is almost too much to bear.
“You’ll find someone else, Katie. Someone better who doesn’t come with grease under his fingernails.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
But I do. And that’s the worst part. I get to decide because I’m the one with the power to walk away and save her from a future she’ll regret in a few years when she’s looking back and wondering what she missed. Wondering about the opportunities I cost her.
“This discussion is over.” I grab my keys and head for the door. “Take the scholarship, Katie. Go to school. Be an eighteen-year-old girl.”
And here it is. Love as freedom. And freedom as pain.
I’m halfway out the door when she calls out to me. “You think leaving makes you a hero? It makes you a coward, Cam. A coward!”
I don’t turn around. I can’t. Seeing her face will break me, force me to be selfish and keep her. My feet move one after the other, fighting the war going on within me, dragging me downstairs to the truck.
The engine roars to life, and I drive. No destination, just movement. There’s an overlook just outside of town that gives a view of everything—the trailer park, the college campus just beyond that, and my garage set right in the middle like a manifestation of the choice I’ve just forced her to make.
My heart pounds like it’s about to explode. I lean back and close my eyes, take a deep breath, and fight to calm down.
I just did the right thing, right?
My phone rings, nearly causing me to jump out of my skin. Katie’s name on the display makes my chest tighten.
I don’t answer.
It rings again, and again, and again, until finally, I turn my phone off completely. The silence is louder than any ringtone.
Love. Love and agony, twisting around together inside me like two snakes fighting for survival. This is self-evisceration. A calculated amputation of my own heart. I know I have to let her go, but doing so might just kill me.
But Katie will be all right. She’ll heal, go to college, make friends, and build a life that’s beyond the one I can give her. She’ll look back on this blip in her life and realize how lucky she was to have escaped.
And I’ll have the garage. The dream I had built in my mind before she entered my world. And that should be enough.
It has to be…
Because the alternative—staying with Katie, forcing her to give up her scholarship—that’s not love.
That’s just a new kind of prison, and I’ve already helped her escape one of those.
I won’t build her another.
9
KATIE
Three days. Seventy-two hours. Four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes of existing in this aluminum cage that used to be my home. My mother clanks dishes in the sink, still moving victoriously. She thinks I came home because I wanted to. She doesn’t know I’m just here because I have no other choice.
She hums off-key, a smug performance of maternal satisfaction. Everything feels smaller now. The walls closer, the ceilings lower, like I’ve grown too large for this space, the trailer no longer able to contain the woman I’ve become.
Cameron’s ring still sits heavily on my finger, hidden beneath the long sleeve of my sweater. A secret. A promise he made, pointing toward the life that’s no longer mine. A life I refuse to surrender.
“Glad you got your head on straight,” my mom says, leaning against the counter with her morning glass of wine. “Go to that college today and check it out. Forget that good for nothing man.”
Every one of her words feels like poison wrapped in a guise of affection.
I force myself to nearly smile. Better than starting yet another fight. “Maybe I’ll visit tomorrow.”
Her eyes flash with a victory she hasn’t really won. Inside, I’m already planning. Building my escape route with the same methodical precision Cam used to draw the blueprints of his new shop.
The campus sprawls before me like a series of photographs taken professionally for its website. A montage of possibilities. Weathered brick buildings, students laughing over coffee, their biggest concern their next exam and not whether their parents’ welfare check will be delayed.