Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“I never stopped to think she might confuse me with her mom when she wasn’t fully awake.”
“It’s bound to happen here and there. It hasn’t been that long.”
Alara nodded, climbing off the bed and coming closer.
“Who told you that you weren’t allowed to cry?” I asked, my voice low.
She jerked back at that.
“No one.” At my brow lift, she shrugged. “Me, I guess. My parents were already so overwhelmed that I didn’t want to make anything worse. My mom was better at hiding her feelings than Charlotte and Liam’s mom was, but a kid can always tell when their parent is stressed or depressed. No matter how well they think they’re hiding it. And as I got older, it was easier to be angry at the guys who were making our life a living hell.”
“The Polats, that was their name, right?” I’d gotten a quick refresher from Brio about his wife’s ex-husband and his brothers, who’d been extorting and abusing Ezzy and Alara’s family for years and years.
“Yeah. You couldn’t show them any weakness, or they were going to exploit it. So I learned not to be emotional. I was just… pissed. Around-the-clock pissed. Eventually, I just… couldn’t cry.”
Except with me.
Sure, she’d been attacked, traumatized, but still, it felt like it meant something.
“Which makes it even more impressive that you could give Charlotte that talk.”
“She’s a great kid. She doesn’t need to grow up angry. No one wants her to turn out like me.”
“Hey,” I said, grabbing her arm when she tried to brush past me after saying that bullshit. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“No? Because I could write you a list. Double-sided, single-spaced.”
“You went through some shit no kid should have had to. And you learned to cope the best way you could. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. I know you tend to see yourself as someone hard or closed off, but that’s not who you are.”
“It kind of is.”
“No, it’s not. Someone who is hard or closed off wouldn’t buy a pawnshop because they want to help people keep their important items because they knew what it was like to lose theirs. They wouldn’t offer to babysit their nieces and nephews even when small kids aren’t their favorite. They wouldn’t adopt a dog and love it even when it doesn’t return the favor. They don’t read teen books because they came recommended from an overzealous acquaintance. And they don’t sit down and hold a crying kid and give them a pep talk when they’re not even related to them.
“Trust me, I’ve known a lot of hard people, Alara. I know what I’m talking about. You’re careful where you put your energy because you don’t want to emotionally invest in people who are only going to let you down. That’s guarded, not hard. And it’s not a flaw.
“For the record,” I said, ducking my head when she tried to look away, and running my thumb up and down her elbow, “I would have no problem with Charlotte turning out like you.”
Her eyes flicked up, something heavy there, a watery depth that she blinked back fast.
And because I could sense this was too much all at once, I ended on a lighter note. “Well, maybe minus the murder board, with your creepy ass.”
To that, she snorted.
I let her arm fall and watched her walk out of the room, only to turn and find the kids watching us.
In Charlotte’s eyes, there was something like hope.
In Liam’s, an understanding.
I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they were seeing something I wasn’t letting myself see.
But things were already too heavy that morning.
So I walked over, took the spatula, and flipped the pancakes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alara
“Christopher seemed okay with how I handled it,” I told Ezmeray as we sat alone in the apartment after Brio and Christopher took Tuna for a walk.
I tried not to let myself remember his hand on my arm, the intense look in his eyes, or the sincerity in his voice as he spoke to me after Charlotte walked out of the room.
“It sounds like you handled it better than a lot of parents would have in that situation. Sometimes, we tend to jump to assuring kids that they’re okay. When they’re clearly not. And that’s invalidating.” She paused, running her fingertip over the lip of her coffee mug. “Though I hate how some of that advice came from personal experience.”
“We went through a lot.” I shrugged it off.
“You went through a lot more.”
“Ez, you had to marry that son of a bitch and be abused by him…”
“I meant when we were kids still. I was an adult then. Barely, but an adult. You went through a lot more as a kid. And don’t think I don’t know how much you’ve edited what went on when I wasn’t around anymore. Because I knew those guys. I knew how they were.”