Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
The poor woman looks like a marionette with its strings cut. Broken.
Her rattling sobs never stop.
My stomach flips over.
Heaves once.
A heartsick part of me knows what happened, but I need confirmation.
I need to hear if it’s really the disaster I think.
The seconds between each heartbeat become years.
“Taylor Rollins ran her car off a cliff last night,” the chief says softly. His words go in one ear and out the other, leaking like cracked glass, my head too fucking shattered to hold anything in. “We found the wreckage this morning.”
The wreckage.
“She didn’t make it,” I say flatly.
“No,” he says bluntly. “Afraid she didn’t. I’m so sorry, kid.”
That’s the moment the lights go out.
That’s when the sun stops rising and I’m handed over to eternal night, and I know I don’t deserve the tiniest pinprick of stars.
I’m an accessory to murder, officially or not, and when the chief asks me to give a quick statement outside, I lie through my teeth.
17
ALL OF YOU (HATTIE)
Holy flying shitballs.
I stare at Ethan, thinking my heart just caved in.
For him, for the boy he was—just a clueless, confused kid, faced with one of the harshest realities any young man can deal with.
And the man it made him into now.
No wonder he’s so Ethan.
So closed off with barbed wire and dragons guarding his heart.
And no flipping wonder it feels like he’s bleeding alone, quietly curled up and wounded in a place he won’t let anyone else tread.
“Well?” He looks at me expectantly.
“Um. Ummm, holy crap.” My voice is hoarse with my heart lodged in my throat. I want to reach out to him, but I don’t know if he’d even let me right now. “I had no idea, Ethan. I never would’ve guessed any of that, not in a million years.”
“I hid it well. Looks like it worked.”
“Yeah, wow. Margot never told me.” I grip the counter for support, completely stunned. My knuckles are white, but I can’t bring myself to relax my grip. “Wait, did she even know?”
“Hell no.” There’s a harshness in his voice that isn’t normally aimed at me. “No one did. Not another living soul—no one except Gramps.”
I blink slowly.
“You told Leo?”
“Not with words. I limped home and raided his liquor cabinet the second I noticed Holden was off for the day. Gramps found me on the verge of blackout drunk. Nearly blind and almost dead on the floor.”
Ethan breaks away from my stare, pacing the room like he can’t bear to remain still.
I get it.
Sometimes when you’re hurting this bad, it feels like your skin is too tight. You need to keep moving for the distraction.
“It must’ve been terrible,” I whisper.
“For me?” He scoffs. “No, I got off too lightly, Pages. I deserve every second of grief. I should’ve just told her from the start I’d figure this out. It wasn’t hard. I never should’ve let her leave the house, not in the state she was in. What kind of good-for-nothing piece of shit—” He stops, his hands shaking, gnarled into fists. “She must’ve figured out real fast it was hopeless. She came to me looking for help, for reassurance, and I spat in her face.”
I ache for him.
Every breath feels like inhaling saltwater, and I try to hold in my tears as my nose burns.
“Ethan, no. You can’t do that. You can’t beat yourself up over something that happened when you were barely grown, just starting out.”
His eyes are remorseless.
They flick to mine, more bitter and cold than Casco Bay in January.
“Like hell, Hattie. Don’t pretend it isn’t my fault. I’m the bastard who knocked her up, the asshole who ignored her. I’m the chickenshit little worm who ran her off. She left blinded with pain, not in her right mind. She thought her life was fucked because of me—and she wasn’t paying attention to the road. She lost her life and so did my kid.”
He inhales like he’s breathing needles, each breath tearing him apart.
And he turns away, his huge shoulders slowly rising and falling, sick and battered with the nightmare he’s lived.
I wipe a tear before I come closer, before I gingerly clench his shoulders, one with his pain—and oh my God, it’s overwhelming.
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t,” I whisper, willing him to breathe, to look at me.
Eventually, he turns and his gaze settles on mine, but it cuts straight through me.
I don’t know how to ease heartbreak this savage.
I don’t even know if I can.
But I hate feeling so useless, so lost in the face of something like—
Jesus, like this.
“I was too much of a selfish punk to care. To take this seriously.” There’s so much self-hatred in his voice I flinch. “When she found me on the docks and we had that blowout, you know what I thought about? Me. Number one. I thought about how much having a kid would shit up my life.”