Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 102361 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102361 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
No. Absolutely fucking not.
I stand and pace the bedroom, needing to punch something. I can’t sit still.
If the next words out of her perfect mouth are to tell me that she married another fucking man, I might lose my goddamn mind.
“I told you,” she says with tears in her voice. “You don’t want to know this, Brooks.”
“Fuck.” I push my hands through my hair and then stare at her. “Finish it.”
“Brooks—”
“Just say it.”
“Come back here.” Her voice is so shaky, and she’s so upset, I couldn’t resist her if I wanted to. So I climb back on the bed and take her hand again. “He said that he’d been given one year to live, and he wanted to spend that year with me. He manipulated me into marrying him.”
“You fucking married that prick?”
She nods, pressing her lips together.
“Then he miraculously went into remission.”
“Jesus Christ. Did you not go to his appointments with him?”
“Oh, I did. But Justin was wealthy, and he could pay a doctor to say whatever he wanted. So for the next eight-ish years, whenever I told him that I wanted to separate, he’d either attempt to kill himself, or his cancer was back.”
“That motherfucker.”
“We had separate bedrooms.”
My eyes fly to hers in surprise. “Why?”
“Because he was so sick, and he said he needed to rest. Which worked well for me because sex with Justin—” She shakes her head, and I feel nauseous. “Just, no. And that’s all I’ll say about that. He was controlling. He was manipulative. And honestly, I think I was a prize for him. It’s not that he was so head over heels in love with me that he couldn’t live without me. He just decided at some point that he wanted me, and figured out a way to make it happen, and decided that he’d won. He never said that, but that’s my gut feeling.”
“Is he why you react the way you do to being startled?”
Her eyes close again. “Yeah. He liked to scare me. He did it all the time, and then he’d laugh and laugh. He was cruel. He isolated me from everyone. By the time he died, my mom was gone, but I never really talked to her much anyway. My old roommates stopped checking in to see if I wanted to get together. I was his thing. For the most part, he left me alone. I couldn’t tell you the last time he touched me. Not just sexually. When he was my bestie, as he called himself, we’d hug or he’d touch my arm, that sort of thing. But later, no. He didn’t touch me at all.”
She swallows, and I can tell that we’re nearing the end of the story.
“How did he die, baby?”
Jules blows out a breath and tips her head back against the headboard.
“We were in a car accident.”
Every muscle in my body tightens, and I can’t stand it anymore. I pull her into my arms and hug her so close, I’m surprised she can still breathe.
“Hey, I’m okay.”
“Fuck. Fuck.”
Her fingers comb through my hair, and she rubs her hand up and down my back.
“I’m right here, Brooks.”
I pull back enough to cup her chin and lay my lips over hers. “Are you telling me I almost lost you?”
“No, I was barely hurt,” she says, and the knot in my stomach loosens just a bit. “I’m okay.”
Letting out a shaky breath, I relax my hold on her so she can continue with her story.
“We’d been arguing because I wanted to finally leave him, and he was throwing a fit, talking about how his chemo was about to start again, and how could I abandon him, blah blah blah. He wasn’t watching the road, and there was a curve, and he went into the ditch. A tree smashed his side of the car. By the time we got to a hospital, he was brain dead.”
Her eyes find mine, and they look so haunted. So fucking tired.
“They asked me if he was an organ donor, and if I wanted to donate his organs to save someone else, and I was so confused. This was the same hospital system where he received cancer treatment, so they had his medical records. I said, ‘How can you donate organs from a cancer patient?’”
I shake my head. Fuck, I know where this is going.
“And they told me that he didn’t have cancer. He was as healthy as could be. He’d never had cancer, Brooks.”
“Jesus.” I plant my lips in her hair and hug her to me. “What did you do?”
“I told them to take everything they needed from him and then pull the plug.”
She shifts in my lap and cups my cheek.
“That was two years ago. After he died, I found meticulous notes that he’d taken about how he’d manipulated me. How he broke us up, kept me close, did all he could to make me marry him. But that’s not all I found, Brooks.”