Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
A strange noise hit her ears. It sounded scared.
Who was it making that noise? Were they all right? Should Lily do something?
But she wasn’t exactly good at helping, was she? Lily was terrible at making decisions. Useless. The only thing she was good for was getting married and having children.
However, she wasn’t even sure she’d be any good at that. How could she raise a child when she couldn’t even feel anything?
When she lived in the numb?
After we get married, Lily, things are going to change. I’m going to fuck you the way I want, and you can’t do a thing about it. Because I’ll own you.
Those words made her heart race faster. They were so mean. But Lily knew how to deal with mean people. After all, she’d lived her entire life with her mother, the meanest person on the planet.
All she had to do was ignore them.
You are such a wimp.
Shame tried to filter its way through the numb, and she couldn’t quite squash it down.
She needed her pills. They’d stop her from feeling anything.
Clearly, she wasn’t well if feelings were getting through.
“Lily? Hey, Lily. You’re all right. You’re safe now.”
She turned her head to look at the man again. Where was he taking her and why did he seem so familiar?
“Mo bhreáthracht, you’ve got to stop making those noises, or I’m going to turn this vehicle around, drive back to your mother’s house, and punch her in the face. I generally don’t like to hit women. However, I would make an exception for her.”
Mo bhreáthracht?
What did that mean? What language was that? She liked the sound of that word. She liked the way it wrapped around her heart and made her feel warm. She really was in need of her pills.
Wait, what had he just said? That he was going to punch her mother in the face?
She was certain she knew this man, that maybe she even liked him, because she didn’t feel scared of him. Which meant that she needed to stop him from making a big mistake.
“You can’t,” she told him.
“I definitely can,” he replied. “Like I said, I don’t like hitting women generally, and I don’t do it as a rule, but there’s very little that I wouldn’t do when it comes to you, Lily.”
That was weird, wasn’t it?
Why would a man, whose name she couldn’t remember, want to help her?
“She would hurt you.” Lily knew how cruel that woman could be.
Maybe she should come out of the numb. However, it was too hard to resist.
And Lily kept slipping back into it. In the numb, she lost track of time, of what was going on. Something had obviously happened, though, for her to be in a car with a strange man who also wasn’t a stranger.
But just who was he?
Rick’s friend.
Harvey.
Oh God. She was in a car with Harvey? Another memory slipped through the numb . . . one of him carrying her out of that dreadful house where she’d lived with her mother for far too long.
“I can assure you that there is nothing that vapid bitch can do to harm me.”
Lily jolted slightly at hearing her mother called a bitch. Not that it wasn’t true. It was just that people didn’t normally say it out loud. At least not where she could hear them.
People were too scared of her mother to say anything bad about her in front of Lily. Not that Lily cared.
“She has a lot of power. She could make things difficult.”
“No. That’s what she wants you to think, but she has no power. None over me, and definitely none over you.”
No, he was wrong. He didn’t know what he was talking about.
“She’s going to be mad that I left. I need to go back.”
“Not happening,” he replied.
Oh, hell. What had Harvey done? Why hadn’t Mother stopped him from taking her? Why hadn’t Rick or Clem?
Wait, Clem had been there, hadn’t she? Had he left Clem on her own with her mother?
That wasn’t good.
“Where is Clem?” she asked.
Where were they going? Had they been driving for a while? Where did Harvey even live? Was he taking her to his house?
Had he kidnapped her?
Lily had lived her entire life in Beacon Hill. It was a gorgeous area of Boston, but at times it had felt stifling.
Everyone had known who she was, who her mother was. She hated feeling like she was under a microscope. For the last ten months, other than going to social functions with Rick, she’d stayed at home.
Hidden from the world.
It had seemed easier that way, rather than having to pretend to feel something she didn’t feel.
“I would say she’s headed back to Texas,” Harvey said.
All right. That was good. She wouldn’t like to think of Clem being stuck with their mother.
“That’s good. Clem loves Texas. She was always happiest there.”