Total pages in book: 188
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 179812 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 899(@200wpm)___ 719(@250wpm)___ 599(@300wpm)
I watch his long fingers clutching the handle and pulling it down and I say, “I won’t be here when you come back.”
And I mean it. This time, I absolutely fucking mean it. But either he doesn’t get it or doesn’t care about it, because after an initial pause on his part and a tight flex of those fingers I’m still watching, he breaks into action again. He opens the door and walks out of it, slamming it behind him. Hard.
Part III
Chapter Thirty-Two
THE WRECKING THORN
My name is Shepard Thorne and I’m in love with a girl named Jupiter Jones.
She has hair the color of strawberries and she has cinnamon-colored freckles scattered like stardust all over her creamy skin. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen but more than that she’s the bravest girl I’ve ever met. She can work multiple jobs and take care of her sister singlehandedly. She can make any house a home, even the one fraught with bad memories and laced with tragedy. She can cut through the poison of any toxic snake or an asshole.
But most of all, she can kill you with only a few words, wreck you to pieces, make you fall apart, all so you can be born again. So you can be made again. Into something that she deserves. That is worthy of her rather than a coward and a liar like me.
The moment she told me I loved her I knew I did. I knew it was the truth. I felt it deep within me, in the center of my being.
It was as if I was waiting for someone to tell me, for her to tell me—I love her—so I could realize it was the truth. Because those three words are something I’d never say myself, something I wouldn’t even think because why would I put her name and a certain death that I think love is in the same sentence? Why would I do that to her when I know how toxic love can be? I mean, I was fucking pushing her away because I thought she had fallen in love with me and that was the opposite of what I wanted. I was doing her a fucking favor and then…
So I had to get out of there. I had to leave. I had to do the right thing even if it killed me.
But the moment I climbed into my rental car and started driving away from her, her words echoing in my head, things started to fall apart. I started to fall apart only so certain things could become clear. So I could finally see the truth.
The truth is that I fell in love with my Little Strawberry the first moment I saw her. In that green t-shirt and a purple barrette. When I saw her long and thick red hair and couldn’t look away.
And that’s because I never loved Isadora. I thought I did. I thought for the longest time that I’d found someone who was perfect for me. Someone easy, someone I could spend my time with, maybe even my life with. I hadn’t gotten that far ahead in my future planning of course, but I can see that was where I was headed. Never got the chance though because she chose my twin long before that.
In any case, I realize now I thought that Isadora was it for me because everyone else in my family had found someone perfect for them. They’d made their own family, found their own person, like my Little Strawberry said that I got so…adrift after that. So fucking purposeless and lonely that I latched on to the first girl I thought would give me what my siblings had.
It wasn’t love that made me want Isadora, it was loneliness. Sheer and utter and fucking pathetic loneliness that I still have trouble accepting. It was that gaping hole that I’ve been trying to fill for the past couple of years, that made me bitter about my siblings’ relationships and happiness. That made me jealous, so jealous that I couldn’t stand to be around them. I couldn’t stand to be around my twin. When finally, fucking finally, we were starting to build something. We were starting to put his issues aside and be actual brothers. Turns out though, I had issues too.
I guess this is what happens when you bury things, your emotions and your feelings. Your thoughts. They decay and waste away in a dark corner of your soul and become something unrecognizable. They become something you can’t identify. So you think the poison running in your veins is love when it’s your miserable loneliness. What you consider a passing distraction is actually love smacking you in the fucking face.
And I also realize I know nothing about love. Not one thing. I can’t even recognize it for what it is so it’s safe to say I have no idea how to love someone. All I know is I want to. I want to love her because I do love her.