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 love her.
It’s a short clip.
Extremely grainy so it’s hard to say who’s who. But it’s a clip of her on her knees on the ground, her red hair spilled around her face and flowing down her back, her deep purple dress flipped up and me behind her, driving into her body with a force that seems violent. That seems like I’m fucking her like I’m trying to kill her. But in reality, I’m fucking her like she’s saving my life.
Like she’s saving me. My lost little bird.
While I’m more recognizable in the video, mostly because my face is in clear view even if it’s my profile, her face is turned away and hidden. Her body is hidden as well except for her flanks and even though the angle is from the side and the distance is huge, it still makes me want to strangle the bastard who did this. Who fucking intruded on our private moment. On her private moment, where she was showing me.
That was her showing me, wasn’t it? That she loved me. That she was mine in every way a woman could be a man’s. That I could love her back because I was safe with her. Turns out, she wasn’t safe with me. But then again, I always knew that.
We don’t know who took the video but it was published by the same website that we’re currently engaged in a legal battle with. Apparently, the cease and desist was only for their ridiculous Redhead Watch and so they thought they could publish a separate article about the same bullshit, dressing it up as the Thorne family scandal. The video has been taken down for now but the lawyers are still looking into getting a court order to ban all content regarding the Thorne family from being published by this website until the case is over.
Fucking leaches. Fucking scum of the earth every last one of them. Including her bitch mother who apparently gave them an interview that was published in conjunction with this video. We always knew she’d come back to fucking bite us in the ass for strongarming her but even I couldn’t have imagined her doing what she did. Actually, accusing her daughter of seducing the Thorne men. Apparently, her daughter did the same thing with her stepfather and so her mother wasn’t surprised to find she was doing the same to her stepbrother.
I almost lost my shit when I saw that. I almost burst out of the glass office they hauled me off to, after the fight on the field. Of course, to berate me and rip me a new one. I didn’t care though. I still wanted to leave, and I told them as much. They could kick me out if they wanted to but I wasn’t going to sit there and not tear apart the people responsible for the shitshow, including her mother. But they told me that the reporter was pressing charges and the only way team would handle it in my favor is I stayed put and paid attention.
Fuckers.
So I did what they told me to do not because I was afraid of jail but because if I went to prison on assault charges, I wouldn’t be able to win her back. And winning her back was—is—my only goal right now.
Anyway, the verdict about my future on the team is there is no verdict as of yet. Apparently instead of kicking me out right away, they’re going to mull it over for a bit. And only because of my performance. It has been on a steady increase all season, with today’s game being my best with all five goals scored by me. But fuck that. None of that matters to me right now.
“I told you to stay away from her,” Conrad says and I look up from where I’m standing, leaning against the wall of my hotel room, my arms folded across my chest. He’s sitting in the armchair by the floor to ceiling window, his elbows on his thighs as he leans forward, looking grave, angry, disappointed. “I told you she was my responsibility.”
It prickles me the same way it did that first night when we discussed her and I remind him, “And I told you she was mine.”
It makes his jaw clench. “Well good job protecting her then.”
Low blow. That was a fucking low blow, and he knows that. I don’t have anything to say to that though because it’s not as if he’s wrong. He’s fucking right and it burns me that he is. It fucking punches me in the gut, making my muscles clench in pain.
Good. I deserve it. I gave her pain, didn’t I? In more ways than one. It’s like everything she was afraid of—the world finding out, the family getting involved, secrets getting discovered—came true in one. Single. Blow.