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 didn’t know that. Not until recently. I thought something was wrong with me. Something was poisoning my insides so much so that some days I didn’t even want to be around them. I didn’t want to hang out with Ledger at practice. I didn’t want to go to Callie’s get-togethers. Every time they mentioned their girls, Reed, I just… I felt irritated. I felt like I couldn’t stand it. And well, you already know I couldn’t stand being near Stellan because I thought Isadora should be with me. But the truth is I was jealous. Jealous of what they had, have. The kind of happiness they have. The kind of love they have. They’re making their own families, and I couldn’t see that. Not when I was left behind. Not when I was lonely.”
He pauses to look at me with a penetrating gaze. “You knew that though, didn’t you? You already knew I was lonely.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
I knew. I could see. I didn’t know the extent of it until now but yes, I knew. And I wanted to do everything I could to make that go away. To make him feel better. To be his cure, his balm. His everything like he was mine.
“You somehow always know,” he says, his thumbs rubbing the back of my hand. “Somehow you already know all the things about me before even I know them.”
“Because I am your heart reader,” I tell him, even though I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t make our connection any deeper than it already is. I shouldn’t look for more ties to bind us together, more shackles and ropes, more twines and twigs. Because for some reason, being tied to him feels like freedom and happiness, safety, and I don’t need any reminders of that right now.
Both his eyes and his voice are fond when he agrees, “Yeah.” Then, taking a deep breath, he continues, “But what you don’t know, you couldn’t know because I had to figure it out for myself is that I got together with Isadora out of that same loneliness that made me jealous of my own siblings. It wasn’t love. It was never love. I was just looking to fill the gap in my soul, in my heart that missed my siblings so badly and she was there. And when she left I…” He searches for a word, and I look at him with suspended breaths and a reeling mind. “I think what I felt was hopeless. I felt like I was never going to have what my siblings had. I thought I was once again being left behind and it was so…painful, that feeling. Scary too, terrifying that I thought it was heartbreak. But it wasn’t. She never broke my heart when she left because she never had it. Even I didn’t have my heart back then.”
“You didn’t?”
He shakes his head. “No, I gave it away.”
“To whom?”
Again, both his eyes and his voice are fond, maybe even laced with a sad sort of amusement at my naivete when he says, “To you.”
I blink. Then I blink again and finally it slams into me, the knowledge and I lose my breath. It’s me. It’s always been me. He’s loved me since the beginning, maybe since the first moment he saw me. That’s why he used to look at me when he was with her. That’s why he used to think about me, watch me, knew that I watched him because his heart was mine. I wasn’t the other girl. No, I was the only girl.
I am the only girl.
But he’s right, there is no way I could’ve known about all this. There’s no way I could’ve pieced it all together, not until he told me about it.
A breath rushes out of him, wafting over me, all sweet and hot, laced with his favorite fruit, me. “Jesus, fuck. I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I can’t… Everything I have done, all the twisted things I have done was all so I could be… I could be close to you.” He swallows thickly, flexing his grip on my fingers, staring into my eyes. “So I could just look at you. And touch you and feel you. Talk to you even though I know nothing about talking. I followed you that night, the night of my engagement, all because I couldn’t stand to be there. I couldn’t stand to be in there when you were somewhere else, when you were miserable because of me. So, I followed you out and all I wanted was to look at you, hear your voice directed at me for the first time.”
He comes even closer then, if possible, “You said I fell in love with you while trying to get out of love with her. No, I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you. I just didn’t realize it even though my brain, my heart, every fucking bone in my fucking body was telling me.”