Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“Eight in the corner,” I murmur. It drops. Red groans. Tripp whoops from the other side, “baby brother takin’ you to school, son.”
That was Tripp, the Hellions President and my dad’s best friend. My parents Tank and Sass have four boys and we have given them so much Hell sometimes Tripp had to step in and beat us at our own games. His son, BW is my older brother Red’s best friend. They have been inseparable since birth.
I lean on the pool stick, breathing easy for the first time all night. The woman’s question floats back, uninvited. Do you ever think about something else? Like settling down.
I picture a porch somewhere near the White Oak River, soft wind running fingers through marsh grass, a dog at my feet, a woman in a dress that smells like clean laundry and sunshine. I picture the stillness. The way quiet could pull at me like undertow on the beach. The way I’d spend the whole time waiting for something to break.
My hand tightens on the pool stick. The picture splinters.
Good.
Red’s watching me. He knows when I go too quiet. “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
He studies me a beat, then nods and slaps my shoulder like a punctuation mark. “We’re pulling a run down toward Salemburg in the morning. Stud needs some parts. You in?”
“Yeah.” Riding solves things talking can’t. I push away from the table. “I’m getting some air.”
I take the back door out into the night. The air wraps around me, lip of cool threaded with summer’s last heat. The security light hums. The moths keep beating themselves stupid against it. I cross the lot, thumb the fob, and the bike’s lights blink slow, sleepy. I swing a leg, settle on the seat. The leather’s warm from the heat of the day it holds on to. I breathe in grease and oil, old sweat and the ghosts of miles.
I could ride.
Right now.
No destination, just lines on the highway and shadows of the dark bleeding down to black water where the sound and river mouth kiss. I could leave the noise behind and run parallel to something that pretends to be peace.
Instead I sit and listen to the night talk. Pine tips hiss overhead. A frog chirps from somewhere dumb and wet. Out there, houses had whole lives—kids asleep on couches, TVs blue and stupid, men and women who know exactly who will be next to them when they wake.
Good for them.
I’m not built for it. Not because I can’t. Because I won’t.
I think about the broad tonight. If she’s somewhere out there hoping I’ll wake up different, she’s wasting her time and mine. People don’t wake up different. They wake up who they are and spend the day deciding whether to lie about it.
I don’t lie.
I don’t settle.
I don’t soften when someone asks me to.
The only promise I make is the one I keep—tomorrow, I ride. And the day after. And the day after that. The road doesn’t ask questions. It just waits for me to answer with speed.
I answer every time.
Two
Kristen
The ocean is loud tonight, waves crashing hard enough against the shore that the sound carries all the way up to the deck. I lean against the glass door, sipping wine I didn’t buy, in a house I couldn’t afford in a hundred years. White-washed wood floors. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Art pieces that look like smears of color but probably cost more than my car before it died. This place isn’t mine. Nothing here is mine.
Except him.
At least, I thought so.
Brian’s voice filters down the hall, low and distracted, talking to someone through his earbuds. He’s always working late, always got someone calling, needing him. That’s what he tells me, anyway. And I want to believe it, because believing is easier than pulling at threads. If I tug too hard, I’m afraid the whole blanket will come apart.
I should be grateful. Twenty-four and living in an oceanfront house most people only see on magazine covers. Traveling anywhere and everywhere in luxury. He pays the bills, keeps the fridge stocked with food, has cleaners and cooks come for to care for the day to day, and leaves a credit card in my wallet like I’m a kid with an allowance. All he asks is that I look good, be available when he wants me, and keep the house from feeling empty.
And I do. For the last four years, he is my life. I wake up based on when he expects me to be somewhere. If he’s out of town and doesn’t have me accompany him then I have scheduled spa days per his instructions. I have fillers and Botox and every facial cream available to me. Look pretty, that I can do. Love a man who is empty, that is becoming harder with every passing day.