Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59521 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
He opens his mouth, closes it, but he doesn’t look away. Eventually, he speaks.
“Your dad hired us.” Each word is grit, pain, and truth. I flinch with every one. “Your dad paid us, a lot, to get you girls to the location where you would be sold. We were supposed to keep you safe and alive, deliver you all and then walk away.”
Keep you alive. Deliver you. Like fucking livestock. I feel it then, the nausea, bitter and thick, rising up so fast I have to bend over and pant through it so that I don’t vomit all over the ground. Ace keeps talking, but the world is a tunnel, the sound rushing in and out, the blood roaring in my ears. “I didn’t know you, Grace. It was just a job. Once I got to know you, I never would have...”
“It wouldn’t have gotten to that,” I scream, my head whipping up. “We only had days left on that boat, and there is no way you ever would have known who I was in that short time.”
“That’s not true,” he rasps, voice low.
“And you?” I hiss, turning on Kellen.
Kellen looks defeated, like he has reached the end of his rope. “None of us liked it, kid. But we didn’t have a fuckin’ choice. We had our reasons for doin’ it, we didn’t know the kind of people you all were.”
“What a fucking cop out,” I cry, the tears flowing freely down my cheeks now. “We’re fucking young girls, human beings, that alone should have been enough.”
“Grace,” Ace tries again.
I look up at him, and he flinches at the pain written all over my face. “I told you about my father. I told you everything, and you—” My throat closes, and I have to force the next words out. “You made me feel like I finally wasn’t alone. Like we could be... something in this shit world. And all that time, you knew that you were there to fucking sell us. You let me take on the guilt of that shipwreck, the guilt of us being stuck here, when all along, it was your fucking fault.”
Ace moves forward, maybe to touch me, but I flinch again, and he stops. “That’s not what it is. Things changed after we met you. We were already reconsidering when the yacht went down.”
“Oh, well in that case, everything is fine,” I croak, sarcastically. “You’re fucking delusional if you think that makes it any better.”
He shakes his head. “Grace, please, just fuckin’ listen to me.”
“No!” My voice rings through the trees. “Don’t you fucking speak to me. You let me fall...” I clutch my chest. “You let me fall in love with you, you self-centred pig.”
I want to punch him, to scream, but all I can do is wrap my arms around myself and back away, step by step, until the green closes over and I can’t see his face anymore. I walk until my legs give out. I shed so many tears there on the cold, wet ground. For every time I let him touch me, every time I let myself believe he was different. I want to dig my nails into my skin and scrape out every ounce of him.
I want to go back to before, to when I was numb and could at least pretend I was untouchable. But even here, pain finds me. Even on an island at the end of the world, I can’t outrun this.
I think I stay there, sitting on the cold jungle ground, for hours. I can hear Aggie and Tatiana calling for me, I wonder if they know? Or if they’re just worried that I haven’t come back. Did Ace and Kellen have the guts to tell them the truth, or are they waiting for me to do it for them?
Eventually I stand. I wipe my face, and I pick some coconuts and start the walk back. Because I have no fucking choice. Out here, survival is the only option.
The camp is gold-stained with sunset when I make it back, clutching the coconuts in a death-grip. My skin is sticky from tears and whatever comes from breaking when the inside of you is finally, actually, irreparably damaged. Aggie and Tatiana are hunched by the fire, cooking something on the pan. Rachel is helping Adrian, adjusting his bed again so he can sleep.
I clack the coconuts on the trunk at the edge of camp, and they all spin in my direction. One look at my face, and Aggie is up and at my side, fingers on my elbow, trying to read my face. “Jesus, Grace. You’re—you’re a mess. What happened?”
I can’t find the words.
“Where are they?” My voice is not my own; it has dropped to a gravelly flatness that, for once, makes the whole camp listen.
Aggie shrugs. “Fixing up the raft. Didn’t say much. Didn’t even eat.”