Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“Stop!”
“Sure, I’ll stop.” I heard the triumph in his voice clear as day. “As long as you stop being a bitter old hag, and move on from the past. I love you, I made a mistake, it’ll never happen again, so let’s move the fuck on. Deal?”
The word was acid on my tongue. “...deal.”
“Awesome. Then, I’ll see you tonight, baby. My place.”
“Fine.”
“You—”
I hung up, not letting him drip another poisonous word in my ear.
Walking up to my car, I dropped my head on the hood—letting the warmth seep into my skull and banish the oncoming headache.
That evil, fucking, miserable bastard was right. Suing him wouldn’t get back what he planned to steal from me—my privacy, my safety, my last chance to ever make it home. If Omma was shamed by a vicious prank I wasn’t a part of, what would be her reaction to a sex tape I was a part of?
That question didn’t need answering. I already knew.
Standing there slumped over my hunk of crap, the words of another miserable bastard roared in my ear.
“You’re a twenty-eight-year-old waitress making fourteen dollars an hour. You live in a terrible neighborhood, that car you pulled up in is older than you, and you think that you can pay medical bills with sob stories.
“So I’m going to do you a favor and give you what you need more desperately than a baby. A wake-up call.”
I cringed then like I did the first time I heard it.
“You’re not ready to be anyone’s mother, Ms. Kim. Come back when you get your life together.”
Tears stung my eyes as my closing throat strangled a sob. The last fertility doctor was a disorganized, inappropriate, irresponsible jerk, but maybe it was possible... that he wasn’t a liar.
“How can I give a child a good life... when I can’t give one to myself?”
The car hood had no answers for me.
Eventually, I slid myself off and got into the car. Checking in for my shift was a no-go after a morning like that, so instead I drove straight home, letting the slow, sleepy town of Willingsworth dance outside my window.
Willingsworth.
I’d never heard of the place before I broke down in it. After Omma threw me out, I bounced around from place to place, taking any job that would hire a kid that was expelled from high school. When I was twenty-four, I left Chicago and found myself driving east toward home—dreaming of making something of myself in the one and only New York City.
My crappy car got as far as Willingsworth, Nowhere, USA.
I broke down in front of the diner where I made a pit stop, and the sweet couple who owned it offered to get it towed to the auto shop, promising the tow would be free of charge. The next day, when I went to the shop to pick it up, I discovered the same couple also paid the bill.
It had been so long since anyone, anywhere, had shown me any kindness, that I decided I’d stay in Willingsworth—make a real home here.
That was until I met Daniel Mills.
I should’ve known that no matter where you are, or how far you run, you’re never too far from a gaslighting, self-obsessed narcissist.
I also should’ve known nowhere is paradise.
My hometown of Lantana looked like a nice place to live too. Mansions as far as the eye could see, and so many smiling, well-dressed people walking among them. You’d never know that a street over from where I grew up, Nick Russell found out his neighbor drained his bank account because he was planning to use that money to run away with Russell’s wife.
So Russell crossed the lawn and shot both the neighbor and his cheating wife in the face.
Nothing like that had happened in Willingsworth, of course—no doubt because Daniel perfected his cheating game after I walked in on him—but, even so, we weren’t headed anywhere good.
After the bypass was put in and tourists stopped passing through town, all of the businesses and incomes dried up, so a new business had taken over the town. One we all knew about, but never spoke of in public.
Drugs.
I slowed before my turn, eyeing my apartment building looming in the distance.
Nicky loitered on the street corner, expertly faking at being nonchalant while he messed around with his phone—texting his bosses above whether the coast was clear.
Not that clear, I thought, sliding a look in the other direction to my diner.
The same diner that I broke down in front of—owned by the same couple who showed me even more kindness by offering me a job. For a whole year, life was pretty nice.
That was until Maybelle and Charles Mills retired and left the business to their devil spawn.
Now I got to spend my days enduring Dan’s leering while serving two undercover cops who couldn’t remember to leave their badges in the car while they spent all day posted up in the diner across the street from a known drug den.