Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 132951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 665(@200wpm)___ 532(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
“And what about you? Did it make you happy?”
“My happiness is irrelevant, Dred.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Why? It’s what everyone else calls you.”
“You are not everyone else!”
He shrugs. “But what if I am?”
“Why are you shutting me out like this?”
“I’m not,” he says flatly.
“You are,” I argue. “Everything you’re doing right now makes me feel like I’m all the things your father accused me of.” And I refuse to allow myself to be used so Connor can escape whatever is happening inside his heart and his head. I know there’s something.
His throat bobs, and he rolls his head on his shoulders. “You signed a contract. You agreed to marry me for financial security. And I don’t blame you. If I was in your position, I would have done the same thing.” He motions between us, voice void of emotion as he continues to eviscerate my heart. “This was never real. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. So did you.”
Every word feels like salt rubbed into an open wound, one that’s festered since childhood. The little girl who was too broken to fix. The one people took home and hoped would be the daughter they’d always dreamed of. But I never was. The part of me that could trust an adult to take care of me, to put me first, had been shattered.
I’m a charity case.
Broken.
Dispensable.
I always have been. Like everyone else, Connor felt bad for me. He saw me as a chance to make the one person who has his heart happy. And he took full advantage of every single weakness I have. He used my soft, flawed heart against me.
He drops his head, shielding his eyes from me. Cutting off my link to his emotions. But now I’m angry. All those years spent broken taught me how to recognize it in others. And I hate being lied to.
This started as a contract, but somewhere along the way, things shifted. Connor might not want to admit the truth, but I was more than an obligation to fulfill, and he was more than just a ticket to a better life.
I fell for him. Not the angry son of a billionaire. Not the hockey player who became a villain on the ice and welcomed all the negative attention because it affirmed what he already believed about himself. I didn’t fall for this closed-off version of the man who handed me a marriage contract.
I fell for the man who took care of me when I slid into a pit of memories I couldn’t escape on my own.
He gifted me the twins for Christmas.
He gave me a room in this house he knew I would love.
He played board games with me.
Read books to me.
Cuddled me.
Fucked me.
Brought my fantasies to life. He made me believe in the possibility that I could have a family. That I could be loved.
And I’m angry that he’s so cavalier. Just taking it all away—from me and from himself.
He’s twisting our time together into something with too many sharp edges, erasing all the good parts of him like they never existed.
His jaw clenches, and he grips the arms of his chair.
I wait for him to own some part of his truth.
But instead he slices my heart in two.
“I don’t want you here.”
CHAPTER 45
CONNOR
Ican’t handle the hurt in her voice or the sting of my own feelings. Mildred has no idea about the shitstorm that’s about to hit my family, or her, because she carries the Grace name. I wish I could give her a piece of the truth, but what good would that do either of us? This isn’t a life she wants. I’m not the person she should be tied to.
The silence that stretches between us is agonizing, but her next words tear my soul apart.
“I thought you were better than your father.” Her voice cracks with emotion. “You’re not a better liar, but you’re just as cruel.”
I lift my head at the last part.
Any of the softness I’ve come to love has disappeared. I ruin beautiful things, as evidenced by what I’m doing to her, to me, to what she means to me.
Her cold gaze meets mine. “I pity you.”
“You shouldn’t.” I don’t deserve anything but her wrath.
She turns around and walks out.
It takes every ounce of restraint not to run across to her bedroom and tell her she has to stay. That she can’t leave. She has an obligation to fulfill.
But hasn’t she already done that?
She mended Meems’s heart, gave her something to keep fighting for. And for that I’m eternally grateful, so forcing her to stay to incur more of my vitriol seems like a torment she doesn’t need. And I already hate myself enough right now.
Half an hour later, there’s movement in the hall. I do us both a favor and stay where I am.