Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 35875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 179(@200wpm)___ 144(@250wpm)___ 120(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 179(@200wpm)___ 144(@250wpm)___ 120(@300wpm)
Because of me?
God, I hope not. As much as the thought of him with anyone else bothers me…the thought of him spending seven years completely alone because of me bothers me more. He deserved happiness. And I've been through enough in my life to know that loneliness can be…honestly, it's one of the worst things in the world.
It's soul crushing in a way little else is.
And it's something people my size understand a little too well. Dating when you're plus size is hard. We're a fetish or a last resort to a lot of men. Or completely undatable to others.
Too many of my friends back in Los Angeles coupled up with the first person willing just so they wouldn't be alone because that's a real fear at our size…being alone forever. Male or female, it's the same story. We choose partners out of fear just so we aren't alone. That's sad to me.
We deserve to choose someone who sees us and loves us, and we deserve to be chosen for the same reasons.
But loneliness is consuming in a way little else is. Anyone who believes people should have to endure years of it to be worthy of love doesn't understand love at all. Love isn't selfish. It isn't cruel. It's far more profound and complicated than that.
Jack deserved happiness, even if it couldn't have been with me.
So did you, a little voice whispers.
It isn't wrong. But I never really let myself get close to anyone. Sure, I have friends in Los Angeles. But I had to lie to everyone to keep my identity hidden. And I never dated because…well, partly because of Jack. Some part of me felt like it was wrong to even try to date someone else when I spent so much time cyberstalking another man. That would have been selfish and cruel, and I couldn't be either of those things.
I wanted to choose, not out of fear but because I was seen.
Jack's the only one who has ever made me feel that way. The night he told me I was beautiful, for the first time, I felt seen. I wasn't the poor little rich girl who lost her mom. I wasn't the youngest millionaire in Silver Spoon Falls. I wasn't a future CEO and business-owner. I wasn't Gerald Laurent's kid. I was just Madison.
For that moment, I was just a girl being seen for me.
That's why I chose his pool house. I think part of me hoped that, if he found me out there, he wouldn't rat me out because he'd see me again, and he'd understand why I'm so righteously furious at being erased. And that is what my father is trying to do—erase me.
Sure, he hung up the posters. He said all the right things. But he never looked for me. He never wanted to find me. He swept right in and took over the company as if it were his. And now he wants to have me declared dead so it'll be his in truth. So I'm erased from the equation entirely.
To him, I'm just a temporary problem to solve, something standing between him and what he felt like he deserved. And I refuse to go quietly. I refuse to fade in silence. If he wants me out of the way, I intend to be a roadblock, taking up every inch of space I'm allowed to possess. I'm not a frightened little seventeen-year-old girl anymore, not sure how to use my voice to advocate for myself or to protect myself. I'll tell the whole damn world what he was planning to do and why I ran, and I'll keep saying it over and over until they hear me.
He doesn't get to erase me from my own company because I'm inconvenient. He doesn't get to undo my mom's will because he didn't get his way. Screw that. He owes her more than that. And he owes it to me too.
I picked Jack's house because, on some level, I wanted to see him again. I needed to know if all the years I spent crushing on him were just a fantasy I created to keep the loneliness at bay or if I'm drawn to him for a reason.
I guess I have my answer now, don't I?
He feels the same spark, the same pull. And he felt it back then, too. We were just…in the wrong place at the wrong time in life then. Those six weeks between right and wrong might as well have been six years standing between us.
In a way, I guess they were. We couldn't be right for each other back then. But…maybe we're exactly right now. And maybe we're exactly where we need to be now.
My father gets absolutely no credit for that, though. Hell will freeze over before I believe there's any sort of silver lining to what he did. There isn't. Whatever this is between Jack and I exists solely outside of what he did.