Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
We had.
But I’d listen to her talk about it all day long on repeat if she wanted to talk about it.
“I am going to the Wreath Across America thing at Arlington National Cemetery around Christmas time,” I told her.
She blinked. “You are?”
I nodded.
“Yep.”
“That sounds…awesome.”
I grinned. “It is.”
“Can I go?”
I shrugged. “I don’t see why not…I’m not taking my bike. It’s too fucking cold up there for me to take it. I have the room.”
She jumped up and down while clapping her hands.
“Woo hoo!”
And that was when I realized that I’d gotten incredibly comfortable having her around me. Normally, happy, upbeat women like Kayla bothered the shit out of me.
It was hard pretending you were happy all of the time.
I wasn’t a good person, and I hated being sociable. But with Kayla, it was damn near instinct to let her know everything she wanted to know.
Which was why I told her what I did when we arrived back at her apartment a half hour later.
***
“You don’t strike me as bad, per se, but scary.”
I grinned. “I was bad at one point. And so fucking angry.”
“What got you straight?” she asked quietly.
I found myself smiling for the first time since I’d started my story in Kayla’s apartment when we’d arrived.
“I thought I was hot shit. I turned into a real douche bag. And I thought that nothing could touch me. My parents were divorced. I was so fucking angry that I couldn’t see straight. My mother couldn’t make me do what she wanted me to do anymore, and when she tried, I thought I was badass and punched her.”
She gasped. “You punched your mother?”
I nodded. “I did.”
“And what happened next?”
I closed my eyes and remembered the feeling like it was yesterday.
“My dad happened.”
“Your dad,” she said. “What happened with your dad?”
“I hadn’t seen my dad for almost two years at that point. He never came around because my mom was a bitch. But, when my mom sent him a picture of what I did to her, he drove that hour and a half from where he lived with his new bitch, parked calmly, walked up the driveway where I met him with a snarl—because who the fuck wants to see their father when they don’t come around anymore—and proceeded to beat the living shit out of me.”
“Your dad beat you up?” she whispered, horrified now.
“I deserved it.”
“But why?” She shook her head. “A father shouldn’t beat up his son.”
“A father should most certainly whoop his son’s ass if he beats up his mother.” I paused. “Let me put it like this. My mother was five foot one, your height.”
She looked startled for a moment. “I’m technically only five foot and a half inch.”
I grinned. “She was about your build, too. Not quite as curvy, but she had a sweet face. Her skin was white as milk, and delicate. The moment I hit her, her face started to bruise.”
Kayla’s eyes were wide.
“Did you immediately feel terrible?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. But…just to say…she really was being a bitch.”
“Why?”
“Well, it started out just our usual fight. She didn’t want me in the gang. I was pulling my sister in—which couldn’t be more opposite from the truth. My sister was the one to pull me in, not the other way around.”
“And?”
I snorted and leaned back deeper into the couch. “And she called me a worthless piece of shit like my father…and suddenly I was just so fucking angry.”
“Oh, shit.”
I snorted. “Yeah. It didn’t go over well. She could’ve compared me to anything else in this world, and I would’ve been able to handle it. But comparing me to him? Yeah, that was the lowest of blows, especially since she knew how much I fucking hated him.”
“And what happened next?”
“What happened next was that I told her that I was nothing like him, and she went and listed all the ways that I was. Then told me that she hated looking at me because I looked so much like him. Talked like him. Sounded like him. Even walked like him.” I paused. “I might’ve lost it.”
“And you punched her?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“And you felt sick to your stomach afterward, didn’t you?”
I looked at her curiously. “Yeah…how did you know?”
“Because I might’ve punched someone like that myself,” she admitted.
“Who?”
“James.”
My brows rose in surprise. “Why?”
“Because he was telling me that my ‘father would be disappointed in me seeing the way that I was acting.’” She grimaced. “I was acting like a little shithead, yeah. But I was also missing my grandmother, and I was lost. I had no one else that only loved me…does that make sense?”
I nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, it does.”
“And I acted out. Punched him in the face.”
I burst out laughing. “And what did he do?”
“I broke my thumb, and he told me next time I shouldn’t tuck it into my fist. That I should leave it on the outside.” She smiled. “He took me to the emergency room, got me casted up, and then took me out for ice cream.”