Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
When I finally got the courage to look up at her again, she was crying silent tears, staring at me like I’d just shocked the holy hell out of her. “What…how? You walked in. He was restraining me. I was fucking crying. He had his hand over my mouth!”
Bile surged up my throat, and it was a very real possibility that I was about to throw up in the sand.
“I saw your hair, and I freaked the fuck out and left. I didn’t look at anything but your hair,” I promised.
There was no mistaking her hair.
It always drew my eyes first, it was so beautiful.
Never once had I looked at her and not immediately been drawn to her wild, curly hair.
“I…” She paused. “I don’t…”
“It’s what I see first, always,” I told her. “I see your hair first. No exceptions. That was why, that night, when I saw your hair…”
“You saw my hair, and someone on top of me, and you left,” she murmured so quietly I could barely hear her over the crashing sea.
“I was wrecked,” I admitted. “Once upon a time, I thought you’d be mine. I thought I could convince you…”
But that was the day that I realized that I would never call her mine.
“Jesus,” she said. “All these years I blamed you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
I knew she had.
She had a reason to.
I should’ve protected her.
I’d been there.
I’d left her there to her fate.
“Was it Jordie?” I asked.
She mewled, and I wanted so badly to pull her into my arms. “Yeah.”
“Fuck.”
Eight
I apologize when I’m wrong. What I don’t do is apologize when I’m provoked. You lit the match, you deal with the fire.
—Creole’s secret thoughts
CREOLE
Life had returned to normal.
At least, I’d returned to normally scheduled programming.
My life, however, wasn’t normal.
I didn’t know what normal was for me anymore, but it certainly wasn’t what it used to be.
The anger and pain that I’d held onto for so long was just gone.
There no longer.
And all of that had to do with Audric pretty much pointing out my stupidity.
I knew he had a thing for my hair.
He always had.
In the beginning of Laney and my friendship, I’d thought he hated it.
He didn’t.
In fact, I’d realized rather quickly that he was obsessed with it.
Before the night that changed my life forever, he never missed an opportunity to touch it.
Never once had I walked into a room with him and he hadn’t touched it.
When everything bad in my life had started, there were moments in time that I’d walk into the room where he was at, and he’d lift his hand up to touch it like usual.
Yet, at my flinch, he’d stopped doing even that.
So I knew he was obsessed with my hair.
Now, I knew that I held a grudge against a boy who had walked in on something he misunderstood and had left without putting any more thought into it.
He’d been hurting.
Because, since I was finally being honest with myself, we’d both had a thing for each other.
We just hadn’t ever acted on it.
Him because he was young and dumb, likely.
Me, because I knew that Laney had always felt the way I felt, only more vocally.
Once I knew that she liked him, that was it for me.
I’d never go there because of our friendship.
I scrubbed my face with my hands, then immediately cursed myself.
I looked at the dirt on my hands, then at the flowers I’d just potted, and snorted.
I lived in a moderate three-bedroom, two-bath townhome in Irving.
I’d purchased it late last year after I decided that I needed to stay close to my dad in case he needed me.
He didn’t.
I was just using him as an excuse to stay in the area because I didn’t want to leave.
In reality, I would’ve never been able to, even though I’d wanted to blow the Dallas popsicle stand since I was seventeen and realized my world would never be the same.
I’d thought the answer was getting the hell out of the city.
In reality, the answer was facing my demons.
Which Audric had forced me to do two weeks ago when we’d been sitting on the shores of Maui.
Ever since, I’d been thinking that I needed to start utilizing my healthcare benefits and seeing a psychiatrist about my issues.
That was my plan for today, actually.
I was going to see someone and finally take control of my life.
It was my first step to healing, and maybe, just maybe, being happy.
And if that happiness brought me closer to a certain someone…
My alarm went off, reminding me that I needed to go get cleaned up and leave if I was going to make it in time.
I quickly headed for the back of the house and slipped into the shower after haphazardly putting up my hair.
Fifteen minutes later, I was out the door and heading to the bank of office buildings in the heart of Irving, going to the psychiatrist that my insurance had recommended.