Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Reg steps inside and immediately looks past the entrance and straight into the living room at the massive amount of collapsed cardboard.
“Did you buy a new freezer?” he asks.
I have to struggle to keep my face neutral. I’m scared it’s doing all sorts of things I don’t want him to see, namely that I want his dad…err…not dad? And holy shit to that. Also, it’s more than mere want. I’m terrified that taking this step is like plunging right into the deepest depths of the coldest waters. Once you’re wet, you can’t just climb out and pretend you were never down there.
Uhh, well, I think.
Okay, so that doesn’t really make sense.
Once you tell someone you’re falling for them, and you initiate that process with all the enthusiasm you can muster, you can’t just stop.
There.
The living room is otherwise occupied with what looks to have been a cardboard bomb, so War leads Reg in the other direction, to the kitchen.
I don’t ask if anyone is hungry because I know we’re not. This isn’t the kind of conversation that inspires a great appetite, but I stop at the stove and take down a cast iron frying pan anyway. Then, I snatch the gluten-free loaf from the breadbox and grab some cheese out of the fridge. At least the cheese is the real deal, although the gluten-free stuff is growing on me. I open the crisper and pull out red peppers, tomatoes, and spinach. They’re joined on the counter by a jar of pickles and a bottle of hot sauce.
If I’m going to make sandwiches, I’m going to make them right. There’s also the upside in that if my hands are busy with cutting and assembling, I don’t have to look up at Reg—a very handy thing when he happens to be sitting right in front of me at the island.
War perches beside him. I steal a glance at his face, and he doesn’t look the least bit composed, but he has a good reason. Everything else has been forgotten.
War doesn’t have to prod Reg to start. He just does. “Candice didn’t know I was home. I was supposed to be in class, but…uh…I may have blown it off. I was tired. I wanted to have a nap instead. She has a few good friends. The one I dislike the most, Grace, because she likes to cackle like a feral hyena, was over, which I thought was just the shittiest of all shite news because it meant I wasn’t going to be getting any sleep. Sure enough, they start winding each other up and going on and on about the crazy things they’ve done. Candice always has to be the best of the best. Her stories have to top everyone else’s.”
My hands stop chopping peppers for a second. I don’t look up, but I am so surprised that my body feels useless. I’ve never heard Reg say one bad thing about his mom. Ever. If I had said something about his mom having to be the biggest and best when we were together, he would have defended her until I got bored and found something to do where I could ignore the many reasons why Candice was the best mother ever, and I was just a jealous, insecure, annoying, whiney brat of a girlfriend with my own mommy issues.
For real.
I think we’ve already established that there was no valid reason why I should have ever been with Reg. No need to beat a dead relationship to death.
“Anyway,” Reg goes on when no one says anything. “She asked if Grace could keep a secret, and Grace was all ‘absolutely, I can,’ even though everyone knows she absolutely can’t. But Candice didn’t really care. Nothing was going to stop her from giving the one-upper of all one-up stories. She told Grace that all these years, she’s been threatening you.”
He stops to take a breath. War watches him carefully but still says nothing.
“Candice told Grace that she’s been blackmailing you. She said if you didn’t pay her, she’d tell me and the rest of the world that when both of you were together, it wasn’t consensual. And that would ruin your life. She said she’s held it over your head all these years, keeping you from seeing me and milking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of you. And then she laughed. She. Freaking. Laughed.” Reg drops his head into his hands and shakes his head. His voice gets thick, which makes me stop chopping again. I blatantly stare at him. I can’t help it. Then, he continues, “She laughed and said that the wildest cherry of all cherry-topping cherries was that you weren’t even my father. She was already pregnant when you guys…err…yeah. She knew who my father was, and she wanted to be with him, but she knew how stupid that would be. He was a nobody, and he had nothing. He would have barely been able to support her and a kid, so she picked a target and made a plan, and it was perfectly executed.”