Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
“It’s not ruined,” he states, so blasé. So fucking…unflinching and unfeeling.
What. An. Honest. To. Goodness. Monster.
Clinging to my anger will help me not to break down. For once, I don’t care about being the better person and the bigger person. I’m going to lose my famed cool. “Okay, Mr. Damnation and Kids and Kidnappers and All The Scary Stuff, I Can Handle It, I’m on Top Of The World, Nothing Can Go Wrong or Get Worse, I Promise.”
He holds out a hand. “I understand you’re mad—”
“Dear lord, no, not the mansplaining! You have no idea what it’s like to lose everything. This is what I was clinging to. This is what gets me up in the morning.”
My nose feels like I just jumped into a pool without plugging it first. I have to stop, or things are just going to snowball into hiccups and sobs from here.
That gives him a chance to open his mouth and tell me what I need. “I know you’ve had a hard run. You don’t just need a social media vacation. You need a vacation from your life.”
I really wish he’d been sacked harder yesterday.
“I’ll pay for it. Anywhere you want. I’ll pay for your bus to be parked somewhere for the month and—”
Oh. This is how he thinks it’s going to go. This uber-rich jerk thinks he can just buy me off, send me to some far corners of the globe, and—
“I’ll make sure Peach Lips has first-class accommodations on the plane. You can use one of our private jets if need be. I’ll take care of all the paperwork.”
My brain is now in vile and violent, not so harsh, not near-death punishment mode. The one thing I keep cycling back to is that Thorn is in a big hurry to shut me up and have me be less visible. He’s not just trying to make me feel better or make this up to me. He’s trying to be shut off from me. If he’d never met me, his merger would have gone through. If I’d never met him, then I would still be going to the shows, and no one would be shutting me down and writing mean things all over my socials, which are solely just there TO HELP ANIMALS IN NEED.
Seriously. People can be so mean. Is it any wonder that I prefer cats? God, I’d prefer a honey badger at the moment over Thorn and any single one of those internet trolls.
There’s no way I’m going quietly on that good vacation.
“No.”
Thorn finally reacts, his lips wavering just a smidge, pressing out and then flattening. Displeasure. He wears it well, I have to admit.
My eyes drop down to his chest and flick quickly to the carpet. One makes my skin crawl. The other doesn’t. I’ll leave you to figure out which it is. By the way, my cheese comment still stands.
“No,” I repeat. “You messed this up for me. You dropped into my life, and now you’re like a moldy dishcloth that just won’t come clean no matter how much you soak it, and all the dishes you wash with it smell like it. And now you have so many problems because they won’t come clean either, and all you smell is that disgusting, wretched, horrid smell of rot.”
He crosses his arms, the muscles flexing in his shoulders, biceps, triceps, traps, lats, abs, deltoids, hamstrings—wait. I don’t think half of those are in the upper body. It’s four in the morning, I’m exhausted, and even if I was up on my anatomy, my brain feels scrambled.
“That’s an uncalled-for comparison.”
I do what I did on the bus and angle my hand to the side of the bed so my middle finger sticks out more than the others. I have never, not even while driven, given in to such childish impulses. I have to stop. I bring my hand up and switch out my fingers, pointing my index finger in his face. “Your house. That’s where I want to go on vacation. For the month. I want to drop into your life.”
“That’s a flat-out no.”
“You can’t just throw money at this. I won’t let you. Fair is fair.”
“Fair?” he barks. “Never mind fair. That’s not even logical.”
Now that I’ve gone there, I can’t not go there. It’s his house or nothing. He needs a spoonful of his medicine. I mean, he double fucked himself, but now he’s fucked me too.
For the love of cat anus, use better verbiage.
Screwed.
Messed.
Plowed.
Derailed.
Wrecked.
Ruined?
Enough. Move on already. My brain is tired of trying to brain at this hour.
“It’s your house, or I don’t cooperate. I’ll get back on my socials and fight this. And I don’t think you’ll like how I’m going to do it.”
“Fine!” he splutters. Now, his left eye twitches. I don’t think this man is used to people telling him no. He’s not used to not getting his way.