Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
She’s not wrong. Still… “You don’t have to do that,” I murmur, opening my eyes, turning my head to offer a weak smile. “You’ve already gone out of your way.”
“It’s nothing. And honestly, you look like you’re ready to pass out. Can you Uber back later and pick up your car if you need to?” I nod, knowing she’s going to drive me whether I want her to or not. I think I do want her to, even if I don’t love the idea of leaving my car here. They’ll probably slash my tires or paint it a different color or something while I’m gone. Right now, I don’t have it in me to care. I just need to get home, far away from this vile place.
Along the way, she tells me a little bit about herself. Her leukemia, her grandmom, her boyfriends. She’s gentle and sweet, and I’ve been missing that. By the time we pull up to the house, I’m feeling calmer, even if I’m still bruised and battered inside.
“Please, let me give you my number.” She is persistent, that’s for sure, almost worried about me. I give her my number, and she calls my phone so I can have hers. “Call me anytime,” she urges.
All I can do is thank her, almost choked with gratitude, before hurrying up to the house.
Mom must be taking a nap, since the living room is empty, though she could be at the store with Dad. Thank God, I don’t have to explain anything to them. I can rush upstairs, fling myself on the bed, and sob until there are no tears left.
I don’t know what haunts me more: the memory of Tiana sitting on me, pinning me to the floor, or the way she and Kellen walked away with her arms around each other.
All I know is by the time the tears are dry and I’ve washed my face, there’s only one thing to do. They win. I can’t go through this anymore.
He finally got what he wanted.
Sitting at my desk, I open my laptop and type up an email to the school registrar before I can change my mind.
Effective immediately, I am withdrawing from all of my classes and will not be returning to Wicked Falls University.
“Congratulations, Kellen,” I whisper before hitting Send. “I hope it was worth it.”
Chapter 17
Kellen
It’s a good thing I’m used to not getting much sleep and still functioning in the morning. Dad has trained me for this. Even if I am practically mainlining caffeine to get through the day just to make it from point A to point B without causing any major accidents.
Only now, it’s not the long hours he used to force on me that makes sleep elusive. It’s what he’s making me do in the daytime.
To think, I once looked at this so-called job as a way to get a little more normalcy in my life. All I had to do was torment one person instead of being up all hours serving as one of his enforcers.
There’s nothing normal about spending hour after hour lying awake, staring at the ceiling but seeing a sweaty, tear-stained face. Face covered in marker. A face full of pain and confusion. I’ve never seen anything so sad in my life.
And my punishment last night was insomnia.
A lesser punishment: constant texts from Tiana. Okay, it was a mistake, putting an arm around her. Letting her have her arm around me. I went with it, though, because I needed to get through Tamson’s skull. There is nothing real between her and me.
It’s a fucking shame I didn’t seem to get the same message.
Here I am, still trailing her. I am nothing better than a stalker, sitting across from the convenience store, watching her work. She hangs around behind the counter for the most part, reading in between helping customers. Twirling a strand of hair around her finger and making me wish I could test its softness.
But when she’s ringing up their things, when she smiles and even laughs sometimes, I could almost choke to death on jealousy. In a perfect world, I would be the one making her laugh. I would be the one lucky enough to bask in the warmth of that sunny smile. All I can bring her is pain.
I wanted to be sick when I heard them struggling in the bathroom yesterday. I don’t know how many times I grabbed hold of the handle on the door, ready to throw it open and rescue her.
All it took to keep me on the other side was the memory of a gun in my hand, the cold certainty that Dad might actually kill me if he was capable of having his best friend murdered. I mean, where’s the line after that? He gets what he wants. It doesn’t matter how.