Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 101796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
The weather is a lot nicer today, but I still have a hot, sort of sick feeling inside. It’s nerves, knowing I’m going to have to face Mom. If there was a question in my mind of exactly how she feels about me, she answered it yesterday when she basically kicked me out of the car. It’s going to take a lot for me to keep myself in check. I’ll do it, if only for Paul’s sake. I know if I make things harder for her, that will just make it harder for him. And he’s been good to me. Better than she ever has.
“We’ve got this.” Carter sounds a lot more confident than I feel as we walk into the house.
It’s quiet, almost eerie. The shopping bags we left in the living room are still there. It’s amazing to think it was barely twenty-four hours ago that we went shopping. Everything was different then.
The sound of something hitting a plate in the kitchen makes me freeze solid. It’s like roots grow from my feet and drive down deep into the floor to hold me in place.
“I’m scared,” I whisper. Probably nothing I actually needed to say out loud, but I need to let it out.
“I know,” Carter whispers back, before tugging my hand. “But remember what we keep saying about that. You’re stronger than you think you are.”
Now is not the time I need to have that thrown in my face, no matter how nice he’s trying to be.
“Are you coming in, or what?” Paul asks from the kitchen. I can’t tell from the sound of his voice how he’s feeling, but I can’t imagine it’s much better than how he was feeling yesterday.
“Let’s get it over with.” He pulls me along with him down the hall, into the sun-drenched kitchen, where I’m sorry to see Mom sitting across from Paul in the breakfast nook. She doesn’t bother trying to hide her anger as we walk into the room, staring holes through both of us.
Paul, on the other hand, looks tired more than anything else. Concerned, maybe, but I don’t see the same bitterness. Maybe that’s a good sign? “Have you eaten?” he asks us.
“Is that what we need to talk about right now?” Mom rolls her eyes at him.
“I’m not hungry,” I whisper. Can she pretend to be decent for once?
Her sharp gaze hits me before she looks down at our joined hands. Carter’s grip tightens like he’s trying to tell me he won’t let go, that I’m safe with him. My spine straightens.
“This is all very nice,” she murmurs, staring at our joined hands, “and it’s very nice that you’re able to move past what happened, but you cannot be together. Not this way.”
“We’ve done a lot of talking,” Paul explains in a much quieter voice. “The writing’s on the wall. And we understand you might have feelings for each other, but you are stepsiblings. You can’t ignore that.”
Still, he doesn’t sound as cold or dismissive as Mom. Almost like he understands or is trying to. At the end of the day, that’s all we can ask.
“So this ends,” Mom concludes.
How am I supposed to forget how I feel? Am I supposed to see Carter every day and pretend? Do I go the rest of my life acting like there’s never been anything more between us? I can’t. I can’t live in this house with him, right across the hall, so close, but so far away. It’ll be torture. I can barely breathe when I think of it.
“So what you’re saying is…” Carter squeezes my hand again, glancing at me, and I wish those blue eyes didn’t make my heart swell like they do. “We can’t be together. We can live here together, but we can’t be together as anything more than stepsiblings.”
“Yes,” Mom says with a sigh, rolling her eyes again. “That’s the idea. I can’t believe you would even consider anything else. So this is what happened when we went away? You decided to twist Elliana up?”
“Irene,” Paul whispers.
There is something extremely gratifying about the disappointment in his voice. Granted, I can’t understand how he would expect anything more from her. But then, I guess he must have turned a blind eye to a lot of things if he figured it was a good idea for them to get married in the first place. He ignored all of her red flags—and there are many.
“I didn’t twist anybody up,” Carter murmurs.
I’m proud of his self-control. He is miles away from the Carter I first met—impatient, self-absorbed, arrogant. “And I know—we both do—that this is unusual. But it’s real. We have changed each other for the better, and I’m not going to pretend I regret a minute of us. I told Dad yesterday, I’m going to do everything I can to make up for the harm I caused.”