Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 113272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113272 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Arabella bit her lip as she thought that through. “You might decide I’m too much work once you hear it all.”
Eli snorted. “You think Kellan isn’t hard work? Believe me, you’re getting the short end of the stick here.”
Kellan shot Eli a look. “Maybe she prefers my honesty to your . . . energy.”
“Oh, I doubt that. I can do lots of wonderful things with my energy.” Eli gave her a wicked grin.
Arabella swallowed heavily. This part was something that Jake didn’t need to hear. “I’ve only had sex with one guy.”
They both stared at her.
“And it was a disaster. It was in my last year of school. I was going through a rough patch. My mom had died and I didn’t find out until I went home for the holidays. By the time I learned that she was dead, she was already buried and the funeral had been weeks ago.”
“What the fuck?” Eli said. “Your father never let you know that your mom had died?”
“No, he didn’t. I mean, we didn’t have the greatest relationship with my mom. Maybe when I was younger, before she started to take pills to escape her life and became more like a zombie.”
“Christ, sorry, baby,” Eli said.
“I still would have liked to have known,” she whispered. “To have said goodbye properly. He wouldn’t even say how she died. It was all swept under the rug and very hush-hush. I went back to my all-girls’ boarding school at the end of the holidays and for a year it felt like I was so . . . numb. Nothing got through to me, you know? Then during the last year of school I met this guy. We did a lot with the boys’ school a few blocks away and I met him at one of the schools’ mixed socials. I thought he was cute and kind. Some girls I thought were my friends introduced us. They sort of pushed me toward him. I really thought he liked me, that he cared about me. Honestly, I would have latched onto anyone who showed me a bit of care and attention at that point. I was starved for affection.”
She still thought she was. Every time someone touched her with caring it seemed to surprise her. And then she wanted to melt into the touch.
Not really appropriate most of the time.
“I still can’t believe that fucking bastard never told you that your mom died,” Eli said.
“There are people with more horrible parents,” she said, suspecting that their father had done far worse from the few things that Kellan had said.
He was an abusive drunk.
“It’s not a competition,” Kellan said. “And abuse is abuse.”
She ran her hand over her face. “I guess so.”
“What happened with this asshole, baby? The one that you thought cared about you?” Eli asked.
“I was old enough that I could get a pass to leave to go into the local town and we would meet up. But I couldn’t see him at night. Some of the girls offered to help me sneak out. I was so stupid because I thought they were doing it as my friends. He subtly put pressure on me to sleep with him and even though I didn’t really want to, I didn’t say no. I still thought he was a good guy and I didn’t really see what he was doing until afterward. And the truth was that I didn’t much care about the fact that it was my first time. About choosing someone wisely. I just knew that the only time I really felt happy was around him. So I wanted to give him whatever he wanted.”
“Did he hurt you? Rape you?” Kellan asked grimly.
“What? Oh no. Nothing like that. No, the sex was okay. I mean, it hurt at the beginning but that’s normal, right?”
The look on their faces told her that they didn’t think it was.
“Um, anyway, the sex was fine. Until the photos started appearing. The first time I knew something was wrong was when everyone at school started pointing at me and laughing. I tried to ask what was going on and then I saw them. There were photos of me naked pinned onto noticeboards, in the other girl’s hands, being passed around. And he’d started these rumors about how I offered to pay him for sex. And how bad it was. And those girls I thought were friends? They were the ones spreading the lies and the images.”
“Fucking assholes better be dead,” Kellan snarled. “Or they soon will be.”
“Oh, he’s having a far worse time than just being dead,” she said with satisfaction. “See, it turns out that one of the girl’s fathers had a grudge against mine. That’s why she did it. And she paid that guy to get those nudes and seduce me. But what neither of them realized was that I was the youngest in my class. So while they were all eighteen, I was only seventeen.”