Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159420 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 797(@200wpm)___ 638(@250wpm)___ 531(@300wpm)
In any case, she’s the sister I never had, and that’s the very reason I can’t share my ugly secrets with her. I can’t burden her with my truth. That’s why I lie and tell her stories. I pretend to be happy and carefree. I pretend that I’m a normal nineteen-year-old, going to college, flirting with boys, going on dates and living my life. I pretend that my father isn’t a monster, and that my mother is like any other rich, flighty mom, too self-absorbed in herself to bother with me and instead traveling the world. Oh, and my brother—I’ve got an older brother—isn’t just like my father.
Back in the moment, I throw my best friend a fake smile and say, “I know, but I can take care of myself.”
She takes a few seconds to reply. “I just worry about you.”
“I don’t want you to. And you don’t have to. I’ll be fine.”
At least that isn’t a lie. I don’t want her to worry about me. I am worried about her, though. Which brings me back to the situation at hand. Her prison pen pal wanting to meet her in real life. So for the next hour, I keep our focus on her situation. We even make a pros and cons list—her favorite and, secretly, my favorite too—about her going to see him. She tells me this is how girls get kidnapped or worse, and I agree with her. This is a bad idea, through and through. But somewhere along the way, it becomes clear, to me at least, that she’s going to go see him anyway. And God, that terrifies me. The last thing I remember before going to sleep in the living room beside my best friend is that Bo Porter better not kidnap my best friend.
Or I’ll hunt him and all his friends down and make them pay.
Something wakes me up after a while.
Something familiar. Something that gets my heart racing. Banging in my chest. It steals all my sleep and leaves me alert. Wide awake, restless. Alive. I don’t know how much time has passed, but I see Reverie stretched out on the couch while I’ve been curled up in the armchair adjacent to it.
The armchair directly in front of the big window.
It’s the middle of the night and the street beyond is pitch-black. Not even a streetlamp. We used to have one but now it’s broken, has been for months now. The drapes are open and the living room is brightly lit. Carefully, I climb to my feet as if I’m on a stage, on display. With trembling hands, I pick up a throw off the back of the armchair and drape it over Reverie, who doesn’t even twitch. My legs shake as I move around the room, switching off lights, checking the air-conditioning setting. The back of my neck prickles as I check the front door and make sure it’s locked even though I know I don’t need to. I know I locked it when I came home earlier. I only do these things to pace myself. To check the rush of blood in my veins, the heat swirling in my belly. The first signs of life I’ve felt all day. I also do it to tease.
For the anticipation before my big performance.
Once I’m done making the rounds of our tiny apartment, all in the full view of the window, with a sway in my hips and that constant prickling that has spread from the back of my neck to the rest of my body, I head to the hallway, leading to our bedrooms. By the time I let myself into my room, my entire body is shaking. My belly is trembling and the place between my thighs is swollen. And wet.
So wet that as I pad across the room to my glass window, in the full view of the street below, I can feel my thighs slipping against each other. I should be embarrassed about it, about how turned on I am. If not embarrassed, then I should be scared of it, and if not that either, then at the very least, I should try to fight it. Try to fight the intensity, the heat. This pull. Like a rope being tugged around my center.
By him. The man who’s watching me through the window. For whom I’m putting on this show.
So there’s a man, see. A man who watches me. Who watches my every move, follows me to places. Stalks me from afar. At night, he stands across the street and watches me. He watches me moving around in my bedroom, doing homework in my living room. He watches me getting ready for bed, sliding under the covers. I think sometimes he also watches me while I’m sleeping, but of course I can’t be sure. I wonder if he watched me on my date tonight too. We weren’t seated by the window, but that shouldn’t have stopped him. It hasn’t stopped him before because I know he has watched me on my dates.