Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 163089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 815(@200wpm)___ 652(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
His voice was stripped and raw and slightly choked as if he couldn’t breathe. Moisture clung to his lashes, and his lips quivered as he kept calling for his parents.
My chest felt like it was being split in half.
I’ve never heard Preston speak in that completely broken tone before, and the fact that I couldn’t put an end to his misery left me shaken in a deep, harrowing way.
For the first time, I couldn’t find a solution to the source of the issue. Couldn’t reach into his dreams and murder whatever demons lurked there.
All I could do was stroke his hair and his shoulder, being careful not to wake him up, since that seems to tick him off.
This time, I patted his back through it, whispering, “I’m here.”
Even if he didn’t hear me, even if he’d been taken by another force, I wanted him to know I was there for him.
For a while, he only got worse, growling and looking like he was being cut open, but then, slowly, little by little, he relaxed and fell back into a deep sleep.
I’ve been awake ever since.
I’ve spent the entire time stroking his soft, golden hair with one hand and going through his phone with the other.
What?
This is the only way I might be able to learn more about him. Yes, I initially thought I’d wait for him to open up, but if last night—or early this morning—is any indication, that won’t work.
Preston can open up but just destructively. He told me about his mental issues fully expecting me to be disgusted and drop him. So if I try to push him down that path again, he’ll just use the chance to make himself seem like irritating high maintenance.
He’ll belittle his brain, paint himself as an annoyance, and do everything in his power to make me hate him.
Abandon him.
Leave him to flounder in the intricate mess of his own mind.
Not that it would work—there’s nothing Preston could do or say that will make me hate him.
It’s always been that way, even when he was an antagonizing prick during the games. Sure, I put him in his place, but it was rivalry, not hate.
And maybe, even then, a part of me just wanted to be noticed by the fairy prince of my childhood.
Utterly ridiculous, I know.
Now, I don’t want him to go into the self-criticizing, self-deprecating, self-hating mode masked with dark humor. I saw a glimpse of it, and I’m not a fan.
He was clearly in pain, clearly holding on to the last bits of his sanity with blood-soaked fingers, clearly…lost.
And I won’t put him in that position again.
But I do need to figure out the root cause, and his phone is the best place to start.
I’ve seen him enter his password a few times after grumbling about how it doesn’t recognize his “gorgeous face.”
Naturally, though, the first thing I look for is my text exchanges with him.
And I kid you not, he has me saved as Regrettably Hot.
It’s shocking how adorable he can be without even trying.
Hey, at least he finds me hot. I’ll ignore the regret.
Then I go to his notes, select them all and email them to myself so I can go through them in depth on my own time. After I delete the trace of the email I sent myself, I go to his texts again.
There are a few from girls that I narrow my eyes on. Some of them, he’s blocked, and others, he just leaves on Read or rejects.
I start to notice a pattern. The rejection, blocking, and ignoring the girls, started since…the game after which I planted myself in his life.
I go through the history of his conversations with them because I’m in the mood to torture myself, apparently.
It’s irrational how much fire grips my chest at the way he talks to them. He has this flirty, funny combo that he’s perfected. One he’s never used with me, obviously, since he’s been fighting this tooth and nail.
I shouldn’t be jealous of some girls who had him before, especially considering my own track record, but tell that to my burning chest.
With a groan, I scroll back up to where he yaps all the time—in the group chat with Kane and Jude. He’s definitely the one who named it, considering the title is Preston’s Fan Club.
Apparently, he does this naming thing most of the time, because the history shows: The Preston Appreciation Committee, Vipers, but Make It Hot, and Prestonverse.
I have to scroll through pages and pages of Preston being so dramatic and Jude and Kane either calling him out or threatening him. That seems to result in him being more dramatic and threatening them back.
Oh, and he talked about me—well, mostly after he burned my bike, to which Kane and Jude said it was a bad idea. It was. Because they’re right. I targeted him even harder after that and got him exactly where I wanted him.