Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
We're sixteen. Broken. Afraid. Standing in the rain looking at a coffin. I’m watching my mom get lowered into the ground two cars down and she’s watching who she thinks is her best friend get lowered. Both of us are broken. Both of us are freezing, lost, confused, stuck questioning adults who refuse to give us answers.
"I waited for you," I confess. It slips out before I can stop it. Shit.
Her hands stop moving. I shouldn’t have said it, I shouldn’t have said anything. I know immediately that it’s too late, though. I already released the words into the universe. “I waited for fucking months for you to visit me in prison. To come in and say you were sorry, that it was a mistake, that you had your reasons, that you were given no choice. When I asked my dad about you he just said you took the money and left with your family, that your loyalty was shit, and that I was worth around ten grand, that’s how much my friendship, my love, cost. And I remember thinking at least twenty, you know? At least fifteen. Ten? She only took ten? When she knows how much my family has? Or is it guilt? I stuck on the number for so long, ten, ten, ten,” I slowly lift the sleeve of my right arm and turn it over. The number ten in roman numerals is tattooed on. “I wanted to remember my worth.”
She bursts into tears over the clay. “You’re priceless, Jude.”
“I’m a number, Lilah.”
She looks over her shoulder, tears streaming down her face. I don’t steal them this time because they’re real, because they’re too many, and because I know if I reach out and kiss them away I’ll find her mouth and I won’t let go.
The temptation to take is too strong.
And right now, the truth is more important.
She’s devastated. And sitting in front of her is a masterpiece of a Cadillac. I can picture it, sitting in front of the gravesite, I can even see the driver with his fur coat.
Fur coat?
Wait.
I stare again.
“Lilah, you never had a sedan, you had a van.”
“I know. We rode in this, though.”
“It looks like part of my dad’s fleet, the cars he used for his men. Did your dad…” He’d gone to prison. He’d done shady things, her dad, but he was harmless. I saw him around our house sometimes but my dad said he worked for the dealership. He’d drop off cars and run errands. Now I wasn’t so sure.
He was involved. He had to be. “Your dad,” I ask. “Was he afraid?”
“No.” She sighed. “He almost looked relieved, which made me even more angry. Who’s relieved at a funeral? Who’s relieved when their daughter’s grieving and feels like her life is over?”
Her face mirrors mine. Loss. Confusion. Grief. I see it all. It’s the same damn wound caused by the same sort of circumstances that stabbed both of us in different ways.
Different wounds.
Same pain.
And both of us have been bleeding out for a very long time.
My fucking face if she keeps adding details.
"Something doesn't make sense." I change the subject. It’s too raw. She watches me carefully. I stare at the car. “Why would you be in one of my dad’s Towncars?”
She watches me carefully. “I mean, I don’t know, it was just there, we just got in.”
“Did you keep the car?”
She frowns then nods slowly. “Yeah, we packed our stuff in it and then when we moved it was just gone. Like he’d made a delivery or something. I never asked.”
“And that night.” I whisper. “What did you see the night you said I shot those men in self-defense.”
She immediately clams up. Her hands drop from the clay. And we’re back to square one as the lies she hasn’t even confessed line up between us. Alright, so that’s how it is, that’s the real secret.
I lean in. “Fear.”
“Wh-what?”
“You’re drenched in it.” I slam my hand down onto the clay destroying the car, destroying the evidence, and stand up. “The longer you keep it inside, the more it grows. Ask yourself, who you’re protecting and why. Besides, at this rate, I’m the only one willing to listen to your confessions, and I’m the only one who can set you free.”
I’m disappointed.
In her.
In myself.
In the fact that when she finally has her chance, she panics. Who is she protecting? “Lilah, where does your dad work?”
Her eyes dart to the left and then back up to mine before she lifts her chin and whispers, “He’s the dean.”
“The dean,” I repeat. Must have missed that. “Of?”
“The business school, he just got another promotion.”
“He’s here.” I shake my head. “And you what? Go have lunch with him when you have free time? Golf on the weekends? Did you have to even lift a finger to get into school?”