Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
“Nice to meet you, Cora,” Tyler interrupted, not wanting to get into why he’d taken over for the old chief of police.
Honestly, I wouldn’t want to get into that either.
It was a large clusterfuck that had to do with drugs, conspiracy, and things best not discussed in the light of day over dinner.
Cora, not realizing Tyler’s tension, only nodded her head and offered up a smile.
She didn’t say a word.
Which made me feel worse.
It was confirmed that she’d been expecting me—and not Tyler—to help her get through the night.
I hadn’t realized just how big of a deal it was that I was helping her out until I’d done the wrong thing and invited Tyler.
The rest of the dinner went like this: Janie would ask Tyler a question. Tyler would answer it. Cora would retreat a little more into herself. Repeat the process until at the end of the night, Cora was sitting about a foot and a half away from the table and looking anywhere but at the people at the table.
At one point, Reagan and Tyler started talking, and I gestured for him to switch seats with me.
He did, and they carried on a conversation with the others while I tried to engage Cora.
But she was so far gone in her own head that I had a feeling I’d broken the fragile friendship that we’d just started to form.
At one point, Cora got up to use the bathroom, and I had the feeling that if I didn’t follow her, she’d head out the back door and never come back.
I was right.
Therefore, when I was standing there, in the shadows, and saw her turn right instead of left that would’ve taken her back out to the bar and our table, I followed her.
She’d just pushed outside the back door and rounded the corner to the parking lot when I called out to her.
She froze at the sound of my voice.
“Cora…listen.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t say a word. Just stood there, stilled, and waited for me to say what I was going to say.
“I didn’t mean to make this awkward.”
She didn’t say anything.
“All I was trying to do was help. Had I known that it was that big of a deal, I would’ve just shown up myself…but Tyler is a good guy. I thought for sure you’d like him.”
With that, I reached forward to touch her on her shoulder, but she jerked away like my touch burned.
“It’s okay, Coke,” she said. “I know when I’m not wanted. You’re not the first person to disappoint me, and you won’t be the last.”
With that, she walked away and didn’t look back.
I made sure she got to her car safely, and then walked to my bike.
I didn’t bother to go back inside and say goodbye.
For some reason, Cora’s words kept replaying in my head, and each time the cycle finished, I felt like I’d done something really, really wrong—yet I couldn’t quite understand what.
It was then that I realized that this might be what she’d said was part of her depressive disorder. Maybe this was a side effect.
By not taking the fact that she had opened herself up to me into consideration, I got the feeling that I broke something in her that never should have been broken.
Chapter 11
Always fuck me goodnight.
-Text from Coke to Cora
Cora
Apologies were the devil. I should’ve never gone over to his house to tell him how sorry I was for acting the way I did.
I should’ve stayed at home and felt sorry for myself, like I’d done for the week up until that point.
Except, I didn’t.
Instead, I’d gone over to Coke’s place, through the trees as was my usual, and had walked up to his house without a single thought or care.
I’d done it twice before, and nothing had happened.
I’d become complacent.
My dad had taught me better, and instead of utilizing my skills, I’d neglected to read the signs.
Now, as I sat where I sat, I realized that I should’ve gone about this in a completely different way. Maybe then I would be able to say I hadn’t gone down like a little bitch.
I stared at my captors, my eyes hard as granite, and plotted their demise.
They hadn’t truly done anything to harm me. In fact, other than scaring me and calling me names—filthy ones, yes—they hadn’t done anything that I couldn’t recover from.
My problem at this moment in time wasn’t necessarily that I was scared. It was because I was pissed.
Why was I pissed, you ask?
I was pissed because they thought I was a seventeen-year-old girl. Frankie. Coke’s daughter. And now I was being held for ransom.
What I was more pissed about was how they were treating me thinking I was a seventeen-year-old girl.
I imagine, had they stopped at the kidnapping, releasing me unharmed, I would’ve let them live.
However, they hadn’t stopped at just that.