Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 27270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 136(@200wpm)___ 109(@250wpm)___ 91(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 136(@200wpm)___ 109(@250wpm)___ 91(@300wpm)
Why else hasn’t he called or written even once?
There has been no communication and every day he leaves me in silence is like another brick being piled onto my chest. I force myself to eat for the baby, but it’s like choking down dust. Living without his touch and his voice and scent and presence is an unbearable state of being and I cry. I cry so much, I’ve run out of tears.
I don’t even know when he’s being released from prison. I called the police station, but they only snickered at me, obviously recalling my behavior the day Flynt was arrested. How shamelessly I needed him. How shamelessly I still do. My body is starving.
Does he hate me? Does he wish me dead because I’m the reason he went to prison?
I’m lying on my side in bed, but restlessness forces me up now, passing through the house like a ghost into the backyard—the only outdoor space where my father will allow me to go. When I hear an electronic whir as I step onto the grass, I glance up and spy a camera mounted to the roof. He’s watching me from work, making sure I don’t leave. I’m not sure how he’ll punish me if I disobey him, but I can’t risk being thrown out onto the street when I’m pregnant. When this baby arrives in seven months, they will need a roof over their head.
With a broken sound, I lay down in the center of the perfectly manicured lawn on my side, curling into myself and dreaming of Flynt and those afternoons at the lake.
He’ll never take me there again.
But at least I have the memories.
Maybe in time I’ll learn to be grateful for that.
Flynt
Three months have passed by the time I’m let out of prison.
I’m released on a Wednesday morning, and I tear through the gate like a madman, my bones rattling with desperation. She’ll be in school at this hour, so that’s where I’m going. There is no way in hell I’ll bother stopping at home or tracking down my first decent meal in ninety days. No. Fuck that. She’s the only fuel I need.
There is no one to give me a ride back to town, so I take the bus. Passengers eye me warily, some of the women even disembarking the bus at the sight of me. I find my reflection in one of the windows and acknowledge that I’ve changed. Endless, scorching misery will do that to a man. I’ve packed on about ten pounds of muscle, my tattoos have climbed up my neck to the underside of my chin. There is a look in my eye that promises death to anyone who tries to stand between me and Ayla.
After an hour, the bus lets me off at the stop in town and I march through town, heading straight for the school, ignoring the expressions of alarm on the faces of people that I pass. Ayla won’t be alarmed and that’s all I care about. I exist solely to see her again.
I’m worried about one thing and one thing only. Going back to prison. Because that’s what would happen if anyone laid a finger on her while I was gone. They’ll have to throw me back behind bars covered in blood.
I reach the campus. Students scatter when they see me.
The principal steps into my path, as if to stop me from entering the school, but one look at my face and he steps aside with an audible gulp. It’s almost lunch time. She’ll be in health class. I’m going to carry her straight out of here, drive us to the lake and fuck her until we forget the last three months of hell. Then I’m going to marry her. Today. Tomorrow. As soon as possible. I’ve had a taste of living without her and I realize now how foolish I was all those years, thinking I’d be able to let her go when we graduated high school.
I’d have followed her wherever she went. Stalked her.
Eventually given in and taken her to bed without a rubber.
It has been inevitable since the first time I saw her.
Ayla is my forever. And I desperately need to hold her and tell her that.
I’m inside the school now, right outside the door where we would have been spending third period, if everything hadn’t gone to hell. It takes my whole reserve of willpower not to kick the door down. Instead, I wrench it open and step inside.
“Ayla!”
Several students drop to the floor to hide behind their desks. Shrieks fill my ears.
I don’t see her. I don’t fucking see her anywhere.
“Where is Ayla Barnes?” I slam my first down on the closest desk. “Where is she?”
The teacher steps forward hesitantly. “Ayla hasn’t been in school for several months.”
“Nobody has seen her in so long,” a girl whispers near the back row.