Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
“They never found her. Never even had any leads. He was a ghost. Just some guy who drove in a neighborhood that wasn’t his, snatched a six-year-old girl, then vanished into thin air. To this day I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. And I hope equally she’s dead at the same time I hope she’s alive.”
“That has to be hard,” he said. “And confusing.”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “It doesn’t really feel like anything. It’s just always been my life for as long as I remember. Because the time before she was gone, when we were a family, it feels like a dream. Because it was so very gone after she was taken from us.”
“Fuck,” he groaned, turning into me so I held some of his weight.
God, it felt good.
And I needed it.
For this part especially, I needed it.
Because losing Macy was the worst thing that could happen.
And it wasn’t just losing her that made it so.
“Dad got lost in his rage. He was angry all the time. Angry at the police. Angry at Macy’s friend’s mom. Angry at Macy’s friend, who was six too, and she gave a description, and shared what happened, but she was only six. Not much she knew to say could help. Angry at my friend’s parents because Macy wasn’t invited to the party, when no one but people in our class were. Dad was just was angry at the world.”
“Hate to admit it, but I don’t blame him,” Cap said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, drew in another breath and let it go before I shared, “Mom disappeared inside herself. Became a ghost. I don’t know how either of us missed it, what was coming. When she killed herself five years later on the anniversary of Macy going missing, we should have known. We should have seen the signs.”
Cap’s arms closed tighter around me.
“You were too young,” he stated.
“Maybe,” I replied.
He gave me a tight squeeze. “Definitely.”
“Okay,” I wheezed.
He loosened his arms.
“After that, Dad became a shell. Filled with shame and guilt. I don’t know how he brushed his teeth and went to work. He was there and he was not. He woke up breathing, so by habit, he just went through the motions.”
“So you were alone.”
“I was, until I met Luna, then she gave me her family. Got a job at sixteen, saved every penny, and when I thought I had enough money, I got in my car and drove as far away as I could get from all that. Hit Phoenix, got a shitty studio apartment, a job at the mall, and here I am.”
His hand at my neck gave me a squeeze. “Here you are.”
“Yeah.”
“My mom beat the shit out of me.”
My head snapped back.
“Cap, you don’t—”
He looked down at me. “I gave myself the name Julien Jackson, Raye. No one knows the name I was born with, except Roam, and no one ever will. This could be something, you and me. We could go the distance. And you will never know that name because it’s meaningless. It’s ash. It’s gone.”
I nodded to indicate I got him.
The significance of his statement cut through me like a razor.
But I got him.
He carried on.
“Julien for Jules, that friend I told you about, a social worker who worked at the runaway shelter where me and Roam, and our buddy, Park, used to hang. Jules. Juliet Lawler, now Crowe. She loved us, fuck, Raye.” His hand still at my neck, tightened. “She loved us. It was the first time I’d ever felt love like that from a female. The first time someone took care of me, looked after me, wanted with everything that was her that I would thrive, and she knocked herself out to make that so. Until Shirleen, my adoptive mom. Her last name is Jackson.”
So that was why his name didn’t fit him, but it still did.
“That is so incredibly cool you got to claim the good things you were given that way,” I said.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“I hate that your mom—”
He shook his head on my pillow and gave me another squeeze to quiet me. “It wasn’t the beatings. They sucked and she was a bitch, and at the time, I hated her. There was nothing good about her. My dad left before I was old enough to put two thoughts together, and I don’t know what her deal was. If she was bitter or if she took her anger out on me that she had to look after me when she didn’t want to be saddled with raising a kid. I don’t know. I don’t care. She hated me too, and she didn’t hide it. There was nothing between us. No connection. Definitely no love. So it wasn’t about that. It was that she brought men home and most of them weren’t okay, they were just assholes. But one of them woke me up in the middle of the night, touching me.”