Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 294(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
A dried-up pink flower.
The same kind of flowers that used to grow in the garden outside my house.
The flowers I often picked as a child.
“You asked me why …” he says, and he pushes the dried flower into my hand. “This is why.”
I thought I’d cried all the tears I had left to cry.
But I was wrong.
So wrong.
Because when I look at this flower, everything I ever thought about him begins to unravel like a string being pulled apart.
I remember this flower and the day I gave it away like it was yesterday.
Time feels like it ceases to exist. At this moment, all I can do is look into his soul-shattering eyes, wondering how I didn’t see before.
“It’s you,” I mutter, tears rolling down my cheeks. “You’re the boy in the bathroom.”
The boy in the bathroom who escaped and lived on the streets for years … all thanks to my father. The same man he just saved from certain death.
“You remember,” he mutters.
“You knew it was me?” I reply, tears rolling freely down my cheeks.
He nods.
All these years, he kept this flower that I gave him.
I look at the flower. “How is this possible?” is all I can muster.
But then my mind remembers all the moments he was facing the wall, all the shuffling and rummaging. He must’ve kept it in his cell, behind a stone.
I smile at the idea, but my smile instantly fades the second I realize all the time we had is spent.
Lex laughs maniacally. “All this strength wasted on a simple girl and her idiot father,” he muses. “What a waste.”
He points his gun at Beast, but Beast simply looks at me and says, “Run.”
One second.
That’s all it takes for me to accept what he’s giving me.
A final chance at freedom.
The one thing he’s fought for all his life.
I run as fast as I can, bolting for the same exit my father ran through.
Behind me, more shouting ensues, and when I look back, a guard has his gun aimed at my back.
Beast leans up with what final strength he still has in his bones and throws a knife at the man, knocking him down.
“You fucking bastard!” Lex growls at him.
But I never stop running.
Not because I don’t want to.
I desperately do.
But because he told me to.
Because I know the value of his gift to me.
And when I take one final glance over my shoulder and see Lex standing over Beast’s body with a gun aimed at him, I hold my breath.
BANG!
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