Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 48306 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 193(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48306 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 242(@200wpm)___ 193(@250wpm)___ 161(@300wpm)
My vision blurs at the edges, and a blaring car horn yanks my attention away from her and back facing forward. At the road. I blink, shaking my head and giving myself a quick slap back into focus.
Focus. I need to focus.
But that’s hard as fuck to do when you’ve got about six lines of coke and half a bottle of scotch in your system slowly dismantling your ability to think from the inside. Your ability to think, function, and drive, for that matter.
The car jerks, and I blink again, heart racing as I squint to focus.
This is a bad, bad fucking idea. Even I know that. But it can’t be helped. Not when she called me an hour ago crying that Raymond was smacking her around again. I showed up ready to put him the ground, but the rat-fuck was already off with his buddies somewhere getting drunk enough to forget he’d laid hands on her again.
Now, we’re headed back to my house. Hopefully, I can get the rager of a party currently going on there to get the fuck out.
“Gina, I’m going to fix this.”
“You can’t always fix everything, Cam.”
“I can fix this.”
She snorts, wiping away her tears. She’s nearly as drunk as I am, and that’s fucking saying something.
“You gonna swim, Cam?” she barks out flatly. “You going to swim me away from my life?”
“I’m going to beat the ever loving fuck out of Raymond, for starters,” I hiss, slamming on my horn as I roar around two stopped cars, flipping off a taxi as I blast through the red light and take the onramp to the bridge over the bay.
Gina laughs a brittle laugh. “There’ll just be another Raymond, Cam. There’s always a Raymond. There was Mikey before him, and Ken before that.” She shakes her head. “Fuck, there was dad even before all of them.”
She turns to look at me, knocking back a slug from the bottle of raspberry flavored vodka in her hand.
“Maybe it’s me, ya know?”
“Stop it,” I slur. “You fuckin’… fuckin’ stop it.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She turns back to the window, looking at the bay lit up as we roar up the on-ramp.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to.”
“Good,” I mutter, blinking and trying to turn ten lanes into the three I know they are in front of me. I swerve into the slow lane, the flawed, blurred, booze-soaked logic in my head telling me that’s playing it safer as we cruise up onto the big bridge itself. Another car horn blares past me, and I’m dimly aware of yelling at the guy to go fuck himself.
“You’re always taking care of me, Cam.”
I turn back, grinning at Gina.
“Always.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that.”
“Nah, it’s all good.”
“No, it’s not,” She takes another long, slow pull from the bottle as I fight to keep the road from spinning in front of me.
“Life’s a hell of a ride, huh?” she mumbles quietly.
The car thunders under me, and I’m flying high as fucking kite—from the booze, from the drugs, from the party back at my place, and at the knowledge that it’s all coming together. Years—literally years of hard, brutal, dedicated work are finally coming to fruition. Because I just found out I made fuckin’ Team USA for the Olympics next year. Phelps, Lochte, Dwyer, and me.
“I love you, Cam.”
I blink, the world coming back into fuzzy focus as I turn to glance at Gina.
“Huh?”
“I love you, you know.”
I shrug. “I love you—”
“Goodbye Cam.”
It doesn’t happen in slow motion. There’s not this big dramatic moment of realization. It’s just that one second she’s there, and the next, the door is swinging open and she’s just gone, her blonde hair disappearing over the guard rail out into the black abyss two-hundred feet above the bay.
It’s what happens next that happens in slow motion. I remember just staring—blinking and staring—like I’m just not seeing her. Like if I squeeze my eyes shut hard enough and open them again, she’ll still be there, and we can get back to my condo and just fix this shit. But she’s not, and I just keep blinking, and keep staring out the open passenger side door with my foot pushing the gas pedal to the floor until the front fender of the Maserati clips the back corner of a semi-truck.
That’s when the whole world goes upside down, and the lights go out.
* * *
Now:
I stare at the cabinet above my fridge. I’m sitting at the big white marble island in the kitchen, swirling green tea around my mug, and just staring. I know what’s up there, because I put it up there—I like knowing exactly where my demons are, and I know this one is just sitting up there, waiting for me to fail and give in.
He can go right ahead and go fuck himself, cause that ain’t gonna happen.