Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
I swallow, but I can feel my emotions settling. The practiced detachment I needed in order to leave all of it behind.
Back then, it hurt like hell to hear the people I loved turn on me. It confirmed all my very worst fears.
But I got past it. I learned to stop needing their love. I learned to be okay without it.
I’m calmer, my tone more normal, when I finish the story. “Her denial of my experience felt more like cruelty than anything because… I loved her. I loved them both, and I endured so much to protect them, to keep that family intact for her, and there she was, accusing me of jealousy. It was salt in the wound. I thought they loved me, but you protect the people you love, and that day, I just felt like they didn’t love me anymore. Maybe they never really loved me, so as soon as it stopped being easy to love me, they gave up the charade. So, I packed as many of my things into my car as I could, and I left. I never went back. When I graduated, I moved here, and… that’s the end, I guess.”
“Jesus. Fuck, Brynn.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I say, glancing back at him. “I know that’s heavy. I didn’t want to bring it up, but…”
“I was an asshole,” he says with a nod.
I crack a smile, stretching to kiss his cheek. “No. I mean, yeah, a little bit, but it’s okay.”
“Why didn’t you block her?” he asks, genuinely curious.
That question triggers a slight twinge of shame. Or I guess the answer does. “This may sound bad.”
“After what you just told me, I fucking doubt it.”
I still hesitate before I admit, “I have no desire to talk to her anymore. I’m past wanting that, but… after everything that happened and feeling so… thrown away by her…” I sigh. “I like knowing she still wants to reach out to me. I like knowing… or believing, I guess,” I correct myself. “I like believing that means she regrets her choices, at least the tiniest bit. It’s the story I tell myself because it makes me feel better, and no one else has ever given a shit about making me feel better, so I had to look after myself, but I like to imagine she wouldn’t reach out if she didn’t care in some little corner of her heart. The truth is probably that it isn’t that. She’s a bad person, but she needs to believe she’s a good person, and good people tend not to have kids who just stop talking to them. So in reality, I’m sure it’s more about her than any genuine feelings she has about me. She’s looking after her own image, not genuinely working to mend a relationship she blew up. But… it’s a comforting lie, and I went a long time without any comfort. If I delude myself into interpreting every unanswered text as an apology, a useless attempt to retrieve my lost love… it just makes me feel better.”
I’m deeply embarrassed to admit that. I never have before, even to myself. But Killian doesn’t judge me. He holds me tight, and he says, “I think you should do whatever makes you feel better about it and fuck what anyone thinks. It’s not their trauma, it’s yours.”
I nod. “That’s what I think, too.”
“And Brynn?” he says, grabbing my jaw and turning my face so I’m looking up at him. “I’m gonna take care of this for you.”
I hold his gaze, and I know exactly what he means. Not only because of what he did to Kyle, but because of the crazy threat he just made when he thought I was talking to someone else.
Killian doesn’t share, and his protection is retroactive.
And I know the right thing to do is probably to argue with him, to plead for mercy for people who had none for me. Because after everything I went through, I fought the hurt and the anger and the temptation to just shut off and feel nothing. I healed, and I had the courage to open up again. I overcame my baser impulses to punish everyone for the pain I felt. I chose to be a good girl and walk away instead of lighting their world on fire.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to see it burn.
There’s a reason, as I spent all those years alone in the darkness, I was attracted to the masked madman who watched over his orphaned angel from the shadows and pulled any string he needed to so his beloved could have the things she wanted but would never dare ask for.
I’ve spent nearly all my life doing what I thought was right for other people, but if there was one dark favor I laid awake nights wishing I could call in for myself, it would be this.