Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25234 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 126(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25234 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 126(@200wpm)___ 101(@250wpm)___ 84(@300wpm)
Misty shakes her head and purses her lips. “No. No way. She’s just fucking with you, Sky. There’s no way you believe this, right?”
I don’t want to. But right now I feel like my entire world is crumbling down around me.
“She knew things, Misty…”
“Knew things? Like what?”
I swallow, feeling like I could choke on my own saliva. “Like Cade told me he was looking for an investor in his business so he could expand. She mentioned that…like he had said the same thing to her.”
“That doesn’t mean he tried to fuck her, Sky,” she replies. “Maybe he was just proposing a business investment.”
“Yeah…” I say slowly, thinking. “But then why didn’t he mention to me that he had asked her?”
Misty thinks for a long moment then nods. “That’s true…” she says. “So what do you think you’re going to do?”
I’m not used to Misty asking me what I’m going to do. I’m used to Misty telling me what I should do–giving me advice that she thinks I should follow.
This is a tricky situation.
Cade isn’t the only one with abandonment issues. He lost his parents, but I lost my mom. Losing him now would break me.
“Sky?” Misty asks again. “What are you going to do?”
I look at her as I deflate like a balloon, feeling completely defeated.
“I don’t know.”
10
SKYLAR
He tried to seduce her.
Just the thought of Cade coming on to my aunt makes me nauseous as I lie in bed staring up at the cracked and yellow ceiling of my bedroom–a ceiling I thought I was going to be leaving behind soon. But now I’m not so sure.
How could he do that? There’s no way he could actually be into her. But that would make Beatrice’s story true: that he actually did try to get her to fall for him so he could get her money. And that would make him the biggest scumbag imaginable.
And what makes it even worse is that I didn’t pick up on it in the first place.
How could I have not seen it?
I guess that’s what sociopaths are good at though, right? Putting on different faces and manipulating people without regret to get what they want.
My heart feels like a solid block of ice inside my chest.
I want to call him and interrogate him like a police officer, but I’m terrified of what he might say. He might deny it all, but can I even believe him? And what if he just flat-out admits to it? What then?
A knock at the door nearly gives me a heart attack.
“Not now, Dad!” I call out.
“Are you decent?”
“Yes,” I breathe out. “But I’m just not in the mood.”
“It’s kinda big news, puddin’. Can I come in?”
I sigh. “Okay, fine.”
Dad opens the door but stays standing in the hallway. “So, uh…I just got some pretty radical news from my sister.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” I ask, not giving one single shit about it.
“Well, apparently she just got engaged to one of her new groundskeeper guys.” The ice around my heart shatters, driving shards into the flesh of my chest. I rocket up in bed in shock.
“What!?”
“I know right?” my dad says, shaking his head and grinning in disbelief. “Apparently she’s selling her house and moving to California. She’s leaving tomorrow. So I guess we won’t be doing Sunday brunch anymore, but we will have to go visit her for the really big holidays–”
“Yeah, that’s great, Dad,” I say, cutting him off as I grab my cell. “Listen, I have to call Misty about work tomorrow. Do you mind?”
Dad quickly takes a step back and pulls on the door. “Sure, not at all, puddin’. Just wanted to let you know about Beatrice. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks.”
I force a smile as he backs out and instantly dial Cade.
But it doesn’t even ring. A strange message comes up saying the number has been disconnected.
“What the hell…?”
I try again, but the same thing happens.
Now I’m really sweating.
This can’t be happening, can it? Cade and Aunt Beatrice engaged? Here I was doing my best to try and find some kind of hole in the story and believe that Cade couldn’t have done what Beatrice said he had done, and now I’m hearing from Dad that she’s engaged to one of her workers and Cade’s phone is disconnected.
What reason would there be for phone being disconnected unless he had blocked me or gotten a new number so he could ghost me?
He really is a scumbag.
Terrifying sensations swell through my body. My limbs begin to tremble, and I collapse back onto the bed, letting my phone slip through my fingers onto the floor as tears spill from my eyes.
How could he lie to me like that?
What about the waterfall? I know when he looked at me–when he took me and laid me down beneath him and claimed me–that he loved me. I felt it in more ways than one.