Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 63702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 319(@200wpm)___ 255(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
He doesn’t want me here. He’s angry at her, but he’s decided that taking it out on me will make him feel better. He’s trying his best to get me to leave.
Unlucky for him, I’m not the kind of girl to be pushed around.
He has no idea who he’s messing with.
I can far outdo him, and there isn’t a single thing he can do to scare me away.
I assured Aunt Chloe I would fix this house up and sell it. It was all she wanted. She made me promise before she died. She wouldn’t let up until I assured her that I would do as she was asking. For some reason, this house meant so much to her. A story she refused to tell me, a secret she took to her grave. Which is part of the reason I’m here, of course. I want answers, and I have a feeling the biker next door might have some.
Chloe was like a mother to me—the kind of person you went to for everything. She showed me the kind of love I could have only dreamed of after I lost my mom when I was young. Left with an alcoholic father, Chloe was the only savior I had. With no other family, she made sure to take care of me when he couldn’t. She gave me everything she possibly could in life, and it’s still hard for me to imagine a world without her in it.
I owe so much to her, so if fixing this house is what she wants from me, then it’s what I’ll do.
Kicking an old stool out of the way, I scream and launch backward as a small mouse comes scurrying out. Its beady little eyes focus in on me with the intensity of a lion as it stares me down, confident that I’m more afraid of it than it is of me. I stomp my foot, and it scurries right toward me, causing me to topple backward over the dusty coffee table, landing on my bottom, the floor cold beneath me.
I can’t handle much more of this.
This place will be the death of me.
There is so much to do, and I’m not sure how to get through.
The first day I was here I cleaned the smallest room I could find and made it livable enough for me to be able to stay. I scrubbed the bathroom and the toilet and had a local handy man come and fix anything that was broken. A girl needs to shower and sleep. I brought my own air mattress and linens, so that’s been getting me through. The kitchen is basically unusable; somehow it has gotten wet, and mold has eaten away at so many parts of it it’s falling apart.
I’m buying food out daily, so the kitchen is going to have to be repaired first.
I can’t afford to eat out every day—some days I simply don’t eat at all.
It’s not a great plan.
But, right now, I don’t have any other choice. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have a home, and now Chloe is gone, I don’t have anyone to fall back on. All I have is the money I left town with, my car, and a few of my things. The rest I left behind when I made the choice to start anew, beginning with this house. My dad passed a few years back, and I broke up with my boyfriend because he was nothing more than a damp rag that I was dragging around because he was all I had.
It wasn’t fair to either of us.
He didn’t take the break-up well and has been blowing up my phone since, but I’ve mastered the art of ignorance, and I can go a long-damned time before I break. It might not be right, hell, it’s far from it, but it’ll be the best in the long run. He needs to move on, and if I continue talking to him, he never will. I didn’t tell him where I was going. I just packed up, left that town, and I have no plans on looking back.
Chloe left this house to me, plus some money to fix it up. When I’m done, I’ll sell it and start my life somewhere else, somewhere away from everything and everyone, somewhere that I can be whoever I want without the past following me. I need the chance to be a new person, a different person, and that’s the only thing that’s driving me to stay in this house and finish it instead of burning it to the ground and running.
Lord knows that would be easier.
Pushing up off the floor, I dust my clothes off and walk past the mess to the one and only clean room. I step inside, glancing around. It’s tiny, but it was easy to freshen up. The window is always cracked open, taking the dusty smell out that remains even though I scrubbed every inch of it. I strip out of my clothes and turn, walking out of the room toward the tiny run-down bathroom.