Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 135442 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135442 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
“Ryn, take a breath, yeah?”
I couldn’t.
I’d thought we were done.
I’d cried myself to sleep.
Cried myself to sleep.
Me!
And this time, they were not stressy tears.
They were the real enchilada.
Heartbreak tears.
I could feel it then, the results of that jag, my eyes scratchy and puffy.
I could feel something else.
My nose felt funny, my throat too.
Shit, it was going to happen again.
I turned my head away, even though it was dark, and he probably couldn’t see much of me, because I couldn’t see much of him, but I couldn’t hide my voice being husky when I said, “Please, Boone, just go.”
“I’ve been a dick,” he replied, his voice soft and filled with remorse.
Yeah.
He had.
And this was exactly what I was trying to avoid by not going there with him.
But no.
He’d talked me into it.
And what?
We’d had a couple of days?
And then he broke me.
Not once…
For years…
After my dad broke me…
Had a man broken me.
But Boone?
A couple of days and he’d broken me.
I decided not to speak anymore and maybe if I just absented myself (without, obviously, absenting myself since I was astride him and he had a lock on me), he’d get my message and leave.
He did not.
He transferred my wrists to one hand, slid the other in my hair and urged, “Sweetheart, look at me.”
I continued to look away and pretend, no matter how ridiculous it was, that he wasn’t there, but I did it breathing heavily through my nose.
“Ryn, fuck,” he bit out. Then back to soft and sweet, “I’m sorry, baby.”
I kept breathing through my nose, his apology getting to me, just a little bit, I could feel the prickle of it pushing through, and it gave me hope.
Hope I could not have.
We couldn’t do this.
We were both way too fucked up.
He was also too proud.
And I was too volatile.
We didn’t work.
“I fucked up going to Smithie,” he whispered, stroking the back of my neck under my hair with his knuckles, something I felt not only there, but also over my scalp and down my spine, and all of that was good, which meant all of it I was attempting to ignore. “I fucked up, getting pissed and walking out. I fucked up getting my pride stung and leaving it too long, coming back.”
“Yeah, you did,” I confirmed through sharp breaths. “But it gave me a chance to think and while I was thinking, I came up with the fact that we don’t work.”
I had not been thinking about that.
I’d spent three days trying to make us work.
I’d just come up with that.
But even so, I was thinking I was right.
“We had a fight,” Boone contradicted. “Just a fight. Now we’re gonna talk it through and make up.”
“No, we’re not, because you’re gonna go.”
“Ryn—”
I looked at him through the shadows. “Really, I can’t do this.”
“Kathryn,” he bit out.
“We’re done.”
“Someone apologizes, and they mean it, babe, you should accept their apology.”
“You broke me.”
I heard and felt him suck in breath.
Oh God.
Oh shit.
Oh fuck.
I’d put it out there.
And when I did, my voice was not right.
Fuck!
I was going to lose it.
He heard it, let my wrists go, wrapped his hand around the back of my neck, his arm around me, and held tight.
I knew there was no hope of getting my hands between us to push him away, so I let my arms dangle at my sides, dragged in a ragged breath and repeated, “You broke me. We’re done.”
“Please listen to me, Ryn,” he begged.
“I can’t…I can’t do this.”
My tone was deteriorating again.
He moved his hand at my neck up to cup my head, shoved my face in his neck, and murmured in my ear, “Take a beat. Breathe.”
My breath was hitching. I was trying to hold them back.
And I was worried I was failing.
“Or don’t, sweetheart. Just let go,” he urged.
“No,” I croaked.
“Why?”
“I can’t be this person.”
“Why?”
“I have to hold it together.”
“Why?”
“Because if I don’t…”
I didn’t finish.
“What?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“What, Ryn? What’ll happen if you don’t hold it together?”
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know what would happen.
My mom would distance herself from me because she had a life of eating shit, taking shit, and working like hell to raise her kids, and Brian repaid her with more shit, so she didn’t need mine?
Or Boone would decide in the end I just wasn’t worth it because I wasn’t only a mess, I was weak and a loser?
“Baby—”
“Stop it, let me go,” I whispered.
“Rynnie,” he whispered back.
Rynnie.
God!
I couldn’t take any more.
I yanked back and screamed in his face, “Stop it, let me go!”
He didn’t let me go, mostly because I collapsed against him and started bawling.
Great.
Just great.
He wrapped his arms tight around me and held me, rocking me gently at the same time stroking my back.
But, apparently, you hold back tears for long enough, you run up a huge store, and even if you’d let some go not too long ago, there were more ready and waiting to be unleashed.