Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
“I have my ways.” He winks. When I look back down to further admire it, he swiftly uses his finger to lift my chin back up to keep my gaze. “You, Presley Morrison, are my destiny. We may get lost in this world, we may forget where we’re going or maybe even where we’ve been, but never doubt for one second that we’ll find our way back to each other. I may not always know what I’m doing or even do the right thing at the right time, but I do know…I do know that we belong together. That we’ll always belong together. That us belonging together is the one thing that will never change no matter how much we do.” Ry leans forward so his next words land a breath away from my lips, “I love you more than life itself, Pres. Never forget that.”
“I love you too,” I manage to say before tilting my mouth to meet his. While desperation and all-consuming passion is what I’m expecting to take hold, I’m shocked when it’s just the opposite. Ry's hand softly lands on my cheek as the kiss remains light.
Hopeful.
Filled with unspoken promises of a brighter future rather than the grim reality we’ve fallen into.
It’s exactly the kind of Christmas promise I need, and having him deliver it with every brush of the tongue is absolutely the way I wanted it delivered.
--
Katherine’s inability to swallow her soon lifts my eyelids open. “Do you still have that compass?”
My hand massages my throat to assist in the confession. “I do.”
“Why?” She casually questions, judgment nowhere to be found in her voice. “Why didn’t you ever let it go?”
“Why is it a big deal? I still have the gym bag.”
“Yeah, but that’s a practical gift. It’d be like still using a piece of Tupperware you borrow from a friend you no longer talk to.”
That’s only happened like once.
“Jewelry is much more sentimental.”
My eyes threaten to close again.
“Much more meaningful.”
Is that why no one else ever got me any?
Did I not mean enough to them?
Even Xander?
“Darling, is there any part of you that hopes his promise is still true? That you can use that to find your way back to him? That he can indeed find his way to back to you?”
Her words create an unexpected cogitation.
“Do you have anything else left from your relationship with him? Pictures? Scrapbooks? Trinkets?”
“No,” I quietly admit. “I mean maybe? I’m not entirely sure what my mom kept when I moved out to college.”
“Okay, then, is it possible that you won’t let the object go because it is the last remaining link you know for a fact that you have to a person that you’re not sure you ever stopped loving?”
The series of questions has answers that after almost ten years of separation are the epitome of bewilderment.
For fucks sake, how is that I’m just as clueless now about where Ry should fall in my life as I was years ago when I walked away from him one final time?
Have we weathered whatever storm we were meant to?
Is all this reminiscing somehow putting us back on the same path?
Or maybe…maybe all this is being done to show me that while I’m currently drowning in a sea of mind-numbing logic and routines that there is still hope for a different future if I stop sabotaging my sanity with distant memories of the past and start making real moves in the present.
Chapter 9
Ryder
-“For the pain I caused you, I will never forgive myself.”-
“I don’t wanna fucking talk about it!” My voice reverberates around the room until it pushes my back against the wall. The pain of the impact provides relief I’m not getting elsewhere. “Just…just fucking let it go, Doc!”
“No.”
“I don’t wanna go back there.” Shaking my head profusely is followed by me tugging the tangled strands. “I fucking can’t go back there.”
I don’t want it spoken out loud.
I can’t hear myself speak it out loud.
I’ve spent so much of my worthless life replaying that one regret.
I’ve rewound that shit over and over and over again, an action that makes the monster inside of me need a fix faster than anything else I’ve ever done.
It’s enough the moment is carved into my consciousness and sub consciousness, permanently incarcerating me in the cell of contrition where I’m left crawling in my own skin every night deep in the shadows, but to let it free? To let it gallivant in circles while cackling at the opprobrious excuse my life has become as a direct correlation of those lurking horrors from the first moment that I truly let drugs triumph over the only thing I thought in my life untouchable?
No.
Fuck no.
I’ve already discussed lots of shit here.
I draw the line at that.
I’m not cranking the lever to that Jack-in-the-Box nightmare.
“You can go back,” Doc disagrees, voice and tone both unchanged. “And you will.”