Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
She stares at me, her own amusement dying. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?”
She drops her eyes, opening her mouth to speak but then closing it again. I tense.
She swallows. “Army … told me, um …” She meets my eyes. “He told me about the husband and wife who made you and him an offer.”
I shift, looking away.
But I can’t move. She’s on top of me.
“He didn’t say as much,” she goes on, “but I eventually figured out you must’ve—”
“I’m clean,” I say. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
She doesn’t falter. “I wasn’t worried,” she tells me. “I know you’d never put me in danger.”
But she keeps her eyes fixed on me, and the room suddenly feels too small.
“How many?” she asks me.
I press my teeth together and grind for a split second. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
But she pushes me. “How many times did you do it?”
“What did I say, Krisjen?”
She shuts up, but even though I’m holding her, she feels far away now.
The past is depression. I can’t change it. Why bother thinking about it?
Maybe we would’ve eventually been okay if I hadn’t gone that far, but what if we hadn’t been? I took care of my family, and I’d do it again.
Maybe.
I don’t know.
I struggle to breathe, and without thinking, I grip her tighter.
It wasn’t the sex that was hard. I just didn’t like not being seen. I wasn’t someone to them. They would never have spoken to me in public. They never would’ve held a door for my sister or thought about me after I left the bed.
I close my eyes, breathing hard as I tuck her head back into my chest. “A few,” I finally reply in a whisper.
“A few like three, or a few like ten?”
My throat is so dry. “A few like six,” I say.
I wait for another question, but she just lies there, her arm draped over my chest and her hand on my shoulder.
I draw in a deep breath. “She passed the news on to her friends,” I tell Krisjen. “It didn’t go on longer than a few months. I got cash and used it to buy other things I didn’t mind selling.”
A couple of them were nice to me. They fucking talked to me, at least, and it became clear they were just as miserable in their lives as I was. They had their own shit to deal with, and we were able to forget about our lives for a while.
But a few of the others … Jesus.
Everything was so dark in the Bay at that time. One of the St. Carmen women wanted me to pretend I was her son. One liked to hit me. A lot.
“I’d always had spells where I didn’t feel good, but God,” I go on, “I felt like an ugly piece of shit walking out of that first house, Krisjen. I never felt so worthless.”
Growing up, I acted out just like my brothers, but not with sex. Not ever with sex. Sex was important. That was always my hangup. I had to be able to connect.
“I could wash it off my body,” I tell her, “but not out of my head, and I was in a hole I was never gonna crawl out of. I hated being here. I hated the sight of the world.” I just go on, spilling my guts and getting it out, because if she knows, then she’ll know more than even Army, and I want her to know me best.
“I couldn’t pay the bills,” I continue. “Dallas was drinking, Liv and Trace were constantly fighting … The house came crashing down on my head every time I walked through the fucking front door.” I force down the lump in my throat. “It wasn’t the first time I thought about it, but … it was the first time I really wanted to do it.”
Like a fucking coward. When you feel like shit, it’s hard to remember a time when you ever felt good, and I left every one of those women thinking life would always be like that.
It wasn’t, and there were good days, but I’m so tired sometimes.
“He watched the whole fucking thing,” I murmur. “He instructed me on how to treat her. How to be rough with her. Told me what he wanted me to do to her, where to kiss her, how hard to …”
I feel one of her tears fall onto my chest.
I exhale hard, my hand going into her hair, fisting it gently. “So I dived into my head and thought about someone else. Another girl.”
“Who?”
I shrug. “No one in particular. A Saint. Someone I wasn’t supposed to have. Someone sweet and innocent.” I rub her scalp. “Always with sunshine in her eyes and smiles that felt warm.” I rub my thumb along her cheek. “I just didn’t know she was real.”