Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 131330 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131330 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“It’s barely five in the afternoon.”
“Yeah, and like I said, I was up all night cramming.”
“Aspen—”
“I’m hanging up,” she warns him.
“Don’t you dare hang up on—”
The line goes dead and Austin lets out a heavy sigh, leaning back against his seat and tossing his phone onto the middle of the old table that’s yet to be torn out. “Fucking hell. She’s impossible.”
I keep my mouth shut, really not knowing what the hell I’m supposed to say without making matters any worse.
“It’s gotta be a guy,” Austin suggests. “It’s always a fucking guy. I mean, did you see the way she ignored you? She couldn’t even give you a smile for fuck’s sake. She always fucking smiles when she sees you.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man. Maybe she’s finally moved on.”
Austin scoffs, shaking his head. “The fucking zombie apocalypse would come before we see the day that my sister finally moves on. And despite how much I fucking hate it, that crush of hers isn’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some other asshole fucking with her.”
Fuck.
I groan, knowing exactly what’s about to come out of his mouth.
“Look, maybe you should head over there anyway, just suss it out. You’ve always had a way of making her talk. Maybe she’ll open up to you.”
Ha. If only he knew that opening up to me is how all this bullshit started in the first place. If he knew, sending me over there would be the last thing he’d ever do.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, man. She clearly doesn’t want to see me. Why don’t you head over there tomorrow instead?”
Austin shakes his head as a man from his construction crew calls out to him. He lets out a heavy sigh and gets to his feet, and as he walks away, he glances back over his shoulder. “You know how she gets when she sits and stews on shit. She needs to talk it out, and clearly talking to me ain’t gonna happen. So you’re up. Besides, I’ve got these guys here all week. I won’t get a chance to get over there ’til the weekend, and I can’t stand the thought of her being all broken up about something for that long. Just go figure it out, and if it’s something that can be fixed, then fix it.”
Shit.
Austin disappears into the back as I ball my hands into tight fists.
This isn’t going to go down well. I’m the last person she wants to see right now, but there’s no denying that the thought of her spending her night broken on her couch tears me apart.
All of this is my fault. I broke her, and it’s my responsibility to put her back together. If there’s even the slightest chance that she could forgive me and we could somehow move past this with minimum destruction, then I need to try.
And with that, I get up from the old table and storm right back out the door, determined to stand at her door for as long as it takes.
16
ASPEN
When you’ve been so deeply in love with someone for most of your life, it’s statistically inevitable that at some point, that person will cause you pain. So naturally, over the past twelve years, I’ve cried many tears over Izaac Banks. Sometimes I cried over his actions or comments to push me away, and sometimes my tears were caused by the heartache of never being able to have what I’ve always wanted.
The past two weeks have been different than before. They’re gut-wrenching.
I’ve never experienced a betrayal like it, and honestly, there are still so many pieces of the puzzle I don’t understand. I have so many questions left unanswered, but all it comes down to is that when I walked into that dark room, he knew exactly who I was, and without saying a word, he touched my body. He put his fingers inside of me as his lips worked across my skin, and given the chance, he would have fucked me.
All I’ve done over the past two weeks is try to process everything, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the day of my mother’s birthday lunch, when Izaac stood behind me in the pool, that was the moment he figured it out, and that was the moment he should have come clean. Sure, it would have been an awkward conversation, but neither of us knew, neither of us were at fault. It was a coincidence, nothing more and nothing less. We would have easily gotten past it, and at some point, maybe we would have even laughed about it.
But he made sure that could never happen.
He betrayed my trust. He knew I was walking in there to be with someone . . . anyone who wasn’t him, and when he knowingly touched me, he stole that away from me. And now the one person I’ve always loved and wanted knows exactly how I taste. He knows how I sound when I come, how it feels when my walls stretch around him, and while that should be something that’s celebrated, it leaves me feeling dirty.