Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
My twin bullying me into taking a last-minute trip to Florida to “keep me safe,” and dumping me at the airport with nothing but my purse and a quick wave as he and Nora drove off into the night.
Calling a car service to take me home—no way am I leaving my brother without backup—only to be grabbed by a giant man in a stinky leather coat and tossed into the back of a windowless van.
* * *
This is where I currently find myself, agony flaring through my shoulder as it makes impact with the van’s wooden floor. I emit a startled squawk of pain, and the jerk who grabbed me laughs from the open doors behind me.
And that’s it, the straw that kills the last of this camel’s cool.
“Fuck off, you fucking fucker!” I roll back into a seated position and launch myself at the man like a rabid spider monkey, determined to claw the smile off his stupid brace face.
I’ve listened to enough true crime podcasts to know that if the man succeeds in moving me to a second location, the odds of getting out of this with life and limb intact decrease significantly.
Even if that weren’t the case, I’m not the kind to go gentle into that dark night.
As a teen, I kept pushing for a place on the varsity basketball team, even though I was the shortest girl and had to run twice as fast to keep up with my teammates. In culinary school, I battled for the top spot, determined to graduate head of my class to make up for the fact that my genius twin brother wasn’t living up to his potential. And when it came to my marriage, I fought with so much burning intensity that Ben was finally forced to tell me that he liked men to prove all the fighting was pointless.
I just couldn’t understand how our love, our family wasn’t enough for him. He said he liked men, okay, but he clearly liked me, too. Our sex life had always been wonderful—playful and fun, if not always as passionate as I would have liked. But I had no complaints.
At one point, when I realized how close we were to falling apart, I offered to open our marriage. I didn’t want to be with anyone but Ben, but if he needed to express the part of himself that was attracted to guys, I promised I’d try to be okay with it. I was so in love; I was willing to settle for less so I wouldn’t lose it all.
But Ben didn’t want to share.
He wanted to fall desperately in love with a pastry chef named Radcliffe, a skinny pastry chef, the kind of sick, sugar-peddling, whole-food-eating creep who should never be trusted with anything—especially a vulnerable man’s heart.
As Ben left with his bags, I sobbed from the front door that I gave their relationship a month, two if they were lucky.
Now, they’ve been together nearly a year. Ben moved in with Radcliffe nine months ago and with every passing day, they sink deeper into domestic bliss. Radcliffe even gave up his home office to make a bedroom for Chase. He filled it with a toddler bed shaped like a sea turtle and fancy toys his mother sent for her “new grandbaby.”
It’s actually…really lovely. Radcliffe dotes on my baby and my ex-husband. He treats the two boys I love most with care and devotion, but I can’t bring myself to be grateful.
Because I want to be the one caring for them, loving them, spoiling them.
Radcliffe stole my life, and I can’t even tell him to go to hell because he didn’t mean to steal it. Even if he had, I can’t compete with him. I’m not a man, and no amount of fighting or pushing or working myself to the bone will ever change that.
It makes me so angry, that sometimes, I want to burn down the world.
But for now, I’ll settle for teaching this asshole a lesson about underestimating women. I might be only five-two, but I’m like a dwarf star, small, but denser and fiercer than suns five times my size.
I go straight for the man’s eyes, but he catches my wrists, holding them at a safe distance. He starts to laugh again, but I wipe the smile from his face with a sharp kick to his groin. As he doubles over in pain, his grip loosens on my arms.
I’m about to dart to his right and jump out of the van, when massive hands land on Brace Face’s shoulders, dragging him backward.
A deep voice growls, “Get your hands off her,” and then my savior slams a fist into Brace Face’s gut, sending him doubling over a second time. A beat later, he’s gripped both Brace’s legs and flipped them into the air, sending him rolling back into the van, clearing my path onto the rain-drenched pavement.