Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 95453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
It goes on, her bliss, but I can barely pay attention now. For months, somebody who is probably Deborah has been fucking with her, and she didn’t think she needed to tell me? What else is she not telling me? Any thoughts of fucking her now are long gone—I’m not in the mood. I don’t know if she even has it in her after the roller coaster I just put her through. She’s splayed out on the bed, whimpering weakly.
Tossing the vibrator onto the bed, I sit next to her, my elbows on my knees. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, staring at the wall.
It takes a minute for her to answer. She probably needs to catch her breath. “You’ve already got so much on your mind.”
“That’s not an answer. You’re my girlfriend. I love you. And if somebody is hurting you in any way, I need to know about it. Understood?”
She sits up slowly, sighing. “I understand. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
And I’m sorry, too, even if I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. I’m sorry we started off the way we did. I’m sorry there was ever a reason for her to not trust me in the first place.
I wonder if there’s ever going to be a time when I’m able to make up for all of that. If I can ever help her forget the pain I put her through.
Otherwise, I can have her body. She can sleep beside me every night, eat her meals with me, share her thoughts with me. But I’ll never really have her. There’s always going to be this invisible barrier between us.
I don’t know how long I can live with that.
5
LENI
“Hey, are you okay?”
Piper’s whispered question pulls me back to the present moment, where she is staring at me while a couple picks a fight with each other on the screen in front of us. The rest of the audience laughs along with the jokes—it’s one of those snarky, cleverly written romantic comedies that I would probably enjoy much more if I could concentrate on it. The girl picks up a balled-up pair of socks from under the bed and hurls them at the guy’s head after spending most of the movie asking him to pick up after himself. Everybody bursts out laughing.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, forcing a smile before reaching for the popcorn. She doesn’t buy it, obviously, and I can see her shaking her head from the corner of my eye. Yeah, it would be really nice if I felt like I could tell her what’s going on, that I keep getting these messages from whoever is trying to get into my head—and how they keep getting worse.
But what could she do about it? It would just be letting whoever is behind this win, and I’m not going to let them win. They don’t deserve it. They’re not going to ruin my life.
What I really need to do is enjoy a night out with my friend. This is supposed to be my chance to leave all the stress and drama behind for a little while. As happy as I am to be with Colt, as much as I love him, the air in the apartment can sometimes get so thick it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes he gets in these moods where I’m afraid to move too much, like it might set him off.
I know it’s not about me, and that he wouldn’t take his anger out on me. He just can’t accept the truth, is all. He’s hurting, even if he would never say those words out loud. He misses Nix. He is sure Nix is alive, and the rest of us are crazy for thinking otherwise. He’s carrying a lot of anger and other feelings inside him that he doesn’t know how to express. I doubt James was exactly the kind of father who encouraged sharing and talking.
He was too busy being a sick bastard.
As usual, my stomach churns when I think of him, meaning I should stop thinking about him. He’s already taken up enough space in my life and doesn’t deserve another inch.
Besides, there’s already so much going on in my head. Who am I to worry about Colt and what he’s going through when I’m sitting here with the feeling that I’m being watched?
I have to be imagining it. I mean, I’m sitting here in a theater full of people—of course, there’s bound to be somebody looking at me at some point, right? There are rows and rows of seats behind me. I need to get out more if just going out to a movie with my best friend has me this freaked out.
Grabbing a handful of popcorn, I decide to focus on the movie and ignore the way my skin keeps crawling. I have everything in life, don’t I? I have a boyfriend who loves me. I live in a beautiful apartment. I go to school, and even if I don’t have a ton of friends, I have Piper. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s quality over quantity every time. I could have a hundred shitty friends who make my life miserable and keep me guessing whether or not they actually like me, or I could have one good friend who I know wants the best for me. I have it better than a lot of people do when I look at my life that way.