Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
That kind of love cannot easily be replaced. Our hearts are bound to each other in a way that nothing could ever break, no earthly power anyway. But when I started paying attention to the rest of the song, the words that spoke of her hurt and trauma, I felt like more of a monster than in the first days after the incident.
Listening to her pour her heart out live and right in front of me had added more substance to the words, and how she’d looked at me at the beginning of the song seemed to drive each word directly into my soul.
Water turned into tears on my cheeks as I slammed my hands into the marble walls of the shower, head bent, knees about to give out in weakness as I relived every moment of that performance.
If I don’t get to talk to her soon, I think I’ll go out of my mind. I need to talk to her, to tell her that this was all a big mistake. Something that I’d done in anger had snowballed and become this major clusterfuck that it is today. “I’m coming, Elena. I’ll make my way back to you no matter what it takes.”
***
*Janie*
“I’m losing him, Dad. I can feel it. Help me, do something. Call her.”
“Okay, I will, I will, but you need to calm down. You’ll do none of us any good if you lose your way at this point. It was just one night anyway; what makes you think….”
“I was there, sitting right next to him, Dad. I felt it. He’s not over her. And the way that he looked at her….”
“Wasn’t he high? How the hell did he even know what was going on anyway? And why did you let him talk you into going there in the first place?”
“I don’t know, Dad. How was I supposed to stop him?” Why is everything always left up to me? As if I was the only one benefiting from this union.
“Is that it? Or was it that you wanted her to see you two together? Were you trying to flaunt your relationship? Huh, is that it? Is that why we’re dealing with this bullshit now?”
“None of that is important right now, dad; we need to do something. Call Mary: she’ll know what to do.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll get right on it.” My hand shook as I hung up the phone.
I started chewing away on my nails before I remembered that I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. There were so many things to remember these days, and none of this was anything like I expected it to be. All I wanted to do was marry my crush and live happily ever after. But nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to.
I can’t erase the look on his face and the way he reacted to her tonight from my mind. Every time I close my eyes, I can still see it. The mesmerized look on his face as he sat transfixed in a room full of people who were sure to be watching for his every move.
Dad was right; we should never have gone there. But Ryder had threatened to go with or without me, and there was no way in hell I was about to let that happen. I can barely keep the two of them apart even without them seeing each other in three years, and I was going to let them be in the same space together. Not bloody likely.
I’d wanted to rub it in her face, wanted to see her pained look of destruction. She’d robbed me of that these past years, and I wanted my pound of flesh. I’d gone overboard in the days after our wedding, only to learn later that the bitch had sworn off social media. She hadn’t seen any of the candid photos I’d paid the paparazzi to take of Ryder and me every time we left the house.
Tonight was going to be my chance. Ryder was so high he wasn’t going to be aware of much. I planned to just hang all over him; that’s why I’d made sure we were seated front and center of the stage. But that, too, had backfired on me.
Ryder wasn’t too drugged up to be alert to her presence, and it was made very obvious by the way he’d stared at her like he was a starving man in front of a buffet. It was the most alive he’s been since days before our wedding day. Everyone had seen it, I’m sure of it; I’d heard enough whispers and twitters during and after the show to know that much.
Now it feels as if all my hard work had been in vain. No, I won’t let her win, not after everything that I’d been through. All the hate I’d received in the beginning, all the snide remarks thrown my way in person and online still reverberated in my brain to this day.