Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Chapter 53
*Ryder*
“Did you eat?” I didn’t want to take time away from her to go deal with everything she’d shared right now. And besides, my plate was already full to the brim, and I could do with a break. It didn’t help that the only person I really wanted to talk to about everything that was going on was the one person I wished to keep that ugliness away from.
“No, I thought I’d wait for you.” She blushed, and I kissed the tip of her nose, wondering how long it would be before this feeling of giddiness went away. I hope never; I hope I never grow to take her and our time spent together for granted again. I still get a hitch in my heart at how close I came to losing her forever.
In fact, it still feels like a dream come true that she’s even talking to me, and that welcome I just received is something I thought it would take me years to earn. Not that I’m complaining, one of the things I knew about her is her forgiving heart and how easy it used to be for me to get back into her good graces, but this time, even I didn’t want her to take it easy on me. But now I know why she has.
From everything that she’d told me that the old woman had said, we were both played. If I hated those people before because of what they did to me, my hatred has multiplied tenfold in the last half hour or so because they’d hurt her even more than I knew.
As hard as it was for me to accept the hocus pocus nonsense, as Lyon calls it, there was no denying that some of this shit was unexplainable. Knowing that my drug use started with them, with Mary and Scott at least and that Matt, the man I trusted to guide me spiritually, the man I’d turned to for help me when I was at my lowest, was only using me, is something I can’t overcome.
“Ryder, I can see you’re thinking about it, so do me a favor and don’t try to go after these people on your own.”
“What makes you think that I would?”
“Because I know you, but I’m scared, don’t do anything, okay? Let’s wait and think of the best course of action. If they’ve gone to this much trouble to get what they want, they’re not going to give up so easily.”
“I know, and that’s what I’m afraid of for you. I don’t want you getting hurt anymore. I won’t let anyone do anything to you again, Elena. Do you understand? I can’t… I just can’t. Do you know how much it’s killing me just sitting here doing nothing after everything they’ve done? But I know I can’t rush into anything for your sake because I don’t want them coming after you again. By the way, you haven’t mentioned Noel and Nicole. What was their part in all this?”
As much as those two were always hanging around, I’d be surprised if they didn’t play a major part in the whole mess. I always knew they were no friends of Janie’s, that they were using her for some reason or another, but I felt so little for her I never cared to tell her what I thought.
I’d felt bad about some of the things I’d put her through until today when I learned that because of her creepy obsession, this whole thing was made possible in part. No doubt Mary would’ve found someone else to take her place if it came to that, but she was the perfect tool for them to use. The fact that she wanted it too only makes me hate her more.
But knowing Mary and the fact that she had at some point in the past tried to get me with one of her daughters, even going so far as to set up a foursome with three of them, it doesn’t make sense that she hadn’t pushed for that. Then again, I’d seen Nicole in a not-so-very-pleasant situation, so maybe that’s why the old hag had backed off from that idea.
Yuck, it has been a long time since I thought of that situation, years, in fact. Is that one of the reasons why Mary wanted to keep her hold on me? Why she found someone to do the dirty work of keeping an eye on me from the inside? Namely, my so-called wife?
I was not sure why. I was pretty sure her daughter wasn’t the only one in this town who got a little too close to her pets. But then again, if the world knew that the daughter of one of the so-called it families, a family the whole world looks to for inspiration, was into bestiality, it might not go over so well. Yeah, I can see her trying to keep that under wraps, it’s not a good look, after all, and she’s big on making the world see her and her talentless brood as the next best thing since sliced bread.