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)
I picked up my phone to go pain-diving into those comments from the night before. Not that I need anything to feed my anger, but seeing them again will surely help me keep that fire burning. There were a million alerts on my phone which I planned to ignore until something caught my eye that left me cold.
Mary and Scott? Why those two? Why now? Was this somehow connected to their part in getting Ryder and me together? If so, who was behind their deaths? My body started to shake, and I jumped up to go check around the house, suddenly more afraid than I had ever been before.
I only breathed easy once I reassured myself that no one else was in the house with me. Silly me, no one knew I was here. My car was well hidden, so even the nosy neighbors wouldn’t know that anyone was here. I was safe, at least for the time being. But what if that person was looking for me now? What’s going to happen with my life, and where the hell is my dad?
He was partly responsible for all of this, and now that I needed him most, he was nowhere to be found. My own mother was dodging me as well, and there was no one left to call. I have no friends. I have no one. How did this happen? Where were all the people who once clamored to be part of my inner circle?
Sure, I always knew they were only there because of Ryder, but surely they’d come to like me for myself at some point over the years. A nagging voice in my head whispered that I should stop fooling myself, that it was time to give up the dream.
All I ever wanted was to be like them. Like Ryder and Elena. Their love story was plastered all over the world for years, everyone loved them, and they were on their way to being the new Hollywood ‘it’ couple before I came along and put an end to it. At least that made me smile.
I still find some semblance of joy in the fact that I had hurt her as much as I had. Don’t get me wrong; I have no personal vendetta against her; at least, I didn’t use to. I just wanted so much to be her, to be loved like that by someone as beautiful as Ryder was when he was with her.
That voice nagged again, reminding me that he was never like that with me. He’d been less than a shell of himself when we were together. The beautiful boy with the golden voice had become little more than a drugged-out wreck during our years of marriage.
But he’d cleaned himself up for her, obviously, because the pictures of him these days looked nothing like he had the past five years with me. It hurt; it hurt so much that my heart felt as if it was being drowned in acid.
Why couldn’t he have loved me like that? My stomach hurt now from more than hunger as the pain the drugs had kept at bay found free rein. I felt it all crashing down on me, everything that I had lost, and now with this, Mary’s death, I knew there was no coming back.
As much as I hated her guts, I always knew that she was the glue holding Ryder and me together. She always had the answers and was always ready with a suggestion, and it had always worked. But now, two of the people who had facilitated my entire relationship with Ryder, part of the team who had made my marriage possible, were gone, and it hit home just how alone and friendless I truly was.
Noel and Nicole might be able to help, but they were the last people I wanted to talk to right now, and besides, they were probably busy dealing with their mother’s death. As bad as my situation was, I still found a little joy in her demise; I hope the bitch suffered.
Whoever it was should take care of them next and make my life a lot better. I wonder how arrogant they would be now that their backer was gone. It didn’t say much about how she died, but it was obvious from the article that it hadn’t been from natural causes.
There was an outpouring of support for the family, which rubbed me the wrong way. Don’t these people know what that family was really like? The woman they were mourning was a demon from the pits of hell. She’d destroyed my life, fanned the flames of my innocent obsession instead of being the friend she pretended to be, and told me to leave it alone.
If she or my dad at any point had taken the blinders off for me, none of this would be happening, and I wouldn’t find myself in the predicament I’m in. Why hadn’t anyone told me? Why had they all fed my hunger to get close to him?