Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Shrugging, because what did it fucking matter at this point, I continued to speak.
“What didn’t he do would be an easier question to answer,” I admitted. “He once collected mouse droppings and put it into a cake. He waited until I’d eaten a piece before he showed me what he’d done. I got really sick from that.”
I sighed. I’d spent two nights in the hospital for that one.
“Then there was the time that he’d known he couldn’t get away with it, and then he’d put cilantro into my food because that was the easiest way to hide the fact that he wanted to fuck with me. I can’t stand cilantro. It tastes like soap to me,” I admitted. “He did that a lot. And then I was forced to eat it because there wasn’t anything else to eat if I didn’t. And he liked to see me starve more than he liked to fuck with my food.”
Jeremiah’s fists clenched hard. “What else?”
“There’s a lot.” I shrugged. “I…”
“Yo, Dorcas.”
I looked up to see Price looking at me.
“Yeah?” I asked very quietly.
“You got any more beer anywhere?” he asked.
I licked my lips nervously and said, “No. I think I only bought three cases.”
That’d been all that I could carry.
“Fuck. That sucks. You should’ve gotten more,” Price grumbled, turning around and dismissing me.
“What’s that face for?” Jeremiah wondered.
I looked at him with a hint of fear in my eyes that I couldn’t quite hide. “He used to call me Dorcas in the most annoying way,” I admitted, changing my voice to sound like Amon’s soulless one. “‘Dorcas, does that food taste good? Dorcas, do you want to come sleep with me tonight? Dorcas, don’t you just hate it when you wake up and you can’t breathe?’” I shook my head. “Hearing my name gives me major ‘I want to stab myself in the eardrum with a knife’ vibes.”
When I looked at Jeremiah next, it was to see his face completely blank.
“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked quietly.
I had no clue.
At least not since yesterday sometime.
I’d been too nervous about today to eat what little my body would allow.
“What if you watched me cook you something?” he asked, obviously reading the look on my face for what it was.
I thought about that for a moment.
“I can sometimes only eat lunch meat and bread,” I admitted.
“What about a grilled cheese?” he asked.
I swallowed hard. “I think… as long as the cheese is pre-packaged, I could do that.”
There couldn’t be any butter, though.
“Come on.”
That was the first time that I ate anything that Jeremiah cooked for me—someone besides myself, as a matter of fact, that didn’t come from fast food. But it definitely wouldn’t be the last.
• • •
Honestly, I think I would’ve been all right continuing to live the life that we’d made with each other… until I saw that Mimi had come back home to run her parents’ racetrack years after we’d married.
It was seeing the look in Bram’s eyes as he stared at her that sealed the deal.
It was that look that helped me make the decision.
Not only was the investigator that’d been responsible for looking into Amon’s murder dead—he’d died in a car accident a year ago—but Mimi was back.
There was no reason to keep playing this game.
No reason to keep thinking that I could make Bram happy when everyone knew I couldn’t.
No reason to continue to deal with abuse from the Crow family when I didn’t need to anymore.
It was time, and I made the decision while having sex with Bram.
“Turn over,” he growled.
I did, unhappy that I couldn’t put up a fight when it came to my husband.
I would do anything to make him happy.
Even leave.
He fucked me from behind.
He gave me an orgasm.
And not once did he have to look into my eyes. So he could pretend I wasn’t really me.
It was after he’d fucked me that I realized the truth.
Sex with Bram was never how it was supposed to be.
He always, always, always made it good for me. I never finished unsatisfied. But there was always something missing.
Something pivotal that was missing that I knew would be there had it been Mimi.
So, as he fucked me to his own orgasm, I realized a few things.
This would never, ever be what I wanted it to be.
And I could leave.
As of last month, I’d graduated from college with a degree in child psychology. Something in which I’d worked hard over the last three years to accomplish four years of work in three.
I mean, what the hell else were you supposed to do with your time when nobody talked to you?
Anyway, the next day, when Bram left for work, I started packing my things.
The only things that I took were my clothes, my toiletries, and my snacks.
Snacks that he wouldn’t eat, anyway.