Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Being a dick. “He couldn’t come, Jellybean.”
She shook her head. “It’s not nice to leave people out.”
“He’s not left out. He’s just busy.” Planning to get drunk. Planning to screw girls. Hating me. “Are you going to show me your new house?” I asked to distract her.
With an eager nod, she wiggled out of my arms, then took my hand, dragging me inside the fancy home. It looked like someone had taken a mansion and asked for a hunting cabin chic.
Antler chandeliers and sheepskin rugs dotted the hallways. Gracie pointed at the chandelier. “Mr. David said they aren’t real because he doesn’t like to kill animals. I like it. Do you like it?”
Before I could answer, she dragged me into a game room. “I’m going to ask Mr. David and Miss Emma if you can come live with us, too.”
A lump formed in my throat at that.
“They buy ice cream all the time and let you have bubble baths every night until your toes look like raisins.”
Forcing a smile, I picked up an eight ball and rolled it over the green felt of the table. “Careful. Your toes will drop off.”
She giggled, and I picked her up and tickled her feet until she squealed.
“We should go find everyone,” I said. “Miss Emma will think I’ve stolen you.”
“You are stealing me.”
I trudged out of the room and through a massive dining room with the biggest table I’d ever seen outside of a magazine, then onto the back deck overlooking the lake.
Kyle, Chad, and Emma sat at a food-covered table while David tended a barbeque grill a few feet away.
I put Gracie down and sank into the chair beside Kyle. Gracie’s bare feet slapped over the wooden deck as she made a beeline to David. Smiling, he lifted her up to let her flip a burger.
I tried to focus on the conversation over lunch, but it was hard. Every time David or Chad did anything with Gracie, all I saw was Hendrix doing the same thing with her. They were a family the same way we used to be. They doted on her, loved her…I was both grateful she had that and sad she wasn’t getting it from me every day.
A crayon drawing of three people landed in front of me, the words “I miss you the most. Luv, Gracie,” scrawled across the bottom. “Can you give it to King Buttmunch?”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Of course.”
Chapter 26
HENDRIX
There wasn’t a party at my house.
I never invited anyone. I never intended to, and while I hated lies, I hated the way I felt about Lola more.
About an hour ago, I’d made the mistake of pulling up Lola’s most recent Instapic post—a photo of Gracie, Lola, and the wannabe, young, dickass Daddy Warbucks of Barrington on a motherfucking boat. Smiling. Lola’s cheeks were pink from the sun, her wet, blond hair stuck to her perfect face, and Gracie in her lap. Mr. Barrington sat wedged right beside the girls who used to be mine.
I hated everything about it.
Ever since I’d seen that picture, I’d sat on my bed in my boxers, ignoring texts from Bell and Wolf asking if I was coming to the dump party while I strummed over the worn strings of my guitar. The guitar I hadn’t played in two years because I’d pawned it for her. Medusa. The girl who had turned my once-beating heart to stone.
As much as it meant to me, I hadn’t thought twice when I’d pawned it to get the ring. The ring that, for some reason, still sat in my nightstand drawer. When I confronted her the night after I saw her at the clinic with Kyle and she told me the baby hadn’t been mine, that she’d cheated, damn did the thought I gave it up for her break me.
Angry as hell, I went straight back to the shop, thinking I could get the guitar back, but it was already gone.
Lola knew how much it meant to me, and the irony that she was the one to bring it back to me was why I couldn’t make myself tell her thanks. It hurt, just like everything else about her did.
Sighing, I plucked out the chorus of “Glycerine.”
The lyrics fit Dayton. And the older I grew, the more that song shifted and changed until it made absolute sense. And damn, did it make more sense than it ever had right about then. Push and pull and utter desperation.
I strummed out the tune, changing the lyrics just enough to make sense for me.
She had been here, then she’d been away.
I’d been alone with a revolving door of girls.
And the fuck could I love anyone more.
I needed her. When she wanted us less… And just fuck…
I finished off the song, something heavy as shit in my chest. I had one life. One. And at the end of the day, regardless of what she’d done, I just wanted her in it.