Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 80503 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80503 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Instead, she looks at me, and I see the pain in her eyes.
“I want to ask you about Sonia.”
I go very still. I didn’t want this, not now. Jeanie’s taste is still on my lips, but the memory of Sonia turns it sour. I don’t move a muscle, and I can tell this is killing her, but she has no clue what she’s doing to me right now.
“Why are you bringing her up right after I’ve gotten you off?” I barely spit the words out of my mouth.
“Something happened with her, whoever she was. You two had a relationship and now she’s dead. I see the way you act around your family, like it hurts to be near them, and I don’t—” She hesitates, her hands turning into fists. “I don’t want to end up like her.”
I sit there trembling with rage. She has no clue—no fucking clue—what she’s doing right now.
The idea that she’d end up like Sonia is repulsive to me.
“Sonia was a mistake,” I say, growling it at her. I slowly stand. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Gavino—”
I slam my hand down on the back of the couch, startling her. Fury rides my spine like thunder. “You ask this of me, you want details of my most horrible shame, the memories that still haunt me and keep me up at night, and yet you’re unwilling to give me anything of yourself. You realize that, don’t you? You hide all the reasons you hate Malcolm, which is fine, I don’t pry, but there’s more you’re not telling me. You want the darkest part of my life? You give me something in return.”
She stares at me, her face falling slack, and slowly shakes her head. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t expect it of me.” I turn my back on her. I’m so angry I can barely breathe. “Get out.”
“Gavino—”
“Get out, Jeanie.”
I hear her walk away. If I turn and watch her go, it’ll break me, but I can’t do it. I can’t shatter, not now.
It took me so long to get to this place. Sonia’s been gone for ten years and I still bear the scars she gave me. They’re deep and raw and still they bleed, and it took so much of me to finally become the man I am today despite everything. Now Jeanie wants to jam her fingers in the wound.
The door opens and closes with a click.
I release a pained howl, grab a decorative vase from a side table, and hurl it into the fireplace. It shatters into powder. I grab my plate and break it, my wine glass, the pitcher of water. I stand there seething.
I could rip this house to shreds and it wouldn’t take this pain away.
Nothing ever will.
Chapter 18
Jeanie
The club’s lights are down low and the music pulses through my body like quicksand. I feel it in my limbs, in my spine, in my feet and fingers. I sip a glass of champagne—stupidly overpriced and sold by the bottle—and watch as Gavino leans forward to say something to Malcolm.
This is hell. It’s the worst situation imaginable. If I had to envision the ideal torture situation, this would be it. Sitting in a club with Malcolm and Gavino. It’s so loud and so crowded and so dark that I can’t really think, which is probably a good thing. It keeps me from obsessing about what happened in Gavino’s house the night before. Benedict is sitting at the bar, throwing me rage-filled glances, and Gavino’s barely said more than two words to me since bursting into my suite, dragging me into my bedroom, throwing a bunch of clothes at me, and demanding that I get dressed and follow him.
I almost refused to go, but something in his stare made me obey.
Now here we are, drinking champagne with Malcolm in a club, while people mill around, grinding and dancing in front of the DJ booth, holding up drinks and laughing in groups, shouting to be heard over the noise.
This should be my scene. I’m twenty-two years old and in my prime partying years, and yet I’ve barely ever gotten drunk, not really drunk, and this is my first time going into a club. The people in here have more in common with me than they do with Gavino and Malcolm, and yet they seem like they belong while I’m sitting on the edge of this couch wondering when I’ll get the chance to go home.
When did I end up like this? So bitter and angry and alone?
I know when. It happened gradually, over years and years of my mother’s asshole boyfriends flirting with me, trying to touch me, trying to corner me in the bathroom. Years of my mother slowly sliding deeper into oxy addiction.
These people are young and I’d bet they haven’t been through half of what I’ve survived already.