Total pages in book: 215
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Zoey glances at her mother, and I watch her a little too closely, hating the way those bright green eyes seem to darken, unshed tears welling, but she refuses to allow them to fall. She shakes her head, this time not even bothering to spare me a glance. “That ship sailed a long time ago,” she murmurs before standing and clutching her plate. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m not very hungry.”
Zoey walks away, taking her plate with her, and I watch as she dumps it on the kitchen counter before hightailing it to the stairs and taking her ass back to her room. I listen to every step she takes until I hear the familiar sound of her bedroom door closing behind her.
A heaviness weighs down on my shoulders. I’m not going to lie, the idea of falling back into our old patterns and dragging her kicking and screaming back into my life fills me with the kind of elation that no man should ever be so lucky to possess. But she’s right, that ship sailed three long years ago. We can’t go back to how it used to be. Too much has changed. I broke her heart and tore her to shreds, and despite the way she holds her head up high, I can still see just how broken she is.
The rest of dinner passes in an uncomfortable silence, at least for me anyway. Mom and Erica hound Hazel about how she’s settling into middle school, and I curse myself for being so fucking self-centered that I didn’t even realize she was starting this year. I can’t help but think back to what Zoey said to me in the school bathroom, how my avoidance of her is also a punishment for Hazel, and seeing how grown up she’s become and how much of her life I’ve missed, I see just how right Zoey was.
The guilt eats at me, and after dinner, I make my way up the stairs. Music trickles from beneath Zoey’s closed door, but I slink right past it until I’m leaning in the open doorway of Hazel’s bedroom.
My gaze shifts around her room, taking it all in and realizing just how different Hazel is compared to Zoey at her age. There are makeup and hair products spread out from one end of the room to the other, but when Zoey was eleven years old, her room was filled with . . . me. Our photos were stuck up on the walls, and she had a collection of teddy bears I’d won for her at every fair we’d ever been to piled up in the corner.
Hazel relaxes back on her bed, holding her phone above her head, and from the sound of it, she’s listening to a makeup tutorial. Clearly not having noticed me in her doorway, I gently rap my knuckles on the frame and watch as her head snaps up.
Hazel peers at me from her bed, abandoning her phone on the blanket and sitting up, her gaze narrowing as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, well. If it isn’t Noah Ryan coming to beg for forgiveness,” she chides, proving that while she’s certainly very different from her big sister, there are also a lot of striking similarities. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Ha. Ha,” I say, laying the sarcasm on thick before pressing my lips into a hard line. “You hate me too, huh?”
Her gaze falls away, and sadness creeps into her eyes as she sits there, not knowing what to say.
I let out a breath and stride into her room, sliding her desk chair out and dropping onto it. I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees, not really knowing what to say either. “I’m really sorry, Hazel,” I tell her. “After Linc died, I didn’t know how to handle it. I still don’t, and I pushed away everything good in my life. I was drowning in my own grief. Linc was . . . you know. And Zoey—” I let out a breath, needing to figure out what I’m trying to say and how to explain something so complicated and deep to an eleven-year-old. “Your sister made me happy. She was everything good in my life, and I wasn’t ready to feel that happiness. The guilt I felt for even thinking about smiling when Linc was gone ate at me, so I pushed her away. I distanced myself from everyone without a thought about who I was hurting in the process.”
Hazel pulls her legs up on her bed, crosses them, and tugs the blanket over her lap, unable to look up and meet my stare. “I lost Linc too, you know?” she murmurs. “He was my best friend. You had Zoey, and I had Linc, then he was gone. But you were gone too, and Zoey was sad all the time, so I had no one.”