Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 122609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 409(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 613(@200wpm)___ 490(@250wpm)___ 409(@300wpm)
“I want you to tell me everything.”
“My life was a struggle. It still is. I’ve got daddy issues.” She ran her hand harder along her leg. “I’ve been engaged twice. Broke off both of those. I have a therapist on speed-dial. I don’t tend to have healthy romantic relationships. I’m usually told by the men I date that I’m too aggressive. I don’t act feminine enough, whatever the fuck that means. I give up on men easily because I don’t have the time to waste. My father raised me to be this way. Self-sufficient. To care for myself. He taught me how to fight, physically and mentally. I want a man like my father, and a man nothing like him. I’m too hard to get to know, and too hard to forget. My mother wasn’t much help during all of my mental woes, but she did the best she could considering she’s a mess, too. I was going to make it. It’s my destiny. Because I’m a survivor.” Her eyes darkened as she rested them upon him.
He was certain more than ever of what he suspected… now, it was a waiting game. When would she say what he’d been believing for quite some time?
“How did things go for you after your father passed away? How did you immediately process that information?” She seemed surprised he’d ask such a thing.
“Archer, do you have ulterior motives for asking that question?”
He smirked. “My life is mostly full of ulterior motives. In this case, it’s just honest curiosity.”
“Well, after my father was shot and killed, things for me went downhill fast. Even though my parents weren’t married, they were together on and off up until he passed away. They’d always found their way back to one another. My mother got married to a man I hated not long afterwards. She wanted someone square. Someone not from the street, because my father was her first love, and he died, and she hated him for leaving her, regardless of their tumultuous relationship. Her first husband, my stepfather, was a controlling asshole. She divorced him, and it wasn’t long before another asshole showed up on the doorstep.”
“I don’t mean to interrupt you, but it seems you’ve left out an important detail. Did you tell your mother what happened? The murder in the house?”
“You seem awfully fixated about my daddy issues, sir,” she quipped. “How come? And don’t tell me curiosity.”
“Because you loved him. Some say fathers are a girl’s first love. Not the puppy love that happens in our teenage years. The way a woman feels about her father says a lot about her. It tells the story of the past, the present, and your future ability to love.”
Her complexion deepened.
“I never told her that I witnessed my father murder someone. I promised him I would take it to my grave. He said she’d go to the courts and take me away from him, and he was probably right. Honestly, it would have been the right thing to do, considering what happened. That was traumatic for me and irresponsible of him, to say the least. I knew what my father was, title-wise, but not what it meant. I was protected. Naïve. Regardless, it was the only secret he asked me to keep the entire time he was alive. My mother, though not involved with gang life, had her own problems that caused me distress, too.”
“Like what?”
“My mother decided she wanted to leave that part of her life behind, you know, dealin’ with street dudes. She wanted to pretend it never happened. She never got help for it, or spoke to anyone about my father’s death and how it forced her into a pretty serious depression. I once heard her say that everyone she loves leaves. Her parents constantly left her alone with her brothers while they went around the country performing. They were jazz musicians. Bad things happened while they were away. So, she has that trauma, and she has abandonment issues. We don’t have the best relationship. My sisters and brothers, Sunday, Monroe, and Kendrick, from her two failed marriages with other men have various feelings about her, and me. Some are not favorable. Sunday feels like I was the favorite. I can prove it was the opposite. I was always the black sheep because of who my father was, and how insubordinate my mother accused me of being.”
“Who gives a shit what your mother and sister thinks. They don’t know you. I probably know you better than they do. When did you start to see yourself the way I see you? For who you truly are? When did you realize you were special? Different? You must’ve found your passion eventually, right? Fuck all of this black sheep and trauma shit. You told me earlier that you’re in love with photojournalism. Where did you find this out and fall in love?”