Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Then sighing, I say, “I can’t watch what you’re doing to yourself. I can’t stand it. And I won’t. I will absolutely not stand for it. Now I’ve tried explaining it to you multiple times that you need to stop punishing yourself, but you don’t listen to me. So this is how things are going to go down: you’re going to stop or I will tell everyone everything. I will tell on you and then I will go all hysterical and dramatic on your ass. And you know that I can do it. You know I’m very much capable of that. So you’re going to stop. I don’t care how. I don’t even care if you want to or not. All I care about is that you —”
“Okay.”
“What?”
“Okay,” he repeats, his eyes and features grave. “I’ll stop.”
I frown suspiciously. “You will?”
“Yeah.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
My suspicion still isn’t gone. “And you promise?”
He lets a second pass by and then he nods. “I promise.”
Oh, thank God.
Thank fucking God.
“Thank you,” I say then. “For both. For promising to stop and… for NYU.”
For a few seconds all he does is stare at me. Then, shrugging tightly, “It was nothing.”
He’s wrong. It was everything.
Like so many other things that he’s done.
This bruised and battered guy. Who does the tenderest of things in the cruelest of ways.
My Bandit.
“I have questions,” I say, moving on to the next thing on my agenda.
The other important reason why I came here tonight.
With an overnight bag.
He senses the shift in our conversation, quite possibly the shift that will finally reveal the reason to him as to why I came. And he goes even more alert than before as he asks, “About?”
“How much,” I swallow, fisting my hands, “did you read?”
Of my diary.
No matter his answer, it’s not going to change that he read it. That he violated my privacy in such a gross fashion. He violated my trust. He violated.
Transgressed, overstepped, contravened.
But still, I’d like to know.
I’d like to know how much of my heart, my very soul, did he get to look at.
And I’m thankful when swallowing thickly, he gives me a straight answer. “A paragraph.”
That doesn’t tell me anything.
My paragraphs can go from one line to the whole page. I’m chaotic that way. And again, one word is one too many, but still I have to know. I have to know exactly how much, how many.
“How long was it, the paragraph?”
Another swallow. “Three lines.”
“And that’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you do it to… Did you do it for fun?”
“No.”
“To hurt me then?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then why?’
I spend the next few seconds in agonizing wait as he simply watches me. Then, “To feel…”
God.
“To feel what, Reign?”
Another swallow, as if his throat is rapidly going dry and scratchy. “To feel close to you.”
Good thing there’s a wall behind me, or is it the lone dresser in his room?
I can’t tell.
All I know is that I’m very glad that I have something to lean on. Because my knees have gone weak. My knees are trembling. They’re knocking against each other.
And I wish I could simply collapse.
I wish I could… touch him.
Gosh, I want to touch him. So, so badly.
And now that I know why it’s very hard to stop myself.
But I feel like if I do, he might break. He’s so tightly wound in this moment.
So tightly coiled, as though revealing this one vulnerable thing about himself might ruin him.
It might ruin me too.
So I wait and ask, “You know it was wrong, though, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“You hurt me. Even though you didn’t want to.”
“I know.”
“You used it against me, Reign. You used my deepest, darkest thoughts against me.”
His chest shudders with a breath. “I know and I…”
“You what?”
And then I do break him.
Without laying a single finger on him, I watch him crack.
I watch him shift on his feet.
I watch him yank his hands out of his pockets and rake his fingers through his spiky hair. He even tugs on a few strands as he replies, “And I regret it, all right? I fucking regret using it against you. I fucking regret ever touching your diary. Touching something…” His features ripple with disgust, self-recrimination as he takes a couple of steps toward me and then back. “I regret touching something so precious and pure. But I… Like an asshole, I couldn’t stop myself and then you were… you wouldn’t listen. You wouldn’t…”
Finally, he sighs, his shoulders rolling up and down, and stares into my eyes, his own swimming with torment. “What I said that night was bullshit. That fucking ultimatum crap. I did it to scare you. I did it so you’d run and you’d run straight into his arms where you belong. But here you fucking are. Again. Here you are, being a good fucking girl, trying to save me. I don’t need you to fucking save me, all right? What I need from you is to go. Go run off to your boyfriend and live your happily ever after. What I need from you, Echo, is to stop coming after me. With your big brown eyes and your goddamn pink dresses. I don’t even know why you’re wearing pink tonight or why your lips shine like that. Like, what is that shit? Why’s your pouty mouth glittering like a fucking target, like something that I can’t look away from. I don’t know and I don’t fucking care. All I care about is that you leave me the fuck alone. Because if you don’t, I’m going to do worse things to you than just reading your fucking diary. Do you understand?”