Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 86706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86706 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
“Where is he today?”
“Probably still in Missouri somewhere. But I’m actually not sure. Sad, huh?”
“For him, yeah. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“I don’t think he cares...” I chuckled angrily. “And sadly, neither do I anymore.” I thought back to a dream I’d once had. “Once when I was around thirteen, I had a vivid dream that my father showed up at my door with an Easter basket and a live bunny. The basket was filled with pink flowers. Peonies. The bunny was just sitting in this huge pile of pink peonies. It was the cutest little light brown bunny with floppy ears. He handed me the basket and asked if he could make up for some of the time we’d lost. The dream ended before I could give him an answer. I remember waking up and feeling so sad—not because of my father, but because the little bunny wasn’t real. Neither were the peonies. That’s when I realized I really had given up on him.”
“Wow.” Tristan nodded. “That’s so interesting. Once someone disappoints you that badly, they don’t deserve anything more than to be overshadowed by a rabbit and peonies.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Exactly.”
“So it was just you, your brother, and your mom?”
“Yup. Well, us and her many boyfriends. I got so used to the changeover every couple of years that I almost came to expect it. We all know how that last one ended, though...” I shivered. “Ironically, there hasn’t been anyone serious since him.”
“She never dated again?”
“As far as I know, she hasn’t. At least no one serious. I think that situation scared her off men.”
“That guy...did he beat your mother more than that one day?”
“Yeah. He was the worst of the bunch. I guess you could say she saved the best for last.” I looked away. “During those years, I was so wrapped up in high school, I turned a blind eye to it for a while. I felt guilty leaving her alone with him, though. But she claimed to love him. Things just kept getting worse. He started getting real paranoid, accusing her of cheating on him.” I tightened my fists. “Then the day I came home and found him choking her…” I cringed, thinking back to that nightmare. “I had to act fast.” My breath shook.
“It’s okay.” He reached his arm out. “You don’t have to go into the details.”
“You know how the story ends anyway, right?” I let out a long exhale.
Tristan nodded and just looked at me for a moment. “What was life like after that?”
“I lived with a lot of guilt. Even if he deserved what happened, it’s hard to live with something like what I did. I began to self-sabotage a lot of the good things in my life. I knew I needed a massive change in scenery, so it became my mission to get the hell out of Shady Hills.”
“What kind of self-sabotage?”
“I had a boyfriend at the time that happened.” I swallowed hard.
“What happened with him?”
Am I really going here, too? “Jacob was everything to me. We were friends long before we ever dated. The dating part was a small chapter of our overall story. We’d been friends almost our whole lives, actually—since we were really young. In high school, we tried our hand at dating. I never wanted to hurt him, but after the incident with my mother’s boyfriend, I fell into a dark place. I felt like I didn’t deserve Jacob. I wanted to spare him the grief of dealing with me while I worked through my issues. I also knew I needed to leave town, and he was a year younger than me. He had his entire senior year left while I was going to college in Nevada.” I shook my head. “So I ended things with him—for his own good. I thought we were too young to be that serious, too. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship by staying romantically involved.”
“You regret it?”
“Only the part where I broke his heart.”
Tristan blinked. “You’re not still in love with him?”
His question hurt my chest. If there was one thing I knew for sure... “I will always love him.”
“Where is he now?”
I shut my eyes, willing the pain away. “He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 12
TRISTAN
My heart sank. Had this kid killed himself because she’d ended things? All of a sudden the photo of her and that guy on her social media made sense—the one she said she’d miss forever. That must’ve been him.
“How did he die?”
“Car accident. He was riding in the back of a car with these guys who stupidly decided to race another car. They hit a tree, and Jacob didn’t survive.”
My stomach tensed. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I was at college when I got the call. He and I were still in touch from time to time, but things had been different since the breakup. He didn’t want to think about me dating guys while I was at school. And I wanted to give him the freedom to enjoy his senior year. I never imagined that something like that could happen. It stole any chance I had to make things right with him again.”