Total pages in book: 235
Estimated words: 227851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1139(@200wpm)___ 911(@250wpm)___ 760(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 227851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1139(@200wpm)___ 911(@250wpm)___ 760(@300wpm)
“So what happened?”
Fuck, am I really going there?
Don’t stop now.
“There was a house party,” I begin, my heart beating faster. “You know, full of drink, girls and . . . opportunities. We were coming up to our seventeenth, prepping for our finals, ready for the Oxford application. Of course, it was my idea.”
“What?”
“To go out and be teenagers, get away from the constant grind of studying, and to stop trying to live up to our parents’ expectations. I knew I’d pay for it, but I was prepared to face my parents’ wrath. We were going to have a few drinks together, like brothers. I wanted to spend some time with him, like normal kids. It was just one night. I never expected to pay so severely.” I tense all over when she moves. Looks at me with soulful, innocent eyes that have no comprehension of the guilt I’ve lived with.
“You got carried away?” she asks quietly.
“Me?” I ask. Of course she’d think that. “No.” God, how I wish it was me who stepped into the road. “I’d had a few, but Jake was throwing back shots like he’d never drink again. I virtually carried him out of that house. Then it all came out.” He didn’t say it, but I heard him. “How much he hated the suffocation, that he didn’t want to go to Oxford. We made a pact.” I see his face in my mind’s eye. The excitement. “We agreed to tell them together that we didn’t want to do it anymore. We wanted to make our own decisions based on our dreams, not based on what would impress the snotty fuckers who my mum and dad socialized with. He wanted to race motorbikes, but that was considered uncouth and common. Reckless.” Fuck, just talking about being reckless got Jake killed. Ironic. “I’d never seen him so happy at the thought of rebelling with me, doing what we wanted for once, not what we were told to do.” I study her, fascinated by the veil of irritation that sinks into her face. “And then he walked out into the road.”
“You can’t be held responsible,” she grates.
“I’m held responsible because I am responsible,” I reply, holding her achingly beautiful, angry face. She’s not angry at me. It’s sweet that she’d try to make me feel better. Wasted but sweet. “I shouldn’t have dragged Jake off the perfect path. The stupid idiot shouldn’t have listened to me.”
“It doesn’t sound like you dragged him anywhere.”
“He wouldn’t be dead, Ava,” I go on. “What if—”
“No, Jesse,” she snaps, silencing me. “Don’t think like that. Life is full of what ifs. What if your parents hadn’t suffocated you?” She tilts her head. She wants an answer? “What if you stood up sooner and said enough?”
“What if I’d have played ball?” Did what I was told, tried harder in my studies. Jake would still be here.
“You would never have found me,” she whispers, her words tight. “And I would never have found you.”
I withdraw, taken aback by the raw emotion in her broken words and the stream of tears that roll down her cheeks. Shit. I can’t hold it against her that she’s said that. I’ve thought it myself numerous times, asked how it’s fair that to find love and peace, I had to lose it first. I let my eyes drop to her tummy. And as much as it hurts, she’s right. “Everything that’s happened in my life has led me to you, Ava,” I whisper, the agony in my words obvious. “It’s taken forever, but I’ve finally found where I belong.”
“With me and these two little people,” she says, holding my hand on her tummy.
And what would I have done if she hadn’t stumbled into my office? Where would I be? I pull her down to my chest, scanning her face, her eyes, her lips. “With you and those two little people. Our little people.”
She smiles, small but sad. “What about Amalie?”
“Amalie would marry well and be a good wife and mother, and I believe she might have fulfilled her obligation.” It’s happening this weekend in Seville. “It said Dr. David, didn’t it?”
“It did.”
“There you are, then.”
“And you started spending more time with Carmichael after Jake’s death?”
“I did. Carmichael knew the score. He’d been through it himself with my granddad. Are you comfy?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
I smile. “It was a relief. I escaped the daily reminder that Jake wasn’t with me anymore, and I distracted myself with jobs that my uncle gave me around The Manor. Are you sure you’re comfy?”
“I’m bloody comfy,” she gasps, exasperated, pinching my nipple.
I chuckle. “She’s comfy.”
“She is. What jobs did you do?”
“Everything. I’d collect the glasses in the bar, mow the lawns. My dad went through the roof, but I didn’t let him stop me. Then they announced that we were moving to Spain.”