Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
She sighed again, resting her hand against her head. “Oh, James. I came over because I don’t know what to do. I believe—no, I know—you’re a good man, but something’s happened, and I think you need to turn yourself in to the police.”
“Like hell he’s gonna do that,” Kyle said, his face bright red. He didn’t show any signs of the grief I’d seen earlier. He was all rage and defensiveness. If anything, I was going to have to keep him from attacking her.
“Kyle, please.” There was enough going on in my head without him throwing himself into the mix. I turned to her. “The police? Sheila, what are you going on about?”
“I don’t want to force your hand. I’ll give you until tomorrow night, and then I’ll do it myself.”
“Why would you do that to me? You know that would ruin my entire life.”
“You fucking asshole,” Kyle spat out.
She pushed to her feet, ignoring him as she asked me, “You think I want to do this? The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you. To think of you suffering in prison over something so foolish. I wish I could help you, but clearly you’ve gone and ruined everything in your life. I hate that I have to even be involved.”
Have to be involved?
No, this was wrong. There was never a need for her fucking stalking me. Or taking photos. Never a need for a threat.
Everything she was saying was bullshit, and I could see in her fucking eyes something sinister, something like all those times when I’d been weeping as she told me I was paranoid or making things up…before falling into her trap once more.
“I know it’s a lot to process, so I’m going to leave it here, and if you need to chat, if you need someone to help turn you in, I can be there. I can help you do the right thing.”
It was all bullshit. What the fuck did Sheila know about doing the right thing?
But I was caught off guard, my emotions stretched to the max as tears rushed from my eyes the way they had from Kyle’s earlier.
“Sheila—”
“Shh, baby.” She approached me, shaking her head. “Not now. Just think on it.”
Without acknowledging Kyle, she put her cell in her bag before heading through the hall and out the door. As I heard it close behind her, tears continued pushing from my eyes, and my body was lost to a fit of trembles.
It was my turn to be the mess Kyle had been before.
I grabbed my chest as I collapsed to my knees.
Dozens of nights entered my mind as she had left me similarly crippled with anxiety. It burned in my chest like fire.
Why would she do this? played over and over in my head, along with the horrifying realization of what she’d done and said.
44
Kyle
James sobbed on his knees.
His pain renewed the strength I had struggled to find over the past few days. Stooping down, I put my arms around him, checking the hall to make sure that bastard was gone.
“She’s not fucking this up for us, James. No one is.”
“How did it take me so long?” he asked, his words taking me by surprise, especially after what she’d threatened.
“What?”
Turning to me, with his glasses fogged up from his tears, he said, “How did it take me so long to see through it all? Her facade? The deception?”
“You did see through it. That’s why you left.”
He shook his head. “Not to this extent. I knew something was horribly wrong, but what she just did… I never realized what she was capable of.”
I didn’t know how, when everything he’d told me made perfect sense as she stood in the kitchen, doe-eyed and acting so surprised at the shit she’d clearly put together to torment him, to make him feel like he was about to lose everything.
“I’ve been so stupid.” He buried his face in my shoulder. “I kept thinking we couldn’t communicate, or that she didn’t understand my pain, but…she’s not a good person.”
“She’s evil.”
“Five years she made me feel like I deserved it. Like I was so lost…or like there was something wrong with me.”
I couldn’t help reflecting on all the things he’d shared with me about their relationship and her affairs. Her demeaning him in the bedroom. Her cruelty toward him.
All those things she’d told him back then, she’d done the same even in that brief conversation earlier tonight as she tried to make him feel so ashamed and guilty for something she knew nothing about.
And of all the people to judge us, she sure as fuck didn’t have the goddamn right.
“We’ll figure this out, James. I promise you.”
I didn’t know how the fuck we were gonna pull it off, but that didn’t matter. I knew I was all in with James. Through whatever the fuck crap anyone, Sheila included, threw our way.