Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 80689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80689 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 403(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Ryan drops his suitcase and collapses onto the bed, facing the window.
It’s been a night.
Sitting beside him, I massage his side. I want to ask him how he’s feeling, but on top of everything he’s been through—Simon’s fits and that reveal about their father—I can’t imagine what it must be like to walk away from the only life he’s ever known.
I don’t speak; I let him work through all this at his own pace.
“You think they’ll find him?” he finally asks.
Shortly after Simon confronted us in Ryan’s bedroom, the cops returned to the house, but when they went to retrieve Simon, he was already gone. They assured us they would continue searching for him, which was all we needed to know before we called an Uber and left.
“I hope they do,” I reply.
“After everything he’s done, I’m still worried about him. He had all those injuries. He needs to treat them.”
“Hopefully the cops will find him, but if they don’t, I’m sure he’ll take care of them, and if they get infected, he could hire nurses to watch over him twenty-four seven.”
He nods. “I feel guilty for leaving like that, but I couldn’t be there another minute.”
“You needed to get out of that place,” I assure him. “Even if we’re just a few miles away and still in town. And tomorrow we’ll be in New York, hundreds of miles away.”
“That sounds nice. Been so long since I’ve been away. I spent so much time at Hawthorne Heights, only traveling here for supplies occasionally, I really was starting to wonder if I was just a ghost. Like maybe if I tried to pass the city lines, I wouldn’t be able to.”
“I’m eager to prove you wrong about that tomorrow.”
Ryan smirks—the first time I’ve seen him smirk since he closed the door to his bedroom. Just as quickly, his expression turns serious again. “With all the time I spent there, the memories it holds, I doubt I can ever truly leave. That probably doesn’t make any sense, but…”
“It does.” Just from the shit in my own life, I know there are things you can never really escape.
His gaze meets mine. “Part of me is mad at Father for not asking me about what Simon told him, but when I told him what Kieran had done, I obviously didn’t mention I’d been lusting after him for years, so I’m sure when Simon showed him my journal, that must’ve confused him. If I’d mentioned that, maybe none of this would have happened. I just didn’t want to admit I’d ever felt anything for the guy who did that to me.”
“You shouldn’t have had to explain more than you did. And Simon shouldn’t have shown him your private journal, nor lied about what happened to you.”
“If he’d talked to me right after, maybe all this could’ve been prevented. He was my brother. We used to talk about everything. I would have thought that if he didn’t understand, he would have confronted me then.”
“Based on the things he said, I think he might have been afraid of the truth.”
His eyes get this far-off look in them. “When I had him pinned to the bed, for a moment I thought I saw something in him—something in his eyes. Like the wall he’d put up to keep me out finally came down. And I felt a remnant of that connection we had. I could see all this anger, and I’ve always assumed it was at me, but I saw anger at himself…and I think at Kieran too. I wonder if the truth caused him so much pain because there was something I didn’t know about their relationship. With how protective he always was of Kieran, I used to believe they must’ve been in love, but now I worry something else was happening between them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wonder if Kieran did something that fucked Simon up, and he just responded in a different way than me.” His eyes well with tears. “I’ll never know the truth, but it makes me wish there was a way we could have communicated, rather than both of us suffering in our own mental prisons all these years.”
I rest my hand on his cheek. “Ryan, you’ve been through so much. And from what I saw, Simon has serious mental health issues. But some things are too big for people to sort out on their own. I think you might need a therapist for that.”
He chuckles. “Yeah. I think we’ve both known that for a long time, but I always felt like I had to carry this with me. I don’t feel that way tonight.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” I lean down and offer a kiss, which he eagerly embraces.
As I pull away, he says, “You should call your aunt. Give her a heads-up that we’ll be there tomorrow and about what Simon might do.”