Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
But I really hoped he couldn’t.
CHAPTER
FIVE
I wasn’t surprised when he slept another three days after that lovely interaction.
Honestly, it was a blessing.
I’d always thought I was pretty patient, that I was about as understanding as a person could be. I’d been a little kid when I’d mastered the perfect volume to speak to an older person. I walked really slow from all the years I had spent keeping pace with my grandparents.
As far back as I could remember, there had always been things that I’d had to quickly come to terms with. Thinking back on it now, it was more along the lines that I’d had shit I had to take with a smile on my face, and I had. Mostly because I had figured out really quick that I wasn’t the only person who had to suffer due to the decisions that others had made.
I’d had to bounce from school to school, had to catch up with academics, start over, try and be friendly but not too friendly, but my grandparents had also had a cross to bear. Now I knew that it sure as hell couldn’t have been easy for them either. Trying to find jobs that also didn’t ask too many questions at their ages, finding somewhere to live that was cheap, starting over and starting over, and constantly living with the worst of the fear that we would be found.
I couldn’t imagine, but just thinking about it made me love them even more.
I would have done anything for them, and that’s why I had taken care of them as they’d gotten older. They had already been older parents when they’d had my mom. My grandma had been forty-two when she’d found out she was pregnant after a decade of trying. She had been in her late sixties when I’d been born. My grandpa had been even older. Once, when I’d been around five or six, he’d tried to tell me it was his hundredth birthday; he’d never actually admitted what his real age was, and if he had a birth certificate or passport, I’d never found it.
Together, we went through my puberty, and their diabetes, high blood pressure, and early stages of dementia. They took care of me in diapers, and I had taken care of them while they’d been the ones who needed them. I’d rubbed more swollen legs and feet than I could count. I had fed them when their hands had gotten too shaky to do it themselves.
Taking care of people wasn’t something new for me.
But taking care of a cranky, irritable superbeing who seemed like he could barely deal with my presence for no good reason was a totally different fucking beast.
I might respect him, but I didn’t love him, and with love, you could do anything.
But when you didn’t love someone, it was harder not to want to wring their fucking necks when they got on your nerves.
And oh, the son of a bitch got on my nerves.
The other night, we had sat next to each other for hours, looking through every site with any detail of The Centurion’s recent appearance. It was like he was hoping to find… something. Some mention. I wasn’t positive of what, because he wouldn’t tell me shit.
Was he worried about them? Did he think that what had happened to him would happen to them? What was their relationship even like? Were they friends? Family? Had they been raised in a government facility together?
There were so many questions I wasn’t going to ask but I wanted to. Oh, did I want to.
The problem was that I had the balls—mostly because I had the curiosity—but I had the brains to know that I better not.
Some people could handle the truth. I guess I wasn’t one of them.
Anyway, I read him everything we came across. One article after another, even though most of them were the exact same with the difference of a sentence or two. Eventually, he’d finally fallen asleep without another word.
While he’d slept, I worked like I always did and, fortunately, none of my students mentioned me looking like I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. I’d gotten a small job translating a manual from English to Portuguese, and that had kept my thoughts on things other than superbeings and having my limbs rendered.
I’d also started eyeing my belongings so I could decide what to do with the few extra pieces of furniture I’d bought. It was a good thing I wasn’t attached to anything. My grandma had taught me to use my sharpest imaginary scissors and cut the cords on the stuff I knew would be too big or too much trouble to take. At least that’s what I was telling myself.
Because no matter how reasonable I tried to be, I still felt weird. My chest heavy. My stomach off.