Total pages in book: 213
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 201920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1010(@200wpm)___ 808(@250wpm)___ 673(@300wpm)
“Yes, I am,” she snaps as she turns around just as I walk up behind her. I have to halt my pace and take half a step back as she cranes her neck to bite out, “How dare you tell me that it was easy for me.”
“You don’t know-” I try to tell her that she has no idea how well I relate to her pain, but she doesn’t let me finish.
“Leave me alone.”
She angrily brushes under her eyes as she quickly descends the stairs with me right behind her. The front door is right there and she makes a beeline for it.
She’s out of her fucking mind if she thinks I’m letting her leave here like this. “Addison. Wait a fucking minute.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she yells back and tries to whip open the door. My palm hits it first, slamming it back shut.
“You’re not leaving like this,” I warn her. My muscles are coiled, but it’s the fear making me wound so tight. She’s leaving. And she’s not coming back.
I can feel it in every inch of me.
“Yes, I am,” she replies, though with shaken confidence.
“The fuck you are.” My words are pushed through clenched teeth.
“If you respect me in any sense of the word, you will let me leave. Right now.”
“Addison, don’t do that.”
“I mean it, Daniel. I need to be alone right now.”
“I want to be there for you.” I don’t know how true the words are until I’ve said them. And oh, how fucking ironic they are.
“Well, you can’t.” She shuts me down.
Her green eyes stare up at me and all I can see is the same look she’d give Tyler when he was being clingy. The look that so obviously said she needed time and that she was overwhelmed. I get it now why he always hovered.
I’m afraid if I let her go now, she’s never coming back. I can’t lose her. Not again.
“I’m coming by tonight.” I give her the only compromise I’m capable of.
I lower my arm but she doesn’t respond. With a swift tug she pulls the door open and walks out, bare feet and all.
I stand in the doorway and watch her reach in her bag for flip-flops then put them on at the corner of the street.
She keeps looking over her shoulder, maybe to see if I’m coming for her.
And I am. She knows better than to think otherwise.
But I’ll let her get a head start.
Five years ago
He hovers. Constantly hovering.
We all know why. It’s so fucking obvious every time he brings her around.
She’s waiting to run.
She’s cute and sweet, but there’s something about her that makes it almost painfully apparent that a kid like Tyler could never hold on to her. It would take a man to keep that cute little ass.
Just thinking that as I stand in the kitchen, watching the two of them in the dining room makes me feel like a pervert. She’s only sixteen, although her curves make her look like more of a woman and less of a girl.
He gives her little touches as they sit next to each other watching something on his laptop. Her laugh makes him smile.
He’s foolish to think she’ll stay with him. Girls like that don’t stay with men like us. He can keep pretending if he wants to. He can keep bringing her home and cuddling up with her because he doesn’t know how easy it is for people to shove you away.
She’ll shove, she’ll push, she’ll leave. And I can’t blame her.
Her shoulders shake as she laughs and leans into him. His broad smile grows and like the kid he is, he wraps his arm around her shoulders.
The smile dies when Addison leans forward and away.
He doesn’t know she needs space.
It’s not his fault though. Tyler has a lot to learn. Hard life lessons.
Like the ones I’ve had to endure.
Cancer took our mother and left us a bitter father who likes the belt a little too much. Not to mention a pile of bills that a single person couldn’t possibly afford. It’s taken years to turn my father’s small-time dealing into a thriving business. Years of destroying what little life I had left.
“Let’s not,” I hear Addison say and when I look up her eyes are on me. Caught in her gaze, I hold her there, but it doesn’t last long. Tyler’s always there to reclaim her attention.
A sense of loss runs through me, followed by disgust.
I haven’t been a good person in so long, maybe I’ve forgotten how. Or maybe I never was a good person to begin with.
“You and Carter going out tonight?” my father asks as he interrupts the view I have of Tyler and his girlfriend.
It’s only ever Carter and me. Never my other brothers. We’re the oldest, after all. The ones who need to pick up my father’s slack. The ones who pay these bills and make the business what it is.