Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
“Shut up! For once in your goddamned life, could you just shut up?” She looks around as if anyone could overhear us in the empty fucking concrete room.
I hold up my hands to indicate I’m done talking.
Because I am. If she’s seriously pulling this bullshit, after everything we had… I just have one last question.
“Why’d you take me to Colorado, then? What was Denver about?”
Her brow drops. “Just because I don’t want to be with you doesn’t mean I want to see you go through life broken. I wanted that to be my last parting gift to you.”
Which just makes me start to fucking cry as if those goddamned mushrooms connected to some well deep down inside me, and now that the spring has sprung a leak, I can’t put the cap back on.
“You’re a good man, Isaak Luther, and I hope you have a wonderful life.” She presses her hand briefly to the glass. “It just can’t be with me.”
She retracts her hand before I can even raise mine.
“You love the money that much?” I wipe my nose with my forearm and glare up at her.
I can’t help but take the shot because I don’t understand. I was ready to tell this woman I loved her. I was ready to give her the world, to give up my world, to change everything if need be.
But she’s not willing to do the same.
“That’s not fair,” she whispers.
“Oh, it’s not?”
When I look up, tears are brimming in her eyes. I feel like such an asshole, bringing her to tears, even if there’s satisfaction in knowing that I at least still have enough hold on her to wound her at all.
“Some things are more important than money,” she says. “You taught me that.”
“Oh yeah? So what’s more important than money? ’Cause it’s obviously not me.”
“No,” she says, pounding another nail into my heart. “It’s not you. It’s my family. They may be awful, but they’re all I’ve got. I want to make amends with my mother. I’ll fit into the community now, and my father will be proud of me. Giving them a grandchild could really bring us all together—”
She pauses, maybe at the gutted look I can feel on my face.
Children.
She’s going to have kids with that little dick-twister of a man. The entire future I saw so solidly just a few days ago is slipping away like sand in a desert storm.
She’s gone before I even had hold of her.
She doesn’t want you.
She’s giving you back.
No one ever wants you.
It’s such a gut-dropping shock. Every time.
I slam my hand against the glass where hers had been so daintily placed.
“Fuck you for making me hope!” I shout and pound the glass again. “Fuck you for making me think we had a future!”
She shoves her chair back and stands.
“I never made you any promises!” Tears flood down her cheeks. But I still hear her devastating whisper, “I never told you I loved you.”
Guards grab my arms and wrench me backward, but I fight for one last glimpse of her.
“Goodbye,” she calls, and I fight harder.
Just one last glimpse—
Just one last—
One of the guards knocks me over the back of the head, and all I see is darkness.
FIFTY-FIVE
KIRA
“Well, I suppose that’s the best it’s going to get,” Carol says, looking at me critically in the mirror after the makeup and hair people have spent hours plucking and painting and spraying.
Her disappointment is clear on her face as she looks down at me in the designer dress that had to be let out at the last minute in order to fit my new size.
Naturally my mother wouldn’t let me wear the gorgeous gown my friend designed and created for me. Drew told me in his new scary threatening voice to humor her and wear the dress she wanted.
Not that she’s pleased now that I’m in the damn thing. “This just isn’t the way it’s supposed to fit.”
She frowns and reaches out to try to tug at the gown even though I’m so strapped into the damn thing it’s not going anywhere. “I told you to stop with the carbs. But what have you done instead? Gone and gained weight. Are you trying to make your father and I laughingstocks in front of the entire congregation?”
“What are you even talking about?” I jerk away from her hands yanking at the back of the gown. “How does what I look like make you a laughingstock?”
Carol gets up in my face. “Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. You always were a little pig. From the time you nursed and I had to slap your face when you got too greedy.”
My mouth just drops open. “We’re not even Catholic.” It’s a lame reply when really I want to ask, why are you such a bitch?
“I always thought we should borrow that one for the Commandments.”