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)
My stomach feels hollow.
I thumb in:
ME: Of course I forgive you.
And then,
ME: I hope your dad didn’t take it too hard on you.
DREW: At least I’m still in one piece.
DREW: Mostly.
I stare down at the screen, not knowing what to text in return. There’s a script we usually play out.
My gut still clenches like it always does when I know his father has hurt him. Back in high school, I’d reach across the gear shift and grab his hand. We’ll run away from here. As soon as we’re old enough, we’ll run away from here, and you’ll never have to see that man again.
But then we got older and neither of us ran.
Well, I ran as far as the other side of Dallas, but I still came home at night to the apartment my mommy was paying for. Drew lived in the dorms, sure, but after he graduated, he went right back to work with his father. The house he bought after graduation is only a five-minute drive from his father’s Dallas district office.
I know the pressure he was under the entire time. I know he felt like he had no choice. I know because I felt the same way.
But just when I felt like I was going to buckle under the pressure, I did make a choice. Or I tried to, anyway.
And now it feels like there’s this vacuum pressure trying to suck me back in to that old suffocating life.
The phone in my hand buzzes.
DREW: Hey U still there
ME: I’m here
DREW: I never asked where you’re living now
DREW: Can I come by
DREW: I wanna talk
DREW: Like we used 2
I breathe out hard. My whole life, all I wanted was Drew Underwood to pay attention to me. The day he proposed, I told myself it was a dream come true. Even when he immediately followed it up by making sure I understood it wouldn’t be a monogamous arrangement.
That’s just so nineteenth-century, he said at the time. It’s just not realistic. I think it’s better if we don’t lie to each other or have to sneak around. You know, like high school. I always loved being able to come home to you at the end of the night.
I hadn’t thought he was capable of breaking my heart anymore after graduation, but there it was. He wanted it to go back to how it was in high school. When I was a shell of a person. When he was my world, and I was… barely alive.
Then he slid the ring on my finger, gave me a perfunctory kiss on the lips, and ran off to whatever or whoever was next in his packed, exciting life.
ME: Sorry. Not at home
DREW: Oh. Where is now?
DREW: Maybe I can come by tomorrow?
I take several short breaths, feeling trapped. I don’t want him coming by the hotel with Isaak around. What am I going to do? Tell my lover I need to go down to the lobby to chat with my fiancé?
Good god, how is this my life? I’m supposed to be boring. I’m supposed to be the professor who was old before she was ever young.
“Hey. Everything okay?” Anna asks.
Jesus, do I really have that bad of a poker face? I’ve got to work on that. There’s too much going on in my life for my emotions to be showing so transparently.
“Fine,” I say quickly. “Just texting a friend.”
ME: Hey, can I text you back later?
ME: really crowded here.
ME: Talk soon.
I send the message and then turn off my phone, breathing out hard as soon as I do.
And consumed with guilt. I never shut Drew out. He knows I always make space for him. Whenever his dad is cruel or violent, he always has me to turn to.
No wonder he wants to marry you. Who wouldn’t want their own personal therapist and comfort object on call?
It’s a cruel thought.
But also not wrong.
I frown. Is that what I really think I am to Drew? Or is it just an intrusive thought I can’t trust? Everyone says to trust your gut, but what do you do when you’ve got OCD and occasionally have intrusive thoughts like: Stab your hand with a fork? or Jump out of the moving car?
My mind feels like a minefield sometimes. I don’t know which thoughts to trust.
“Hey, everyone!” Moira says, breezing in and taking off her coat as she sits down in the chair beside Anna, furthest away from her brother. “Hope I’m not too late.”
She pulls off her shades and tucks them in her purse.
“Just in time,” Quinn starts to say before pausing and leaning over the table. “Holy shit, M. Is that a shiner?”
Domhnall shoots up from where he’s sitting across the table. He’s got his sister’s chin in his hand a second later, tilting her face toward the light.