Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
But then again, this is a daydream, right? None of this is real. None of this will ever happen. I’ll probably never see you and you’ll probably never see me. So maybe you could be my first kiss, after all.
Until next time,
Peyton
PS: You know what they call a daydream? A reverie. And reverie, along with daydream, is my favorite word.
To: Peyton Turner
From: Bo Porter
Peyton,
What if I do have nefarious intentions? What if I’m playing a really long game? A game where, as you said, I lure you in and then ruin you. Although if I really was, I wouldn’t tell you.
Like I never tell you about anything else. Other than my crime and that I’m a cowboy. Or was. I was a lot of other things too but they don’t matter anymore. In here, I’m just a number in an orange jumpsuit. So maybe you already know everything there is to know about me.
Another thing to know about me: I’m not like your daddy. I’m not going to hurt you. Not physically at least. My rough hands may leave marks on your body but they won’t be the ones you’ll cry over when you look at them in the mirror. My sharp teeth may bruise your skin but only because you asked for it.
I’m also not like all the other motherfuckers out there. Those little college-going pissants who don’t know their asses from their elbows. I’m torn between beating the shit out of them until they stop existing for making you feel the way you do and letting them live because their loss is my gain.
Even though I haven’t been on the outside for eight years now and things may have changed, I know some things remain the same. A man getting to put his rough hands on a woman whose soft skin has never known any other fingers is one of them. I thought I knew hunger. I knew craving. I knew what it’s like to starve in a place like this. But I didn’t know the first thing about it until your last letter.
Hunger is when there’s a deep ache in your stomach. When every breath you let out hollows out your gut and leaves it clenching. Craving is when your fingers shake while standing in the chow line, and your fucking knees tremble in the exercise yard. Starving is what happens when the slightest thought of you makes my body sweat. And hard.
I’ve been so fucking hard all week.
You want hard things, don’t you? Well, here I am: all hard up and in pain. And I may sound like a big man right now, boasting about taking it slow; taking my time with you, absorbing you, dissolving you on my tongue; strumming you and stirring you with my fingers, but I already know it’s going to be a struggle.
It’s going to be a struggle to control myself.
So maybe it’s a good thing that I may never get to see you because if I do, I don’t think I’d stop with just a kiss on the lips. I’d want things from you that you probably aren’t ready to give.
Bo
PS: A reverie, huh. So maybe that’s what you are: my reverie. My dream girl.
AS ALWAYS, I wake up fully aware.
I slowly sit up on the sleeping bag with the early morning sun at my back. There’s dirt under my fingernails and twigs in my hair. There’s streaks of blood on my body and my dress, dried up and so stark against the white backdrop. Rocky’s still tied to the same tree, his head bent, mouth grazing in the bucket on the ground. There’s breakfast waiting for me, warm and fresh by my sleeping bag, along with my own bucket of water and a small towel. I notice the smoke rising from the firepit he built yesterday, alerting me that he probably cooked those breakfast sausages while I was sleeping. At least he isn’t going along with my fake vegetarianism anymore.
The only thing that’s missing from this scene is the man who put all of this together.
Then I hear a splash in the close distance, and beyond the trees and the foliage, I spy flashes of arms cycling in and out. I guess I found him then. He’s taking an early morning swim. But how is he doing that after what I…
Regret drowns me for a few seconds. I honestly did not mean to stab him. Yes, he deserved it. He probably deserves more, but daydreaming about plunging a knife into someone and actually doing it and watching the blood spurt out is something else.
I never want to do that again. And yes, I will admit that I never want to do that to him again. I also don’t want to think about what came after.
What he made me, basically forced—as always—me to do.