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)
No one knows the whole story.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I keep insisting.
I absolutely don’t, because for some insane freaking reason, I do want to tell him.
If there’s anyone in this whole wide world that I’d want to tell, it’d be him. Because somehow my heart thinks I owe him that. I owe him the truth about my life because he saved me from it. Without knowing, he gave me and my mother a second chance. His crime saved us, or at least me, and revealing all my hidden truths to him seems like a very small price to pay. But if I tell him that, then I’m going to have to tell him the whole truth. And I can’t tell him the whole truth because I’m supposed to be lying and pretending and playing a stupid role that’s getting harder and harder to do.
“How. Fucking. Often?” he roars, jerking me closer to him.
My hand goes flying and lands on his wildly breathing chest to find my balance. And before I can stop myself, I practically shriek, “It doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t fucking matter how often. My father is a monster and that’s what he does. That’s what he’s always done. It’s not even the point. I don’t care about that. I don’t care how many times my father beat me. That’s not the right question.”
“What’s the right question?”
If I was more in possession of my faculties, I’d consider my words carefully. If I wasn’t holding on to him like I’m falling apart and he’s the one holding all my pieces together, I’d pare my words, try to tread carefully, so I don’t expose too much or accidentally ruin everything.
As it is, I don’t.
My heart pounds with its own rhythm and my lips let the words flow. “The right question is about why, instead of protecting me from my father, my mother used me as a shield to protect herself. Why did she provoke him against me when he was in a bad mood; why did she put him in a bad mood in the first place so he’d focus his wrath on me and not on her? So he’d take his f-frustrations out on me and not on her. The right question is”—I keep going, even though I’m running out of breath—“why didn’t she love me enough to protect me? Am I even worth protecting?”
Because if my own mother didn’t protect me, then maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m expendable. I’m forgettable and dispensable. I don’t matter to anyone.
He leans forward, jerking me out of my thoughts. When I get a look at his eyes, my fingers dig into his shoulders like claws. It’s probably painful to him, but again, he doesn’t show it, and neither can I loosen my grip on him. Because there’s fire in his dark eyes, but it’s not like the kind I’ve seen before.
It’s the kind that’ll burn these woods down.
“I want you to listen to me,” he says, his skin burning hot just like his words and his stare. “When we go back, I’m going to hunt him down, and I’m going to kill him. And I’m gonna do it with my bare hands. Because shootin’ him down like an animal or stabbin’ him with a knife isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to make him regret putting his hands on you. So I’m going to wrap my hands around his throat, and I’m going to squeeze every tendon and crush every bone in his neck. And I’ll do it slowly, so he has enough time to watch his entire life flash before his eyes and all the choices he made that led him to his death. Do you understand what I’m sayin’ to you? When we reach Black Rock, I’m gonna kill your father for hurtin’ you.”
I was wrong. The fire in his eyes won’t be contained to just these woods. The fire in his eyes will burn the world down. And all the people in it.
Including my father.
“But you…” I whisper, hypnotized by the darkness in his gaze. “You said you wouldn’t kill him.”
I don’t know which him I’m referring to. My father or Peyton’s father, the man on whom he’s intent on exacting revenge. I don’t even know if I’m playing a part; and if I am, then how do I keep doing it when he’s promising to kill people.
For me.
“That was before I knew,” he says.
“K-knew what?”
“That you’re worth protectin’.”
His words sound sweet. They sound like the light at the end of a tunnel, the first drop of rain on cracked, scorched earth. They sound like they’re meant for me.
For the real me.
The one I’m trying to hide away from him—and I can’t have that. I absolutely can’t. So I need to find a way to run before we reach Black Rock, and I need to find it quickly.