Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 764(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 510(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 764(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 510(@300wpm)
"What are you looking for?"
I'm ready to snarl as I turn and glare at the door I left open. Only the girl standing in the doorway isn't who I expected to see. "What are you doing here?" I ask Becky as she steps into the garage.
"I was walking to work and passed the house. I saw the light on in here."
"Okay. Do you walk into every place where there's a light burning inside?"
She doesn't flinch at my snarling. "Only when the person whose house it is, treated me like an enemy when he saw me for the first time in years."
This time it's different. When I saw her before, she was almost apologetic, almost curled up in a protective ball. Now, it's like there's armor around her. She reminds me of the girl I used to know — always angry, defensive, but not with me. She was never like that with me.
That was then. Before I gave her a reason to be.
"What do you want from me?" I sigh.
"How can you say that?" She takes a step closer, her dark eyes narrowed but blazing. "What do I want from you? I want the truth. I want an explanation. Why did you leave that night? Why couldn't you have at least said goodbye? That was already the worst night of my life, and I came home and found out you were gone. Do you know what that did to me? Do you know how long I told myself it was my fault?"
"It wasn't your fault."
"Yeah, thanks, I know that now. Try explaining that to a sixteen-year-old who just had her life torn apart. You were the one thing I had that I could count on. You were my life raft, and I was yours – or I was supposed to be. But then you decided to run away."
"It wasn't like that."
Something dangerously close to understanding works its way over her face. "Yeah. I sort of figured after a while."
"What do you mean?" And why do I feel like the walls are closing in on me? She's blocking the doorway and I locked the swinging doors. There's no way out unless I shove my way past her. What am I, a child? There's no running away. I should know that by now.
"I mean, there's a big difference between being sixteen and twenty-six. You figure things out. You get smarter."
Careful. Don't be stupid. "If you're as smart as you say you are, then why are you putting me through this? Why do you want an apology if you know I had no choice?"
Her soft sigh is a punch to the gut. The way her face sags. "Maybe I just need to feel like I mattered at some point in my life. That somebody actually gave a shit about me for real, and not just because they wanted to get in my pants and have a little fun." She looks tired as her shoulders slump and the light leaves her eyes.
"You know it wasn't like that. It never was."
"Then why are you still so pissed at me? Why can't you look me in the eye without having to look away? Why couldn't you even call me to see if I was okay when you knew I lost our baby? Even if you didn't care about it, you were supposed to care about me." She scoffs, shaking her head. "You ran."
I'm not pissed at her. I'm pissed at myself for so many things, too many to name, even if I could find the words. "You know it wasn't because of the baby, right? That's not why I left."
She snorts, nodding. "Like I said. You figure things out."
No, she couldn't have. Could she? "Then say it," I whisper. "What do you think you know? Go ahead."
Her face hardens. "No. I didn't say it to her, and I won't say it to you."
"Her?"
"Tatum found me at the store when I was working. She wanted me to feel better about the shitty way you treated me—because she knows how it feels." All I can do is sputter in surprise. "You can't keep treating people who care about you like it's weakness or something. Because one day, you're gonna wake up, and you'll have run off every last person who ever gave a shit about you, and that will be a sad day, Romero. I would hate to see it happen."
She turns her back on me, stepping outside where her breath turns to a cloud around her head. "If you had just come back as a friend, this could've been different. I never held a grudge against you. None of us did. But you came back here acting like you were better than us. Like you resent us. That, I'm not going to forgive. And I thought you should know."