Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
I’d wake in a full-blown sweat.
I’d pace the garden with its veggie patch and windchimes and look at the moon as it cycled from crescent to half-full.
What if he’d never been there?
What if he’d never existed?
What if I’d never seen him at the club and spent six months being broken by others?
I thought I’d hated Henri for those initial pains. I thought I’d been strong surviving him when really…I’d never hated him because I felt him.
I’d always felt him.
Felt his loneliness, his longing, his love.
I’d felt him when he was only half alive—a man with nothing and no one. Would I feel him now if he died?
Would the flames between us turn to ash and cause my heart to crumble?
He’s alive.
He has to be.
I rubbed my chest, tracing the indentation in the centre of my sternum. The mark of death that’d been stopped thanks to Peter protecting me.
Two weeks since I’d been home.
All my belongings from my old apartment with Sam had been stacked in boxes in the corner of my childhood room. Apparently, he’d visited my parents a few weeks after he’d left me in Paris. He’d broken down and apologised for leaving me there. He’d shown he did have a sliver of a soul and had even sent a text to my new phone when the rumour got to him that I’d returned. His apology had been true, the guilt haunting him enough to make him a better person.
I’d texted back and said I forgave him.
My days were kept busy with aunts and uncles who popped by. My cousins—blood and non-blood—did what they thought was best and distracted me with presents, cakes, and conversation.
I found myself craving the same quiet that Krish held so dear.
We’d often lie on the lawn just staring at the sky. Occasionally, Tiger would hop onto our chests and nudge our chins with his exquisitely soft nose. Krish was right. That rabbit had some sort of magical calmness that fed into me the moment he was near.
If it wasn’t for my brother and his bunny, I might’ve gone screaming down the street.
I had so much inside me.
A churning mess that needed to be free.
I didn’t know if I wanted to sob or curse, screech or break.
By the end of the third week, my parents made noises of me speaking to someone. Dad ran a few tests on me at his hospital and thanks to regular home cooked meals, I put on the weight I’d lost. The cut on my neck and hole in my chest healed far too quickly, erasing what’d happened, making it seem as if none of it had been real.
The past eight months took on a strange sort of patina.
A dark haze that grew thicker and thicker, deleting the past until I clung with desperate fingers to memories.
Not because I wanted to recall the pain but because I wanted to recall them.
Peter and Mollie.
Citra and Kirk.
Suri and Dane and Caishen and Rebeca and Nancy and…
Rachel messaged me often from where she’d moved in with her uncle in Madrid. Her parents were too old to have another baby in the house, but her uncle—who she’d always been close to—had never gotten to raise a child. He and his wife had tried to adopt, but she’d died before they’d been approved.
Rachel said she’d never seen him so happy to have her stay even though she still couldn’t decide if she loved her son or hated him for being Victor’s.
“Ily, baby?”
I looked up from pretending to read in the egg-chair on the patio. The winter chill kept trying to push me inside but…I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to hear my mother and her two sisters laughing as they made Sunday dinner complete with malai kofta and banana blossom curry.
“I’d murder someone for a banana blossom coconut curry from my cousin’s restaurant. He runs it with his wife, and I’ve never found anything as good.”
Peter’s voice tore through my head.
The first night I’d arrived at the jewel’s quarters.
The first hint of his sorrow.
I choked on a sob as I looked up at my mother and did my best to hide my tears. “Yeah, Mama?”
“Come join us. I don’t like to see you out here all alone.” She wiped her hands on a tea towel, giving me a sad grimace.
“I’m okay. Truly.” I plastered a smile over my melancholy. I loved my parents too much to let them continue worrying about me, especially seeing as I’d told them—in heavily redacted sentences—about where I’d been and why I hadn’t been able to come home. I hadn’t told them about Henri’s involvement in stealing me away. I didn’t tell them about the sexual nature of the abuse. But I had confessed that I’d found people who meant the world to me, all while we suffered in sorrow together.
Giving me a knowing look, she said gently, “Would you think about talking to someone like your father suggested?”