Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 62543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62543 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
His rough stubble brushes along my sensitive skin, and my body bows to him. I can’t deny the effect he has on my body. I can’t help how I want him. I try to override my body’s reaction to him.
“We need to talk,” I try to tell him, but he shushes me. And I obey. Whatever fate Jay gives me, I’ll take it. I know that with every piece of my being in this moment. I only exist because of him, and I’m guilty of a far worse crime than any he could commit against me. I’ll bend to his will; I owe him that. I owe him everything.
“Go back to sleep,” he tells me in an even voice. And for the first time in years, I do just that. I slip easily into the darkness and fall into the depths of a dream I once had long ago.
Chapter 11
John
The camera’s set up and focused on her. She's sitting on the bed with her knees pulled into her chest. There’s a room upstairs full of clothes for her, yet she’s wearing a white t-shirt that’s far too large for her and a pair of men's blue flannel pajama pants. Something Jay must have left for her to wear. She's alone on a tiny ass mattress with nothing else in the room except a metal chair.
I let out a tortured breath and drag the chair across the room. The metal legs scrape on the cement floor, and the screeching only pisses me off. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I think about how I’ve canceled everything to be here. It’s like an obsession, picking at the back of my brain, the anxiety making my body tremble. But more than that, I’m curious.
I don’t know what exactly happened between them, but the way she looks at him and vice versa… I’m more than curious.
“How do you know Jay?” Robin asks me with her gaze still fixed on the sheet she’s balling up in her hand. She dares to lift those hazel eyes to me, and I take a moment to consider what I want to tell her.
“We met when we were kids,” I answer. I finally sit down a few feet away from the bed, but inside of the camera’s field. I swallow thickly. “He helped me,” I admit to her.
She picks at the sheet, but doesn’t look down. Tilting her head, she asks me, “Helped you with what?”
“I was adopted and it was hard for me, but Jay was,” I pause and clear my throat, remembering back to when we were kids. Both of us lost and feeling alone, feeling abandoned. “Jay was a good friend when I needed one.” I nod my head once and then look back at her, but I have to rip my eyes away. It doesn’t justify this.
“I see,” Robin says softly and it reminds me that she’s a shrink. A huff of a humorless laugh spills from my lips. “Are you analyzing me, Doctor Everly?” I ask her with humor in my voice, but she nods her head once.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says in a soft voice, still picking at the sheet.
I try to swallow the spiked ball that’s formed in my throat, but I can’t. Instead I just talk. “I didn’t want to do this,” I tell her. “I’m afraid to not be here though.” I look her in the eyes when I say, “When I came back here this morning, I was scared that I’d find-”
I shake my head, unable to continue. It makes me less of a man to leave. Less of a man to leave Jay with her. But there’s something I don’t know. It’s like it’s right in front of my face, something I know deep down inside that says it’s all okay, that this is meant to happen like this.
“Jay doesn’t want to hurt me,” Robin says confidently, but then adds, “Maybe a small piece of him wants to. But I don’t think he would.”
I stare at her with wonder and ask, “Why would you give him the chance?” Her eyes narrow with pain and gloss over before she reaches farther onto the bed and pulls the sheets up to get comfortable.
“What do you know about me?” she asks me.
“You’re a psychiatrist,” I answer her. I almost add that I looked her up while she slept. That I know where she went to school and other details I was able to find online, but I shut my mouth. She’s already frightened, and I’m holding on by a thread. “Did you want to become a shrink because of what… what you went through?” I ask her. My heart aches for her as I search her eyes for answers.
I’ve felt bad for Jay for so many years. It’s why I could never leave his side. And I feel the same for her. Unabashedly so.