Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 156392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 782(@200wpm)___ 626(@250wpm)___ 521(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 782(@200wpm)___ 626(@250wpm)___ 521(@300wpm)
What the hell is going on?
Papa never liked Eli. And I mean never.
He’s called him a little psycho since he was twelve and has often gotten into massive rows with Uncle Aiden—Eli’s dad—over that.
He hated him even more when I had a stupid crush on him and warned me to avoid the nuisance, as if he was a spark of fire and I was a house pumped full of petrol.
It’s safe to say that he’s the only person who joins in enthusiastically whenever I talk shit about Eli. So the fact that he’s nodding in agreement with the same person he calls ‘a prison runaway’ and ‘a privileged criminal’ is bizarre, to say the least.
This is a dream, after all.
Mama pulls away, but her touch doesn’t feel surreal. I can feel her warmth and smell her favorite cherry perfume. It’s her. My mother.
“Are you feeling okay, honey?” she asks, stroking my hair away from my face.
Papa sits beside her and I stare at them, then at Eli, who’s standing behind them like a wall, both hands in his pockets and a calculative look in his eyes.
“Yeah,” I answer. “Papa. What’s going on? Where’s Ari?”
“Ari went to get you a change of clothes.” Papa strokes my hand. “Do you need anything else?”
“No…” I get distracted by Eli again, pause, swallow, then groan. “Seriously, why is he here? Wait. You can see him, too, right? Mama? Papa?”
Mama steals a glimpse behind her, and when she looks back at me with a furrow in her brow, my heart races so fast, I nearly throw up.
Is it my imagination again?
No.
Please no.
“Where else would Eli be?” Mama asks with a note of confusion.
“He better have stayed the entire night by your side.” That note of loathing Papa has for Eli rushes to the surface, and I let out a breath.
Okay. It’s a bit more normal now. Except where Papa wants Eli to spend the night by my side.
Or that he’s here in the first place.
“Do you remember what happened, hon?” Mum asks.
All of a sudden, a shroud of tension covers the room. Three pairs of eyes dig into my skull in silent expectation.
Way to pressure a girl.
“Um, yeah. I called 999 before the accident because someone was following me.” I trail off when I hear a subtle tsk coming from Eli, then narrow my eyes at him.
“Someone was following you inside the house?” Papa asks with a note of weird carefulness.
“Was someone else there when you fell down the stairs?” Mama says.
“Stairs…there were no stairs. It was a…”
My lips seal together when Eli shakes his head. I narrow my eyes.
“It’s fine if you’re confused,” Papa says. “You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, so let’s leave it for now. We’re just glad you’re okay.”
I nod, but the confusion mounts to an unprecedented level. I am so going to have a field day talking to Cecy about this.
“Where’s my phone?” I ask Mama. “I want to call Cecy.”
“She’s on her way from the States.”
I frown. “But she wasn’t leaving until next week.”
“She hasn’t been here for about a month, Ava,” Mama tells me, her voice soft but her face slightly paler.
What? There’s no way. We were together a few hours ago.
My protests remain unsaid when a few doctors and nurses walk inside, looking like a prim-and-proper private crew that someone like Eli—or Papa—would insist on hiring.
“How are you feeling, Mrs. King?” the doctor asks, and I search my surroundings for Aunt Elsa—Eli’s mum. Or maybe Aunt Astrid—Eli’s aunt. Or Eli’s grandmother. Those are the only Mrs. Kings I know.
I find none of them and redirect my gaze at the white-haired doctor, who’s watching me with that fake sympathy.
“Mrs. King?” he repeats.
“Who is he talking to?” I whisper to no one in particular. “Is Aunt Elsa around?”
“He’s talking to you, Ava,” Eli says with a cruel tilt to his lips. “We got married two years ago, remember?”
4
AVA
My jaw nearly hits the floor and my mouth remains hanging open for longer than socially acceptable.
I stare at the countless faces surrounding me, searching for the joke. The ‘I got you.’ The ‘you didn’t see that coming, did you?’
Neither come.
“Mrs. King?” the doctor asks again while adjusting his gold-framed glasses.
My heart squeezes and beats in intervals of uncomfortable pain.
Something must be wrong. There’s no way I’m Mrs. King or that I married Eli two years ago.
I was floundering in fucking depression two years ago. He mocked, ridiculed, and humiliated me two years before that.
He taught me the valuable lesson to never love again.
There’s no way in hell I married him when I was nineteen or that Papa would have allowed it.
I release a burst of nervous laughter before it chokes and dies down amid concerned gazes from my parents, sympathetic looks from the doctors, and a cold glance from the devil himself.