Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I remembered how she and he both had made light of what we once shared. How he’d thrown us away to be with her and that even after she’d won, it was still not enough. I recalled how she’d gone out of her way to mimic all our shared times together. Going to the places Ryder and I had been known to frequent and always with some sly remark when asked about why she thought she was the one he’d chosen. The mockery she’d made of my love for him. A love that I held so dear had been turned into nothing.
I thought of the strange woman who’d approached my mother and me out of nowhere to warn us that someone was working something dark against me. Something I had ignored at the time because I was too caught up in heartache, and besides, I didn’t believe in that crap, though I felt there was something more than meets the eye at work there.
It would’ve been so easy to accept that explanation because what else could be responsible for how he’d treated me? But my rational mind told me that such things were not real, nothing more than old wives’ tales.
And then I thought of all the ways she had tried to become me until it was so obvious that even our fans had noticed and made mention of it, giving credence to the old woman’s words. I thought of the betrayal from both of them, and calm was the last thing I felt.
“She turned my life into fucking All About Eve, only you’re no Bill Sampson because you were too stupid or too hopped up on whatever drug of choice you were on that week to know what was going on. I was the one left hurt; I was the one who was gutted for all the world to see, so you can just fuck all the way off to hell and take that hag of a slut along with you.”
I slammed the door even though my heart was shaking and my knees were about to bend. I was dry-heaving so hard I thought I would throw up all over myself. My head spun, and it was all I could do to hold onto my mind before it fractured. This was not good. I needed to calm down before things really did get out of hand. But I was so confused.
I wanted more than anything to open that door and run into his arms like an idiot, but the tears that burned a trail down my cheek were all the evidence I needed to keep going. The heart wants what it wants, but I can’t let it win, not this time and not with him.
I didn’t know that I would feel like this. That seeing him again would rob me of all my senses. Even with the hurt, I still felt I could still want him. He was my person once, mine, and he’d stripped it away without explanation. He’d torn the biggest part of my heart away, and what was left, he still lived in.
Why is life so unfair? Why do I still feel for him? Why am I so tempted to hear what he has to say? Could there be any reason good enough for what he has done? I would say no. So why? Why am I so thrilled beneath the anger that he’s here?
I wanted him to go away, and yet I wanted more than anything for him to stay. Why was he here now? And why was he so affronted by me calling her his wife? Did that mean that they were no longer together?
There had been much speculation about that very thing in the tabloids of late, and though I had a peripheral interest, I’d told myself that it was none of my business, that I didn’t care. Nothing about him was of any concern to me. And now I just wanted him to go away, to let me heal from seeing him again.
And then, what my true heart really wanted was realized. I didn’t have time to register the sound of the door opening behind me because the loud crashing sound it made as it bounced against the wall was so foreign, but I knew the feel of the arms that came around me from behind.
And just like that, my whole body, my very core, gave a welcoming sigh as if all that I was finally coming home. And at that moment, I realized something that I hadn’t known all these years we’d been apart.
I realized that all those times, I felt a hunger that could not be fed; it wasn’t food that was missing. All those lonely nights that I blamed on insomnia were something much deeper. All those stray moments when I had the weird feeling that something was missing and blamed it on something else, that it was all lies.