Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
There’s no more maybe.
No more I might.
All that’s left is I am.
Because I am completely fucking gone on this girl.
I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t care when.
All I know is she snuck up on me, and I’m not mad about it.
Someone’s shouts intrude from outside the cracked-open door, and the moment is broken.
Payton slips onto the back patio, and I drop my head back with a huff.
The minute I’m alone, it’s like the light she brought left with her. All the negative thoughts come rolling back, coiling around my limbs like a snake has snatched me as its prey.
Fangs forge their way into my lungs, and I gasp. I blink, but the haze won’t clear, my heart now working overtime, threatening to tear through my rib cage. I try to swallow, but knots form in my chest, panic threatening to suffocate me where I sit.
I’m an athlete who can’t play. A student who can’t go to school. A man who can’t protect.
I’m completely. Fucking. Useless.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Payton
Now, September
Pressure falls heavy on my chest, and I reach up as if rubbing the ache away was a possibility. It isn’t. I should think pain is something I would be used to by now, and maybe in some ways, I am. I am in the sense that I know when I open my eyes in the morning, pain is quick to follow whatever sensation I wake to, and when I lie down at night, pain is the last thing I remember.
Sometimes it’s a hollowness that seems never ending, one that grows, chipping away at the density of my bones, leaving me brittle. Other times it’s like an avalanche, and I go tumbling, buried under mounds and mounds of pressure.
Then there are the times when it’s but a tangled web in my mind, memories and moments spun into fear and fate. I’m caught in a loop of damned if I do, damned if I don’t, and I don’t know how to get out of it.
I don’t know what’s right and wrong, and lately, I wonder if I even care.
I should, but do I actually? Or is it some sort of societal ideal that frowns on falling for someone new so soon after losing the person you promised yourself to that has me messed up?
The truth of the matter is none of that makes a difference, because the damage is already done. There is no stopping it, no backtracking or changing what I feel for the man before me, and that means all that would be left of me if something went wrong is an entirely different dose of heartache and everlasting pain.
I couldn’t survive that. I can hardly handle this, and it’s my own doing, so I can’t even begin to imagine all the ways in which I’d crumble if I fell at his feet and then something swept him away.
My eyes trail over Mason’s features, and I reach out, running a shaky thumb along the tension lines between his dark brows. They shouldn’t be there.
Mason, if nothing else, is a worrier and stress case. Almost always, his thoughts are made up of someone else, something I’m sure has only gotten worse after Ari’s accident. He was known to pick apart his performance with a fine-tooth comb or kill himself with concerns over what his sister had going on or his parents being too far for him to get to if they needed something fast.
But these lines, now nearly ingrained in his handsome face, didn’t invade his sleep before.
Yet here he is, out cold on a bed that isn’t his in a town we don’t live in, with deep creases lining his forehead and a tight pinch to his perfect lips. I can’t pretend I’m not the reason behind the restlessness he’s experiencing. I’m causing him pain, and that makes me sick to my stomach.
What’s worse, Mason looks thinner, his hair not as trim as normal and his usually smooth face littered with a shadow of stubble. I glance to his hand, the ice pack I brought in sliding more and more off his knuckles with each uneasy twitch. There are even slightly dark circles beneath his eyes, telling me he’s not sleeping like he should.
Gingerly, I open my palm, pressing against the heat of his cheek. Mason leans into my touch instantly, and sharp prickles sting behind my eyes when a ghost of a grin appears.
“My Pretty Little,” he slurs, his lashes fluttering, but his eyes are too heavy to raise. “Why’s she doing this to me?”
I clamp my hand over my mouth to keep the cry threatening to slip at bay and cautiously push to my feet, my eyes trailing over his pale face as I take backward steps toward the door. I pull it open as slowly as a snail, stepping out before looking back inside one last time, and when I close it, I take a moment to lean my head against the frame.