Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104239 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104239 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“I couldn’t stay away. And I couldn’t keep waiting for you.” Oh, fuck, she sounds so desperate. Like she’s in love with him. Can this get any worse?
“I have work to do here, you know. I can’t afford to let personal things get in the way all the time. This kind of thing has to be worked out carefully. How am I going to explain why you’re here? And how exactly did you get here anyway?”
I’m going to be sick. Just when I thought I had already heard every possible lie come out of his mouth. Then again, is a lie of omission the same as a regular lie? I never came out and asked him if he had a girlfriend. He conveniently never told me.
And why would he? Why do I matter? I don’t. I’m somebody to keep his dick wet and his balls drained while he’s waiting for his girlfriend to show up. I wonder if she knows who he really is. What he’s been doing with me.
More than anything, I wish I had the guts to go in there. Swing the door open and announce myself and insist on a little truth. Does she know what a coward he is? How he was willing to let me die? I wonder if she’d feel so desperate to be with him if she heard about that.
I have to fight to hold myself back. What would it make me look like, going in there, freaking out? That’s not who I want to be. The spurned side piece who loses it once it becomes clear a guy isn’t interested in her anymore. That’s pathetic. I’ve already lost so much, but I’ll be damned if I lose what little bit of pride I have left.
I can’t believe how much it hurts, though. I can’t believe I still had a little shred of hope in my heart, either. Shouldn’t I know better by now? But it’s gone, burned up. One more thing for Lucas to take from me.
One thing is for sure as I tiptoe out of the assistant’s office, then rush back to my room to be alone—he’s not going to get away with this. I won’t throw a fit in front of his woman, whoever she is, but I’m not going to pretend I don’t know she exists. Maybe I’ll rub it in his face a little bit, even. His little secret isn’t a secret anymore. He’s not as good a liar as he thought he was.
Has he somehow been fucking her all this time? What if she comes in every once in a while and wasn’t supposed to be back until after this? The next time he called her or whatever? I can just imagine it. Sneaking her in, sneaking her back out. No wonder it’s been so easy for him to stay away from me these past few weeks. The bastard. The lying, callous bastard. Pretending. Making me think he cared.
And dammit, I should have known better. How many times am I going to let him hurt me?
My fists slice through the air at my sides as I walk, and I imagine driving them into his face again and again. He knows what things have been like for me. He’s seen it. He’s been there. He knows practically everything about me, how I’ve never been able to count on anybody. And still, he lied. He used me, lied, and then threw me away.
Where’s the big surprise there? He couldn’t be bothered to warn me about Xander. What’s a little thing like a secret girlfriend compared to that?
At least I can be alone for a little while. I can cry in private, maybe get it all out of my system before I see him. Maybe I’ll wait until later while he’s in his apartment. I’ll have him send his little girlfriend away and pretend it’s a school-related thing. The way it would be if I hadn’t let him get to me the way I did.
I’m prepared to do my usual checking under the bed routine when I reach my room and open the door.
But I can’t move once I get a look inside. I don’t want to, either. I’m afraid to.
My eyes dart all around the room, landing on one thing after another. The mattress hangs halfway off the bed frame. The pillows ripped open, stuffing everywhere. The broken lamp. The books are torn to pieces, pages strewn from one end of the room to the other.
Clothes, torn to shreds. Everywhere. Even the clothes Celia gave me. All of it pulled out and torn up and thrown around.
But it’s the wall above the headboard that holds my attention once I’ve taken in the sight of everything else. It’s what turns my blood to ice. Two words are scrawled in what looks like blood.