Total pages in book: 16
Estimated words: 14860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 74(@200wpm)___ 59(@250wpm)___ 50(@300wpm)
“I, um… I’m meeting someone—a friend—for dinner,” I responded lamely as I shifted my body on the small barstool and glanced along the length of the bar, hoping desperately to find a red flower sticking out of a pocket or pinned to a lapel. The bar was long and the dim lighting meant I couldn’t see very far.
“How about meeting me someplace a little more… private?”
I jumped when the man curled his hand around the inner part of my thigh, his meaty fingers precariously close to my groin. It was all I could do not to leap off the barstool. My desire not to create a scene was the only thing keeping my ass on that stool.
It wasn’t the first time a guy had come on to me, but none had ever put their hands on me—I hadn’t allowed them to. I wasn’t one of those people who was embarrassed about being a virgin at the ripe old age of twenty-three… no, I was one of those guys who was scared of any kind of contact, period. It didn’t matter if it was a man or woman, I hated the idea of being touched. Any hand, big or small, could cause pain. Any fingers, thick or thin, could leave marks on your skin. I’d been in enough foster homes to know that.
The smell of cigarette smoke was replaced with the acrid fumes of fire that stole more and more oxygen from my lungs with every desperate inhalation. I could feel the sizzling of my own flesh as flames licked at my skin and the weight of the burning wood as the once familiar items around me were consumed one by one by fire. And I swore it wasn’t only my own screams I could still hear…
I can’t move. Please, I can’t move…
“Take your fucking hand off of him or I’ll rip it from your body,” I heard a deadly voice order. I couldn’t make sense of it because the firemen and paramedics had been calling my name out over and over as a mask feeding me delicious oxygen was placed over my mouth. My brain had been fighting between staying in the darkness or looking for the light.
That’s what it felt like now as my senses slowly returned to me one by one. The scent of a subtle, woodsy cologne versus cigarette smoke. Warm fingers wrapped gently around my upper arm as blatantly cruel ones gripped my thigh. That soft yet deep voice giving the I’m-not-fucking-around order against the slurred one that told my would-be rescuer to fuck off.
Reality hit me like a ton of bricks in just a matter of seconds.
I was still sitting on the barstool with the stranger’s hand wrapped around my leg, his fat fingers digging into the spot where my thigh met my groin while the stranger’s hold on my arm, though gentle, was determined.
What the hell was I doing? Why had I let Jennie talk me into this in the first place?
Just look at some of the profiles. You don’t have to respond to any of them.
That was what my sister had said as she’d looked at me with a scary level of mature sadness that no fifteen-year-old girl should have ever had to carry on her shoulders.
Some form of desperation had consumed me in that moment and after my little sister had gone to bed, I had begun scanning through some of the matches the Heart 2 Heart dating app had found for me based on the profile my sister had set up for me without telling me. Most had been the stereotypical looking-for-a-fit-successful-guy type profiles, but one had stood out.
And all because of the one question it had posted to potential romantic partners.
A question that had haunted my dreams that entire night.
If you could go back in time and make one different choice, what would that be?
The guy’s profile hadn’t included a picture—something unusual but also memorable—and he hadn’t answered his own question, but after a night of tossing and turning, I’d found myself sitting in front of my ancient laptop and doing nothing but responding to that single question. Thankfully, my sister had kept the details of my own identity cloaked by giving out only a few details about me, but that hadn’t seemed to matter to the anonymous stranger because he’d answered me within a matter of minutes.
And from there, I’d been helpless to do anything but participate in hours and hours of conversation with the stranger who went by the screen name FinallyReady. We hadn’t talked about anything that would reveal our identities nor had we exchanged pictures, but we’d had intensely deep conversations nonetheless. I’d learned about his childhood filled with lies to keep his parents from learning who he truly was and the scars those secrets had left behind. I’d shared in his fear of the truth about myself being discovered along with the other fears that came with my true identity being found out.