Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 209489 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1047(@200wpm)___ 838(@250wpm)___ 698(@300wpm)
I hadn’t heard him right.
No.
I couldn’t have.
“If you ask me,” he said quietly and unexpectedly, “it was overkill.”
No.
No.
They’d burned the trailer down? All my things?
There weren’t a ton of them, but they were mine, and each one mattered.
My past and my present.
I wanted to ask if he was sure, but of course he fucking was. He was sarcastic, bossy, and secretive, but he didn’t hide being all those things. There was no reason he would make it up.
Everything was gone?
The place that had been my home for years. The remainder of my grandparents’ belongings and our memories together. It was all… it was all….
Oh God, I had nothing left.
Nothing.
Not my cell phone, which had precious voice mails. Not an old blanket. Not the few family heirlooms that we had made room for no matter how little space there was in the car.
Nothing.
This was all because I hadn’t fucking left when I should have.
My mouth filled with saliva, and those tears I’d been trying to keep control of poured out in the span of an exhale.
I slapped a hand over my mouth at the same time I drew my legs up and slouched forward, ignoring just how bad that hurt me everywhere.
Tears gushed over my fingers.
My home was gone.
Everything was fucking gone.
“Why are you crying?” the deep voice demanded from beyond my knees. “The house was small and smelled funny.”
I cried. I cried harder than I’d thought I was capable of.
“I lost everything,” I told him, my voice cracking. I mopped at my face with my wrist before even more came out. Losing my grandparents’ things hurt worse than my own. My grandma’s tablecloth. My grandpa’s watch.
My hands shook.
A wail built up in my throat, and I clung to it for dear life. Threw a fucking lasso around it and gripped the end like I would get stomped to death if I didn’t get it under control. It was stuff, yes, but….
“You still… have your life,” The Defender said.
It didn’t help. He was right, sure, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
“Materialistic belongings don’t mean anything.”
I swallowed so, so hard.
He tried a different angle. “Could you… quit crying?”
I wiped at my eyes even harder.
“Anyone ever told you… that you cry ugly?” he fucking asked.
If I thought it would actually hurt him, I’d kick him in the nuts. Instead, I slouched forward even more, squeezed my hands into fists so tight my nails dug into my palms, and gritted out, “I. Know. That.”
Good God, I didn’t know it was possible to sound like I’d been a chain-smoker for half my life, but it was. “Believe me. I’ve moved more in my life and have had to leave so much shit behind every time, that I know that. That’s why I don’t keep that much stuff anymore. But there were still….” This was harder than I’d thought, and really, I was getting more and more pissed by the fucking second. Not just at him but at everything. “There were still a few things I was able to keep. A few things that really meant something to me. They were all I had left of the people I loved, okay? So please cut me some slack for being upset that I lost things that I can never replace.” I choked every single word out so that I wouldn’t scream. Or cry. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
Then I made the mistake of glancing at him, there on the floor, his face dirty, and snapped, looking him right in the fucking purple eye, “And you’re ugly when you cry.”
Whether it was my words or tone or both, that got him to shut up.
It wasn’t my best comeback. I was rusty. I hadn’t talked shit back to anyone since my Xbox days, and I really had tried so hard to be nice to him.
But I didn’t care anymore. My hands shook, and my breathing got choppy as I tried to tell myself that I had been planning on leaving and not taking 99 percent of the things in the mobile home with me.
But it didn’t help.
It really didn’t help.
Nothing did.
My life was fucking over, I thought sometime later.
But I guess it had been over since the day my parents had done the stupidest shit possible.
Most of my choices had been taken away from me before I’d even been born.
But now… now, it was official. Now it was real. It was all over.
I cried so much I was out of tears.
And energy.
Trying not to make a sound as your world imploded around you was a hell of a lot harder than making a big stink about it. That was for fucking sure. Staying positive? I might as well have convinced myself I was going to win a gold medal at the next Olympics.
I felt miserable in body and spirit when I finally rolled to face the ceiling. There was something almost therapeutic about lying on your stomach, crying into your stacked arms. Maybe it was just me though. I didn’t cry often. I’d been dealing with a bad hand my whole fucking life. All I’d ever known was to keep going, even when it wasn’t easy, and all I wanted to do was wallow.