Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
I wasn’t going to make excuses or believe that same line I’d told myself over and over again during the length of our relationship. Poor wittle Kaden. So busy. So many things to do.
No, he didn’t. His mom did everything for him. I’d done everything for him. He had other people who did everything for him. I bet he had no idea how much money he paid in taxes or how much his mortgage was.
“Is that why he’s not here?” I asked her, barely repressing smiling sarcastically. “Because he’s so busy?”
I didn’t miss the way the corners of her mouth went white before she collected herself and said, “Yes.” Mrs. Jones cleared her throat lightly, just barely. “Aurora….”
“Look, Mrs. Jones, I’m sure you have better things to do than hang around Pagosa trying to catch up with me, because I know I do. What do you want?”
She gasped. “That’s incredibly rude.”
“It’s not rude if it’s the truth, because I really do have things to do.” It was my day off. I had breakfast to eat. A life to keep living.
She huffed in her seat, that thin, pink mouth pressing tight before she set her shoulders in a way that reminded me of all the times she’d had to be the bad guy with someone in honor of her son. “Fine.” She sat up straighter than she’d been before, collecting her words and possibly even bracing herself. “Kaden made a mistake.”
Maybe they would end up with that shit pie eventually, after all. “He’s made a lot of mistakes.”
Bless her heart, she tried not to sneer, but I knew her too well to fall for it. “I’d like to know what all these ‘a lot’ of mistakes are,” she snapped before she could stop herself.
I kept my mouth closed and gave her a look that I’d learned from the best, the man whose bed I’d left that morning. That was what I would have rather been thinking about. What was happening there. What could happen there. It sent a thrill through me.
“With you, Aurora. I’m talking about the mistake he made… leaving you.”
Bingo. I bet that cost her to say. “Oh, that. Okay. A) He didn’t leave me. You two kicked me out. B) I knew he’d regret it someday, so that’s nothing new, Mrs. Jones. But what does that have to do with me?” I had to coax her into saying what I was already totally aware of.
She couldn’t think I was so stupid to not know, right?
Then again, she probably did.
She let out an exasperated sound, her dark brown eyes moving across the diner quickly before returning to me. I knew what she saw. People in T-shirts and flannels, camouflaged coveralls, old jackets, and pullover Columbia sweaters. Nothing fancy or flashy.
“It has everything to do with you,” she whispered, stressing her words. “He never should have ended the relationship. You know he was under a lot of pressure with the way the Trivium album went, and you were making all these demands.”
Demands. Me asking him when we could get married. Really married because it mattered to me. When we could have kids because I had always wanted them and he knew it, and I wasn’t getting any younger.
I’d been his most faithful friend for fourteen years, and I had made demands.
But I kept the comments to myself and kept my face even. I let her keep going.
“He was in a bad place.”
In his ten-million-dollar house, traveling around in a two-million-dollar tour bus, flying around in a private jet that his record label owned.
He hadn’t been in a “bad place.” I knew Kaden better than anyone and knew that, apart from a time after his grandfather had died, he had never been devastated a day in his life. He had been bummed and disappointed after his Trivium album had gotten reamed by music reviewers, but he’d shrugged it off and said he was lucky it had taken him six albums to finally have a flop. It happens to everybody, he’d insisted. His mom on the other hand had been furious… but it had been her idea to stop using my songs so….
He slept soundly every night, fueled by the countless people who brushed off the failure and kept reaming him with butter-covered words that would go up his butt easier. He had lived in a fantasy world of love. Part of it was my fault but not all of it.
“And you’d been together so long, he needed to get his head straight. Make sure.”
Make sure?
I almost choked, but she didn’t deserve that.
Make sure. Wowee wowsers.
I wanted to laugh too but held that back as well. Just… wow. She was digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole, and she had no idea. I should’ve been insulted by how dumb and desperate she assumed I would be to fall for this.