Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
The door opened, and he was there, wearing basketball shorts, a T-shirt…and with cuts on his lip and eyebrow. “Jesus, Jojo. What happened?” I reached for him, stopped. Christ, I’d done that without thinking, just went for him as if I had a right to hold him, or touch him, or comfort him. I’d lost that when I told him I didn’t want him.
He closed his eyes, lowered his head. “Please…don’t call me that.”
The words pummeled my heart, but he had every right to say them. If he wasn’t Jojo anymore, that was something I had to accept. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’ll try to do better.”
He nodded, stepped aside to let me in. Questions still raced through my mind. Those cuts hadn’t been there when I saw him a few days ago. What happened between then and now? I didn’t know why, but I flinched at the click of the door closing behind me.
My fingers tingled with the need to touch him, and I couldn’t help wondering if he felt it too. He wrung his hands together, massaged one with the other and flexed his fingers in a way my own longed to do.
“I don’t…” Joey shook his head. “I don’t know how to do this with you. I’m not sure what to say or ask first…what I feel or think. It’s like there’s a fucking block in my head, and if I open the floodgates, I won’t be able to close them again.” He ran his hand through his hair.
He was so different, so…hardened. Was there any of the old Joey left in there?
“If you need to open them, do it. I can take it.”
“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to come in here and try to protect me and be the hero. I’m not that kid anymore, Gage. I don’t need you like I did then. I can take care of myself. I made damn sure I could take care of myself after you decided you didn’t want me anymore. I won’t depend on you or another man ever again.” He was pacing the living room, a sharp edge to his voice. Something about that sound, about his stance, unraveled the control I had over my own pain.
“You act like you’re the only one who was fucking hurt! I went to prison, Joey! I was locked behind bars, and I was alone! I didn’t have Mouse or Romeo. I had nothing!” My head was throbbing, this pulse of regret and pain echoing through me. This wasn’t like me, but I was hurt. This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out.
“You could have had all of us! You’re the one who cut off contact! You’re the one who wouldn’t see us or write us. You’re the one who threw us away…threw me away. You could have had me.”
He gave me his back. I could see his neck tighten, his hands fist as if he wanted to hit the wall, but he didn’t, he shook it out, dropped his forehead to it the way we used to do to each other.
“Why didn’t you want me anymore?” The ache in his voice eviscerated my insides, sliced and diced until I wasn’t sure there was anything left. “I needed you. I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to be strong for you, to be who you needed, and you didn’t want me anymore.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed my arms, paced, tried to deal with the edginess beneath my skin that threatened to make me crack apart. It was so goddamned hard not to go to him and touch him, not to ask him to hold me, because as much as Joey always thought he needed me, I needed him more. “I wanted you, Joey. I always wanted you.”
He whipped around, his eyes flooded with tears. “I would have waited.”
“I wanted better for you.” Didn’t he get that? It was about him. It was always about him.
“And you didn’t think I should get to make that decision for myself? You didn’t think I was strong enough or smart enough to decide on my own?”
“What? No, that’s ridiculous. You’ve always been the smartest, strongest person I know.”
“Yeah, okay, and yet you didn’t think I could make a choice about what was best for me? You got to determine, what? That I didn’t need to wait for you? That I should go to college and do all the things you didn’t get to do? And I would just skip away and forget who we were together?”
“I wanted you to be happy.”
“You failed miserably there,” he bit off, with what sounded like rage in his voice. It did its job, setting fire to my already ground insides. “It wasn’t fair. You don’t get to tell me you think I’m strong and then make decisions for me as if I can’t make them myself. You had no right to make that decision on your own. You either wanted me and I got to choose what was best for me, or you didn’t want me at all.”