Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26659 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 133(@200wpm)___ 107(@250wpm)___ 89(@300wpm)
Fuck. There was so much more to it all than Eva was allowing me to say. If I just nodded, it wasn’t explaining it fully to her, but it was giving her the truth, even if it was only one-third of it.
“I—”
“No,” she shouted, shaking her head rapidly as she took a step back. “Just tell me a simple yes or no.”
“It’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be. If I say yes, you’re going to think that’s all it was when it was so much more.”
“Stop lying to me,” she screamed, her hand batting at the tear that was rolling down her cheek. “You’ve already told me you orchestrated this”—she gestured between us—“to find the money, so answer my question. Were you looking for it the whole time we’ve been together?”
“Yes.” My voice was raspy as I forced the word out.
Covering her face with her hands, her torso bucked as she let out a loud sob, the noise forcing my feet into action in her direction. Just as I got within reaching distance of her, though, she dropped them and backpedaled when she saw how close I was to her.
“Please don’t touch me,” she whimpered. “I can’t take it. Don’t you get it? I can’t take any of this. For once, just once, I felt comfortable enough with someone to let them in. I came here yesterday to pick up some photo albums so I could show you we were a normal family, even though Mom’s in prison. I wanted you to see that she wasn’t an ogre and had been a good mom to us, regardless of the shit she’d done to other people.”
Wrapping her arms around her waist, she glanced blindly around the room. It went against everything inside me to not take her in my arms and promise her anything and everything, but I knew she wouldn’t believe a word that came out of my mouth, so I held myself back.
“I didn’t want to lose you when you found out, and I thought that was the best way to do it.” A whimper made its way out of her as she blinked tears back. “I thought I was the one cheating you over, but all this time….”
Something about what she’d said stuck in my craw, and my response came out before I could think it over more carefully, digging me deeper into the pile of shit I was in.
“Let’s not get this twisted, Eva, we’ve both lied to each other. You might have been looking for a way to tell me about your mom, but you still held that information back. I may have orchestrated us meeting, but that doesn’t mean my feelings for you are a lie.”
She clenched her eyes shut as she exhaled heavily, and when she opened them, I felt my stomach drop at the coldness in them.
“Everything about us is a lie. People think cheating means infidelity in a physical form with someone else, maybe even emotionally, but it’s so much more than that. Cheating is defined as fraud or deceit—”
“I know that,” I clipped, frustrated that things were getting impossibly worse. “I don’t need an English lesson. This may have started deceitfully, but it quickly turned genuine for me.”
“Yeah,” she snorted, humorlessly, “while you searched through my stuff to find out where Harry’s uncle’s money was, right? That’s real honest, Joshua.”
“Look—”
Cutting me off, she picked up the bat that she’d dropped on the floor at some point and then walked over to a side table and picked what looked like her work ID up from it. “Forget it.”
“Why did you bring a bat with you?”
Hadn’t Harry paid the guy at the desk off? Had he called her?
“Ironically, I keep it in my trunk because I’m never sure if someone Mom fucked over’s going to find me. It seems like I had good intuition on that possibility, hey?”
Stopping her from leaving the lock-up, I grabbed her arm and turned her back around. “I’d never let anyone hurt you, Eva. Not ever.”
“Physically, maybe. Emotionally, you already did.”
If someone had stabbed me in the gut, I reckon it would have hurt less than those words did. “I’m going to fix this.”
She avoided looking me in the eye as she pulled her arm out of my hold. “Empty words now. I’ll go back through everything I can find in Mom’s stuff and go and visit her to ask her about Mr. Owens’ money. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.”
And with that, she turned and walked out, leaving me wondering how the fuck I was going to fix things with her. I wasn’t lying—it might have started as a lie between us so I could find what Harry needed, but it’d quickly turned into something real, with emotions I’d never felt before. Not for the first time since I’d accepted what I felt for her, the matter of James Owens’ money and Harry’s friendship didn’t even come close to what my priority was—Eva.