Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I swallow the lump in my throat, but clearly I don’t move fast enough because he steps forward, curling his fingers into my hair and jerking me toward him. Then, as if I weigh nothing, he turns and drags me behind him by my hair. I screech and claw at him, but I can’t reach anything solid enough to make him stop. He drags me down the halls, the burning in my scalp far too much for me to handle.
My screaming only gets louder.
“Hey.”
I jerk from my position by the pool, legs dangling in the water, and see Bohdi sitting down beside me. I didn’t even hear him approach, I was so lost in a memory, so tangled up in the anguish I feel when I’m anywhere near my old life.
“He heard me tell Cova I wanted to leave one day and she accidentally said something about me not working,” I say, without prompting from Bohdi. The words just flow out. “I thought maybe there was something out there for us, that if we went together, we might just have a chance. He lost it, he dragged me down the hall by my hair and put me in the basement. He didn’t feed me for a week, I only got small rations of water and he withheld all my drugs. I was heavily addicted to drugs, so I laid there crying and screaming, sweating and vomiting. Then, I had nothing left so I just slept. All day and night I slept. He wanted me to be reminded what life without him would be like. I never did consider leaving again.”
“That motherfucker,” Bohdi growls, his voice low. “If he wasn’t dead, I’d have his throat.”
“Well, he is dead.”
“Is that why you and Cova ain’t close?”
“Because she told on me?”
He nods.
“That and many other things. Cova and I have a strained relationship. There were times, times when he was so angry he’d actually hurt her, that she’d come to me and we’d hang onto each other to get through. But mostly, she played her part as his little pet and that earned her the freedom she had. Cova never wanted him to hurt me, she really didn’t, but she also wasn’t going to give up the preference she got by defending me.”
“You think she regrets that?”
“I’d like to think she does,” I exhale. “But she’s here, isn’t she? Looking for him. Wanting that life back. So I doubt it.”
“You’re a thousand times the person she is, Merleigh.”
I don’t say anything to that, I just stare into the crystal blue water. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s not. I don’t know. I just know I had my own back after that day, and I will continue to do so for the rest of my life.
“There you are.”
I exhale at the sound of Isla’s voice coming up from behind us. Bohdi turns, I don’t. I keep staring at the water, wishing, for just one second, she’d go away. I get it, she’s his wife and she probably has a lot of wounds from their past together, but I also know she’s making her presence very well-known and isn’t willing to let him spend a single moment alone with me.
“I’ll be in soon, Isla. I’m talking with Merleigh.”
“I need you now, though.”
“I said—” he turns and glares at her “—I’ll be in in a minute.”
I can’t see her face, but boy do I know there is a glare there that would be so intense, it would probably make me stand and walk away.
“Fine.”
She disappears, and I dare to ask the question that bothers me so very deeply. “What’s going on with you two?”
“No idea,” he murmurs.
That’s it? That’s the best he can give me?
“No idea isn’t really an answer.”
“It might not be an answer, Merleigh, but it’s the truth. It’s all I have to give you right now. I know you want more, fuck, I wish I could give you more but that’s all I have to give right now. I don’t know. I honestly don’t fuckin’ know.”
He stands, and guilt slams into my chest, so I quickly stand, too.
“Want to go for a walk with me?”
He stares at me, those eyes racing with emotion. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“Come on, I know somewhere really cool.”
We walk out of the motel complex and through the town, neither of us saying anything. Only when we are through it, past all the people and at a little lake, does Bohdi speak. “You know your way around well.”
“I was here for a long time, and we often went places with him, so long as we were seen and not heard. This place I found before I met him, though. This was somewhere I used to come when I was on the streets. This big tree—” I point to the massive tree in the middle of the green grass “—used to shelter me from the rain so incredibly well.”