Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 44963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44963 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 225(@200wpm)___ 180(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
But there’s a glint of light in it now too, one I can’t share with Luke. I waited for my man, my Luke. Maybe we’ll conceive a child the first time we have sex. Wow, imagine if I said that to him. He’d freak.
“It’s not a bad thing.” He wraps his hand warmly around mine. “You don’t have to be ashamed.”
“No?” I whisper, knowing we should stop.
Any second, Dad could wake up, hear us, walk in to find this killer with his hand on mine. It would make things much more complicated. Not only are we running for our lives, now we’re running toward lust too… toward a one-sided future only I want.
“No,” Luke says fiercely. “You’re young—”
“It’s not that,” I cut in.
I should stop. I don’t want to overshare, and I don’t want to venture down the dark avenues inside of me, the crevices and the holes built of pain, memories stacked upon memories, all of them threatening to crush.
“I mean, that’s not the why. Maybe I would still be a virgin if it never… I think I would, actually.”
Either way, I would have wanted to be a virgin before I met Luke, so I could give myself to him and only him, so I could offer him everything I have, and we’d never have to share each other.
“If what never?” Luke says. When I press my lips down, he goes on, “If it never happened? Is that what you were going to say?”
I meet his eyes. They catch the moonlight, aim it back at me, dreamy and intense.
“Yes,” I whisper, nodding.
“What happened, Violet?”
His voice has never been fiercer, even in the forest, even the night he arrived to kill my dad.
Suddenly, it’s like I’m perched outside the window, staring in at this unbelievable scene. It should feel more wrong than it does, so much crazier. It’s the opposite. It’s like I can finally share this, and yet I say, “It doesn’t matter.”
He wraps my hand in both of his. I can sense the urge in him to snap, to move his hand to my leg, to squeeze down in that compulsive way he has, but he keeps holding my hand.
“You can tell me,” he says.
I blink, stunned at the tears in my eyes, sliding down my cheeks. He’s breaking down my walls with his patience, his focus, as if nobody else matters to him except for me. I know that shouldn’t make sense. I know I’m probably going completely crazy. He leans over, kissing the tears.
“Tell me who made you cry,” he growls, kissing them away. “What. Happened?”
His voice trembles. Leaning away from him, I wrap my arms around my knees, hugging them to myself like I did in the aftermath of it. Or them, since there was more than one incident.
“When I was fourteen, we had this guidance counselor,” I murmur, blinking away the tears, then forcing the next wave away.
As I go on, my voice is cold and detached from emotions.
“I remember his office was covered in motivational posters, and the chairs in there were so freaking hard. I remember thinking how weird it was, all these posters about hope and the future and stuff on his walls, considering what he did.”
“What did he do?”
I look at Luke, kneeling beside the bed, his fists clenched against the mattress and his jaw jutting from his hard face. He’s a barely contained explosion. His eyes lock on me.
“He used to… cross the line,” I say, forcing away more sobs. “Don’t make me say it.”
“I won’t make you do anything. By cross the line, do you mean he touched you where he shouldn’t?”
I nod, trying to force away the memories, but they crash into me hotly, cruelly. Again, I’m struck with an odd out-of-body feeling. I haven’t been able to talk about this with Dad in detail, just enough to let him know the barebone facts.
“It was maybe six or seven times. I was so scared. I didn’t know how to react. I figured, I don’t know, it sounds weird now, but I figured it was part of his job as a guidance counselor or something. Like he was getting me ready for the world. I don’t know. Maybe I’m the sick one.”
“No,” Luke barks, so loud we both flinch.
We wait, listening for Dad’s footsteps, for any sign we’ve woken him.
“No,” Luke goes on quieter, taking my hand again, squeezing it tightly. “You’re not in the wrong here. That scumbag is a lowlife. Nothing that happened is your fault.”
“I guess you can see why this stuff is difficult for me now, huh?”
“I get it,” he says, nodding. “I’d never force you… I’d never put you through what that evil bastard did.”
I return the pressure in his hand, struggling to believe this isn’t real, that this intimacy doesn’t matter. It has to. It feels so significant.