Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 178343 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 892(@200wpm)___ 713(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
He moans and then he’s laughing while blood oozes from his mouth.
He spits something out and I hear a ping hit the concrete.
Maybe another tooth.
“Kill me, Kill. Do it.” He snarls at me and has the gumption to take a swing for me, shouting, “Three years!” As he misses, his nose connects with my elbow as I drive it at him and his head hits the back wall before he slumps, dazed.
“Try that again and you don’t eat or get water for three days. You wanna drink your piss outta that bucket, Raymond, swing at me again.”
“Stop!” she cries out.
“Three years we spent together, Coulter,” he pants, “Three years she was mine, man…”
I want that gun. I want to put it in his fucking mouth.
Violet choking on another sob halts me.
I gather up the supplies, head to the trash bin and toss the old stuff out, then squat to pick up the cutlery from the floor on the way to put everything else back in its place.
I look back over my shoulder, assess to make sure I’ve left nothing behind. He’s on his back. He slowly sits up, then he leans over and takes a handful of lasagna and shoves the food in his face like a savage.
“Almost tastes as good as her cunt,” the bastard says around his food, and then he’s laughing, food falling out of his mouth. “Yeah man, I tasted her first. I had that pussy first. Whenever you taste her, know I was there first so really, you’re also gettin’ a taste of me.”
I storm back in, grab the plate and dump the food on the floor and then whack him across the face with the plate. He’s trying to bait me, so I’ll end him.
Violet shrieks.
He can eat off the concrete if he wants it badly enough. I shut and lock the door, then toss the plate toward the sink, missing it so the plate shatters before I dump my gloves in the trash and pump hand sanitizer over my hands and then toss the first aid bag back where I keep it.
She’s running up the stairs.
I follow and catch her by the front door, trying to pull it open. My arm hooks around her waist.
“Baby.”
“Lemme go. I need air. I need air.”
I hesitate.
“Please.” It sounds like her plea is ripped from her, so I release her, then watch as she runs toward the water and wince when she falls to her knees at the rocky shoreline. She’s in her work clothes, a skirt and blouse, no coat on.
I head out there and stand a few feet back listening to her cry, feel the biting cold blowing straight through me. I can’t take the sight and sound of my beautiful wife falling apart on the rocks for more than ten or so helpless seconds before I’m scooping her up into my arms and carrying her back to the house.
“Don’t,” she cries out, trying to pull free.
“Baby, stop.”
“I don’t even know you,” she whispers, staring at me, her eyes glassy with tears.
“It’s me. I’m still me,” I reply, gruffly. “I’m the man you love, the man who is going to spend my life making you happy.”
She looks into my eyes as we enter the house and does it searchingly; it feels like she sees everything ugly inside me. Everything. All of it.
“This is a nightmare. I wanna wake up. I wanna wake up and know that you actually do love me, that you haven’t been lying to me for all this time.”
“I do.”
“And that he isn’t really down there,” she says. “That you haven’t really been torturing him.”
I swallow and as I set her down on the couch, she curls into a ball and buries her face into her knees.
“I do love you. I’ve only lied to protect you.”
She says nothing.
I pull a blanket over her, then put another log on the fire and head to the kitchen.
I wash my hands for a long while before I cut another piece of lasagna from the pan, plate it, and slide it in the microwave. When it’s ready, I throw my piece back on for a minute and then grab another bottle of water.
I bring everything to the coffee table and sit.
“Please try to eat,” I say.
She says nothing. I take a bite of mine.
She makes a delicious lasagna, but I’ve got zero appetite.
Setting the fork down, I put my arm around her.
“Don’t,” she pleads, lifting her face out of her knees and propping her chin on one, tear-filled eyes aimed at the fire. “I don’t know you.”
“You do know me. Think on it. Think on what he told you. On some of what I’ve told you. You know me. Deep down, you had to know this was possible.”
“I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Violet. I kept shit from you so you wouldn’t feel like this. You believed in me because you looked into my eyes and saw me. Now, you see all of me. And once you get a chance to think on it, you’ll know everything I’ve done, it was for a reason and none of those reasons point to me wanting you to hurt.”