Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 454(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113464 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 567(@200wpm)___ 454(@250wpm)___ 378(@300wpm)
“Hey, check me out.” I open the door to my dressing room and knock on the door beside it. “What do you think?”
“Gimme a sec.” Her high-pitched voice rings out at the same time I realize her door isn’t fully closed, and it doesn’t occur to me not to open it until I see what she is trying to hide.
She’s just finished taking off a dress and is only in her bra and panties, so nothing’s keeping me from the black-and-blue patches all over her upper arms, her shoulder blades, even her ass.
Her wide, panicked eyes meet mine in the mirror. “It’s not what you think,” she immediately whispers.
“What happened?” The sight of her wearing those bruises makes my throat so tight I can’t do more than sip air.
“It’s nothing.” She backs herself into the corner, her arms crossed over her chest, hands gripping her shoulders. “Can I get a little privacy?”
No, she can’t because when my eyes drop below her waist, the bruises on her thighs jump out at me and make my eyes sting.
“We were swimming,” she explains while I stand in mute horror. “We rented a boat in Catania and were out in the water. I got thrown against some rocks. That’s all.”
And were any of those rocks hand-shaped? Because that’s the shape of the bruise on her left bicep—the perfect imprint of a palm and five fingers wrapped around her arm.
“Listen to me.” I close the door behind me and lower my voice to a whisper. “I want the truth.”
“That is—”
“Tatum,” I snap. “That isn’t true. What about the bruises on your legs, inside your thighs? What really happened out there? You can tell me. I love you. You’re my best friend.”
“I know that.” She stares at the floor, curling and uncurling her toes and chewing her lip.
“If somebody hurt you, I’m here to listen. No judgment. But you have to be honest with me, and I can tell you aren’t.”
It’s when a tear hits her arm that my heart shatters. I have never seen her cry in all the years we’ve known each other. Even when she broke her wrist after tripping and falling on the playground in middle school, she didn’t shed a tear. She’s gone through breakups, and her mom has flaked out on something important a million times. Tatum never so much as sniffled.
“It was bad.” I almost have to lean in to hear her; she’s whispering so softly. “Worse than before.”
“Before?” I ask with dread in my stomach. Damn it, I should have known. I saw all the warning signs. I just figured he was a temperamental douchebag, not that he would ever really hurt her. Somehow, I always had this stupid idea Callum Torrio’s daughter could defend herself—and that even if she couldn’t, nobody would be stupid enough to screw around with her, knowing who her father is. I figured she was invincible.
There is nothing invincible about the bruised, weeping girl in front of me. “He started getting physically abusive maybe a month before the trip,” she confesses, still looking at the floor, tears now dripping from her chin. “I thought he would be better once we got away and there wasn’t so much stress. But it only made him worse. It took me a while to figure out he didn’t feel like he had to be careful anymore, with us being in Europe. There was nobody watching, nobody that could stop him.”
“Oh, sweetie…”
“I don’t know where he is.” She looks at me from under her lashes. “He went off with some people he met in Rome, packed all his stuff and everything. Even the things I bought for him. I would do anything so long as it would make him happy and keep things calm.”
It obviously didn’t work because these bruises can’t be more than a week old. Some of them are as vivid as the ones I still wear on my skin after the accident.
“That’s why you didn’t go anywhere,” I realize. “No shopping, no sightseeing.”
“Only if he wanted to, and he almost never did. He just wanted to lie out on the beach or go to clubs and meet rich people. That’s all he cared about. And all I wanted was for him to stop… to stop being angry…”
She covers her face with her hands, shoulders heaving, and the sight of her propels me across the small space. When I wrap my arms around her, she drops her hands and throws her arms around my neck, weeping on my shoulder.
“I am so sorry,” I whisper over and over, rocking back and forth while she cries it out. “So, so sorry. I didn’t see it. I never guessed.”
“Why would you? Lucas… was an asshole. But he wasn’t like this.”
No, but he tried to kill me with his car. I’ll spare her that detail—there are certain things I haven’t told her yet, either. Amazing the secrets we keep from each other when we’re supposed to be each other’s confidant. Shame is pretty fucked up when you think about it.