Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136791 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 684(@200wpm)___ 547(@250wpm)___ 456(@300wpm)
Yeah, I miss her like crazy.
"Don't do anything stupid, Kincaid," Roman urges me when he pulls to a stop in front of Ma Lucia's house. "You aren't going down for this. Just trust me, and don't do anything you can't take back."
"Okay," I agree easily enough. I don't plan on doing anything stupid. If I go down for this, it certainly won't be because I was stupid enough to stroll into Hernandez's office and confess. They're going to have to work for it if they want my head on a pike because my girl is standing not even ten yards away, and there's no fucking way I'm willingly going anywhere she isn't.
That's just not gonna fucking happen.
Chapter Twenty-One
January
"Are you sure you're going to be okay here on your own?" Mariah asks for the fifteenth time since she picked me up an hour ago. She nibbles on her bottom lip, clearly reluctant to leave me by myself. Not that I can blame her after how she found me last week, but I'm fine.
Okay, maybe that's a stretch. I'm still working through a lot of things. The medication the psychiatrist put me on is helping. So is talking to her. But something inside of me is broken and probably always will be. My mom and brother were murdered, and I'm finally trying to deal with the aftermath instead of simply ignoring it like it never happened. PTSD is the official diagnosis.
Frankly, it feels more like torture to me.
I've been seeing the shrink for the last week. I spent the first three days as an inpatient at a rehab facility so she could monitor me around the clock. She was too polite to call it suicide watch, but we both know that's what it was. I don't want to die, though. Not anymore. I want to find a way to live with my demons.
Once Dr. Jenner realized that I genuinely meant that and wasn't just feeding her a line to get myself out of there, she let me leave. I've spent the last few days going to group therapy and individual sessions during the day and crashing with Mariah at night, but I can't hide out forever.
It's time to come home and start figuring out how to do things on my own.
My stomach churns at the thought of being alone, but I fight through it. I'm strong enough to do this. I've been doing it for years. It feels different this time, though.
Perhaps because it is.
I used to get through every day by burying what I felt and refusing to even acknowledge what happened to Titan and my mom. I told myself they died. That was it. They simply died. It wasn’t traumatic or awful. They were just gone. I said it over and over and over again. Every damn time I woke up screaming, that’s the line I fed myself.
I got through the days being angry with Cade for leaving me here alone. That anger, as fucked up as it is to admit it, pushed me through the hardest days. So long as I had him to be angry with, I didn’t have to face anything else. I could just be pissed that he left. I could be pissed that he broke his promise. I could focus on that and nothing else.
But I can't do that anymore.
I can't keep pushing it down.
I can’t keep lying to myself.
I can’t ignore the pain and grief.
I can't pretend I'm mad at him or that any of this is his fault.
I miss him so fucking much it hurts. Every damn day, I miss him a little bit more.
I know he’s been calling Mariah two or three times a day to check on me. I begged her not to tell him anything, and she’s kept that promise—not because I don’t want him to know. But because I need to be the one to tell him where I’ve been and why.
He asked me when he first got home if I wanted to die. If I was trying to get myself killed. The truth is…that’s precisely what I was doing. I didn’t care if Kaleo killed me. It didn’t matter so long as he didn’t take anything else from me.
Cade gave me his truth, every devastating word. Even when it broke him, he spoke it.
It's my turn to give him mine, the whole ugly thing.
"I'll be fine," I tell Mariah, who's still watching me with wide, worried eyes as a massive black truck starts up the street. "I'm just going to settle in and get ready to go back to work on Monday."
I've been off for the last week and a half. Since I've never missed a day of work in my life, they were more than understanding when I told them I was ill and needed to take some time off. I didn't explain exactly what was going on. But I'm ready to go back. I miss my kids.