Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 107687 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107687 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 538(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Now I’m the one making the face. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard you say,” I snap at him, annoyed. “How can you just group them like that? Would you group my sisters and me?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s said that women who come from abusive homes gravitate toward men who abuse them. Do you just assume that’s what we’ll do?”
“I wouldn’t allow it.”
I lean on my legs, anger flushing through me. “Peepaw, you can’t control us,” I stress. “We have come from where we were told how to wear our hair, our clothes, and what shoes pleased them. We were told to provide whatever a man would want from us, and there was no other option. Even when I tried to defend myself, I was beaten. And with your way of thinking, I’ll end up in a relationship like that?”
“No, not at all, Austen. That’s not what I mean. You’re not a traditional abuse case.”
“No, I’m worse,” I somehow get out, the tears burning my eyes. “There is plenty of help for people getting out of an abusive home, but where is the help for people coming from an abusive cult?”
“Austen—”
“But you’re right. I won’t fall into another situation like that because I want more for myself. I deserve better, which is why I left the moment I could.”
“And I’m proud of you for it.”
“Thank you, but I won’t allow you to put Dimitri in a class he doesn’t belong.”
He shakes his head. “Austen, you deserve better than him. I won’t allow you to throw away a good future for someone like him.”
I gawk at him. “Someone like him? Dimitri is funny, kind, and so supportive. He likes to read, he likes to help me learn about hockey, and we laugh so damn much. Wouldn’t you want someone like that for me? Someone who makes me happy?”
“It’s a ruse, Austen. Listen to me. I will not allow you to let this boy hurt you.”
“Did you not just hear the words I just said? You will not make any choices for me. You will not decide who I am or who I can be with. I’ve been there, done that, and I won’t allow anyone, not even you, to put me back into that pit of pure hell,” I say, my voice burning with tears. “I mean, hell, Peepaw, you sound just like they did. Like my mom, telling me I have to take whatever the Grandmaster wants to give me. You know she was going to let him have sex with me. She offered to hold me down for him, to apologize for the disrespect of my biting a guy’s dick. I ran to you, the one person I knew would help me.”
Pain flashes across his face. “Austen Faye, that is unfair.”
“Is it? Try living it.”
“Austen, I am not them, and I can’t imagine what they put you through. It pains me to know these things, but sweetheart, I am only looking out for you. You are naïve when it comes to athletes. Not all of them can treat you the way you deserve.”
“And that’s for me to decide,” I insist, holding his gaze.
“Honey, he could be using you to get on the team.”
I scoff. “Like I have that kind of control?”
“I do,” he stresses. “Austen, I am very successful. I have two teams already, with a third on the way. What if he’s looking at you as an instant payday? If it doesn’t work out with the Assassins, he’ll live off you?”
I laugh at that. “You don’t know him at all. He isn’t like that. Without even asking me, he buys me food, drinks, and whatever he sees that he thinks I’d want. Money isn’t everything, and we sure as hell don’t bring it up.”
He eyes me. “Then what if he’s using you to get on the team? That if he’s with you, it’ll urge Elli to put him on the team.”
“He wouldn’t do it,” I say simply. “I have watched him work his ass off, just as I have, to get where Posey wants him. He works with her twice a day. He goes in on the weekends. He isn’t just sitting back doing nothing. He’s working. You don’t know him.”
I can see every wrinkle around Peepaw’s eyes from the stress of trying to get his daughter back. Of trying to save her. I can see the lines along his mouth where he worked his lip in fear of knowing we weren’t safe. He is a good man, a loving man, and I love him fiercely, but I will not have choices made for me. I will make them. “I have to make my own decisions and learn from them.”
“But if I can guide you, why wouldn’t you accept that?”
“Because I don’t want to,” I say simply. “I won’t believe for one second that Dimitri is like these guys you speak of. I know he is not.”