Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 129460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129460 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 647(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
“Jess isn’t your only friend. I’m your friend too.”
Smiling, she fans her hand across my chest. Her touch doesn’t make me want to vomit like everyone else.
Well, everyone but Jess.
“You don’t count since you’re blood.”
She’s wrong for the second time, but once again, my lips act as if Jess’s almost-arousal glued them together.
Fucking coward.
While yawning a tiger-like yawn, Octavia slowly trudges to her room. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I wait for her bedside lamp to switch off before silently stalking down the hallway. I don’t watch her like a freak. I’m a little fucked in the head and have commitment issues a mile long, but I still have some functioning morals. I merely want to make sure she’s asleep before closing her door since the wood wedged between our rooms may be the only way I’ll keep secret the fact she isn’t the only one in our duo having nightmares.
Almost thirty minutes later, the niggle of my bladder becomes too stabbing for me to ignore. After closing Octavia’s door without so much of a creak, I head to the small bathroom positioned between the kitchen and our bedrooms.
Even living here for a little over a month hasn’t lessened my panic about using the facilities in the slightest. I still switch on every light in the vicinity of the cramped space before checking to make sure no one is hiding behind the door or in the shower stall.
“Just take a fucking piss,” I mumble to myself, frustrated that not even his death cured me of my phobia. I was so scared the first time he touched me, I refused to use the bathrooms at home. I wet the bed almost every night because that was the only time I could no longer fight my bladder to hold.
I think my bedwetting was my mother’s first clue that something wasn’t right with me. Dehydration was a close second.
She had a lot of theories, and she did the best she could to protect me, but her beliefs weren’t close to the real cause of my nightmares.
Everyone thought he was a saint.
Everyone but me.
“Come on.” I almost strangle my dick when the shake of my hands has pee landing on the toilet seat instead of in the bowl. I’m practically straddling the porcelain like I have a vagina between my legs, yet I still make a fucking mess.
I could thank God when the rest of my bladder is emptied without incident, but since he’s most likely up there with that prick, I tuck away my cock, wipe up the mess with toilet paper, then flush before moving to the vanity to wash my hands.
When the bathroom bulb blowing plunges half the bathroom into darkness, I take a retreating step back. There’s no one behind me, but my head conjures up his black robe and evil grin even quicker than it does a demand to flee. I can feel his breath on my neck and his hands skating around my front to help me ‘learn how to aim.’
I could aim perfectly fine before him. I fucking could. My mother put a ping-pong ball in the toilet bowl when I was three. I made it rotate with my precise aim every single time I went.
Then he fucked it up.
“You fucked it up.” I scowl at the shadow reflecting in the vanity mirror. “You fucked up everything. Me. Them.” My voice croaks under the weight of a sob when I mutter, “Her.”
Needing some air before I put my fist through another mirror, I race out of the bathroom and my apartment building before I even register that my legs are moving.
As I pace the cracked concrete of the side alley near my building, I rake my fingers through my hair while blubbering incoherently under my breath.
Don’t ask me what I’m saying. I am barely lucid.
The psychosis isn’t as bad as the one I had when I pretended Jess’s boyfriend was my grandfather. Someone can drag me out of it, although I really wish she couldn’t.
I can’t be trusted when I’m mentally shut down. Not with Octavia, and most certainly not with the woman who makes me want to believe he didn’t break me.
After dumping the rubbish I was meant to clean into a trash receptacle at my left, Jess moves to stand in front of me. Her micro shirt has been replaced with one far more modest, and her hair is swept off her face and twisted at the side, but she is still the most ravishing woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on.
She doesn’t speak. She merely stares and stares and stares until my head agrees with my heart that she is the glue needed to repair me.
“Caleb…” Jess murmurs faintly when I crowd her against the brickwork with three long strides. “We shouldn’t…”
She leans into my touch instead of repelling away from it when I raise my hand to brush away a curl that popped free from her braid. Her hair isn’t as straight as it was last month, but it seems to have grown inches in a matter of weeks. It fascinates me to no end, but not enough for me not to issue a warning.