Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105665 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“M-my bunny …” Jersey hiccupped. “Only h-has one-one e-ear.”
G’s mouth pulled into something resembling a crooked smile and a grimace, probably because of the cut on her lip. “Bunnies still hop with one ear,” she whispered.
It was the most she had ever heard G talk. A whisper. Five words to take away Jersey’s pain. Who took away G’s pain?
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Present
Bunnies still hop with one ear.
Jersey looked down at the one-eared bunny. Next to it, peeking out of a wet, soiled envelope was a photo. She slowly squatted next to the bunny and retrieved the photo with her left hand while her right hand continued to grip the knife. The photo shook in her grasp—she shook.
“G …” Jersey whispered, letting her watery-eyed gaze slide over the school photo of G. Her long, scraggly hair hung in her eyes. Her lanky body dressed in a plain red tee and jeans. No makeup. No smile. You could barely see G’s eyes.
Jersey wondered if G hid behind her hair to hide her shame.
“Why do you have this?” The pain carried more weight than her pride, sending more tears down her cheeks when she blinked. “What did you do to her?” She tore her gaze away from the photo, meeting Ian’s grimace as he continued to clutch his leg.
As if his pain no longer mattered, he studied her, torturing her with that look—the one that made her feel like his whole world. But she wasn’t. She was his punching bag, his toy, his most tortured victim.
Ian coughed, trying to clear his throat. “I cut her hair so the police wouldn’t unfairly judge her. I cut her hair so her next foster parents wouldn’t belittle her and call her a girl. So they wouldn’t buy him feminine clothes, sodomize him, and stick tampons up his ass to absorb the blood. I cut his hair so he could play on the boys’ basketball team because he wasn’t a girl … G was a boy. His name was Christian Guardian Faulkner.”
Ian continued to obliterate Jersey’s world. “Mr. Fisher said he wasn’t worthy of the biblical name, Christian, or a protective name, Guardian, so he called the boy G. And since the boy had long hair, he treated the boy like a girl. And when the boy tried to correct him, or have an opinion, or say a single word to anyone, Mr. Fisher beat him and raped him.”
“N … no …” Jersey sobbed, the knife shaking in her hand. G was the first person to really care for Jersey—to love her. G kept Jersey alive. G told her to be brave and run fast.
G remained in the forefront of Jersey’s mind every day. When Jersey fought, she fought for G, imagining every face she punched was Mr. Fisher. Not a single day passed where Jersey didn’t think of G, wondered where she was, if she was even still alive. Not a day passed that Jersey didn’t silently thank G for saving her.
“I left that life,” Ian continued. “After two years with the Russells, playing basketball with my friend Kessler Lockwood and watching him blow a basketball scholarship because of drugs, I changed my name. I followed my passion. And a few months ago, I found the girl who has haunted my dreams for over sixteen years. I found the girl who mattered more to me than my own life. She did sixteen years ago, and she still does at this very moment.”
Ian swallowed hard, sucking in a sharp breath as he put his hand behind him and eased to sitting with a hard thunk and another painful “fuck!”
“I …” he seethed, his clenched hand covered in blood, “let that life go because I killed a man to save the girl with the bunny.”
“If he killed them, it wasn’t intentional. He’s not a killer and neither are you. I think you might take a bullet for me, but I don’t think you’d actually take a life for me.”
“No …” Jersey shook her head over and over, covering her face with her hands, just her tortured eyes peeking at him over her fingertips.
Ian was G.
Guard-ian.
And he took a life for her.
“No … no …” The tears flowed freely, blinding her, drowning her thoughts, blurring reality.
Reality … she had no concept of what was real.
“Jersey!”
Her gaze shot to the door, Chris’s voice and pounding footsteps drawing nearer.
“Jersey …” Chris stopped at the doorway, face swollen and bloodied.
Her vision blurred as her ears rang, bringing on a wave of nausea from her stomach tightening. She blinked several times before her gaze shifted from his face to Ian’s bloodied knuckles. Everything stopped. Jersey felt catatonic.
At first, Chris sighed with relief before he homed in on Ian and his bloodied ear and the knife impaled in his leg. “Jersey …” His wild eyes shifted to her as she slowly grabbed the knife again.