Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 748(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Scottie rolls her eyes and bumps him with her elbow to move him out of the way. Ace and Julia are counting the cash and splitting it up five ways. I take a stack from them as they hand them out, feeling the weight of it on the bulging anxiety that lives and breathes in my chest.
Blake smiles at his own stack. “Well, folks, you’re stuck with me now. Consider this team officially formed for any and all group Double C shit for the rest of the year.”
“Me too,” Ace confirms, shaking his bills in the air while Julia nods. “Ditto.”
Blake looks from them to me and Scottie—once again, we seem to have migrated toward each other. “What about you guys?”
“I’m in,” Scottie says immediately, steering her gaze up and over her shoulder to me. But it feels like my answer is for more than one question.
Am I in the group?
But more importantly…
Am I ready to stop pushing Scottie away?
Power and pain and deep longing move from Scottie’s green eyes to my gut as I hold them hostage. “You’ve got me.” My heart thrums in my chest. “You’ve got me for good.”
God help us all.
Tuesday, October 29th
Finn
I flip through my copy of The Winter’s Tale and wait for Scottie and Nadine to get to class and take the two empty seats next to me.
The ripped page from my dad’s journal burns a smoldering hole in the pocket of my pants, and anticipation makes my heart race even though I’m sitting down. I spent last night while Ace was out with Julia pulling some prank on his parents reading through it again and again until I found the perfect page to leave on Professor Winslow’s desk at the end of class.
The time has come for someone other than me to feel the pain of reality.
I want him to see the truth for himself and wonder, like I spent two years wondering, what it all means for his life. I want him to wonder who I am and how long I’ve known, and I want him to feel as helpless as I’ve felt my entire life living under the abuse of our asshole dad.
Scottie flops down in the seat next to me, and I jolt out of my daydream. It’s one of the darkest parts of me—these horrible thoughts I have about people who don’t know me at all—and it scares me a little that I can’t rein it in immediately when Scottie sits down. I shift in my seat and swallow to clear my throat, but I still feel like I’m burning alive from the inside out.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
I shake my head and look down at my lap. “I’m fine.”
She laughs. “Yeah, okay. Come on, Finn. Can we really not even manage to be friends? I mean, we worked together Friday night, and we’re all two thousand dollars richer because of it.”
“We can be friends,” I say. Though, even to my own ears, it sounds against my will.
“Convincing,” she says teasingly, bumping her shoulder into my own so many times, the tension in it finally leaves.
I crack a small smile. “You’re right. We can be friends.”
“Well, thank fuck for that. I was starting to think I was going to have to do this project with two people who hate me.”
“I could never hate you.” It’s simple. It’s fact. Scottie, for me, is the kind of person who lights up your soul. She’s happiness and wholesomeness and the sort of girl you cherish. I just don’t live the life of a guy who can give any of those things.
Nadine sits down before Scottie can reply, annoyed immediately. “I don’t understand why we have to sit together just because we’re working together.”
“Probably so we can work together,” I remark, saving Scottie the trouble of dealing with her.
“Then he at least should have let us pick our groups,” Nadine whines, looking back at Dane. He’s been paired with two other girls, and from the looks of things, he’s absolutely eating up the attention.
“All right, guys!” Professor Winslow calls from the front, making the rest of the chatter stop and effectively saving Scottie and me from having to say anything back to our apparent hostage. “I can see that you’ve all taken seats with your groups like I told you to last class, which I appreciate. I’ve done this for a reason, but before I get started, I want to bring out a couple volunteers I’ve wrangled into helping me out today.”
The classroom door opens, and my whole chest locks in on itself. Remington and Flynn Winslow—two of my other brothers—are dressed in jeans and blazers and sporting smiles despite the incredibly ridiculous fact that they’re spending their morning at a freshman literature class.
I recognize them immediately and with ease after all the research I’ve done on all of them, but even if I didn’t, the family resemblance is striking. In every feature of their faces, I see a little bit of my father.