Total pages in book: 18
Estimated words: 16396 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 16396 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 82(@200wpm)___ 66(@250wpm)___ 55(@300wpm)
“Don’t do that, gorgeous!” I protest, reaching for her to pick her up. But she puts out a hand to stop me.
“You grew up here?” she asks, walking past me up the stairs to the front door.
“I…yes I did.” I join her at the door. The house key is still on my keychain, although it hasn’t been used in years. I slide it into the lock. “But I haven’t been back in a while. No one but me even knows about it.”
“Well, let’s go inside.” Josie smiles.
This is insane. A girl as beautiful as Josie in a place like this? It’s like eating caviar while sitting on a dumpster on a street corner in the worst part of town. This girl deserves the best, and I’m taking her here. It’s the only way to keep her safe, and I know she’s just doing her best to be nice to me by acting like it’s no big deal, but she deserves the princess treatment, and I’m treating her like somebody’s side piece.
With a deep sigh, I turn the key in the lock and open the door.
The place is just how I remember it. The old couch is still there, my dad’s chair in the corner, the coffee table, the fireplace, and the door leading out back. Sometime in my absence, the door to the kitchen came off its hinges and is lying on the floor in the middle of the doorway. There’s a musty smell too, like an old bookstore.
Josie walks to the back window and looks out at the sun setting through the trees. “It must have been nice growing up here.”
“Stop that,” I say.
“What?” She turns and looks at me.
“I know you’re just trying to be nice. You don’t have to do that.”
“Magnus, I’m not—”
“My dad was a con artist,” I say through gritted teeth. “Always working one scam or the next. The only valuable thing he ever taught me was how to fight. And one could argue if that’s the best thing you ever taught your son then you failed miserably as a father.”
I can see us both standing in the back yard, him holding up his hands, shouting at me to swing, cuffing me in the side of the head when I was too timid to go on.
“Magnus…”
“My mother was what you might call a ‘working girl’ these days,” I go on. “She had me, and I guess when she saw me, she decided she didn’t want me. I never met her. All I have is a vague image in my mind of a woman I think is her.”
I almost feel it slipping in again—that pain I’ve done such a good job of pushing down all these years. I reached a point in my life where I told myself that the fact that my mother never wanted me would never bother me again, but for some reason, explaining it all to Josie has those feelings coming back, like the opening of an old wound.
Of course, I’ve never spoken about this to anyone before. I guess that could have something to do with it.
She approaches me, a pained look in her eyes, but a look also filled with empathy. It makes me want to turn away or change the subject, but I can’t. It’s like my feet are stuck in concrete, and all I can do is watch as she moves in and reaches up and touches a hand to my cheek.
“I know what you’re feeling, Magnus.”
Her words shock me like a bullet to the chest.
“Do you?” I almost scoff. I want to believe her, but how could she? Her mother is still alive. She has the beauty of a goddess.
Josie nods. “I grew up in a place not much different than this. Our hot water never worked because we never had money for the bills because my dad was a degenerate gambler. His debt caught up to him when I was twelve and…” She looks away. “He went out one night, and we never saw him again.”
“Jesus, Josie, I’m sorry.”
“I’ve learned to deal with it, but it’s one of those things you never really come to terms with, you know?” I nod and take her hand in mine. It’s so small and so soft, so tender. Every protective instinct in me is brought out by her presence.
“It was just my mom and me after that. I thought things were going all right, but my mom just couldn’t handle things, I guess. She got…well…”
“Drugs?”
Josie nods. “Vincent got her hooked on them. Pretty soon she was…well, she just wanted to be around him all the time. But she couldn’t afford her addiction, so she started working for him.”
“Christ,” I growl, clenching my fist at my side. I knew Vincent was a real son of a bitch, but I never thought he would stoop to that level.