Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 339(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 339(@200wpm)___ 271(@250wpm)___ 226(@300wpm)
She shrugs casually and lifts her chin in a proud, haughty fashion that tells me she doesn’t give two rats’ asses about what she did. “If you didn’t want me to find them, why were they in the medicine cabinet?”
“I don’t know…for days that I couldn’t sleep, maybe?”
“Huh, days. Not nights. Because you do all your crazy, trying to reach sainthood, proving to the world that you’re the hero you always wanted to be, black knight hacking at night.”
“And what’s so repulsive about that? Should I not try and right the wrongs my father did? And not just my father, but our fathers? Should I not pay back the woman who gave me everything, who gave me a family, a place in the world, a trade, a way to make a living? Everyone else has day jobs. All my brothers. But not me. This is what I do, and I live, eat, and breathe it. This is how I survive.”
“Gross. Talk like that sounds more like it’s consumed you. Gone from being a passion to an obsession. Your brothers told me that you come off like a jerk because, as you just said, this is all you do. There isn’t room for anything else. Also…No. One. Else.”
I’m pissed that she was talking to my brothers—when did she even find time for that?—and they divulged some of my secrets, no doubt in a bid to help me, though now they’re being used against me like sharp weapons shoved into the tender parts of me.
“I don’t let people in because it’s dangerous for them, and that’s not fair.”
“Oh? And it was fair to do it to me?” She stops reaching for the door handle and crosses her arms, and that’s when I realize she’s holding a…is that a pickle? She then realizes it herself and brandishes it at me. “I’m leaving. I’m walking out of here, and if you try and stop me, I won’t be responsible for what I’m going to do with this pickle.”
“Leaving?” That comes out amazed. I really can’t believe that’s what she was trying to do. Yeah, it appeared like it since her hand was on the door handle when I stopped pretending to be out cold and caught up with her here, but I’m still surprised. “I thought we were…working on things.”
“What things? Argh! I never agreed to sign anything. Just because I believe that Scarlet is telling the truth, and maybe I even feel for her, it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe I even like your brothers and feel a little bit sorry for you as a kid, seeing as you had a shitty childhood, which makes me feel horrendous and guilty, too, because I didn’t, and it could easily have been me in your shoes. Maybe I feel all of those things, but it doesn’t mean that I like you or I’m going to marry you even if it’s just fake or that I’m going to…to…to help you.” She stamps her foot and waves the pickle at me. “I want my old life back! I want my boring library job back. You stole that from me! I want to talk to my parents, even if it’s just on the phone. I want to go back to my house and water my plants and have a hot date night with a good book because that’s about as exciting as it was for me. I want to…to…I want to not be here with you, dealing with any of this.”
Maybe our evil plotting dads were onto something because Azalea is my match in every way. She’s headstrong, proud, and stubborn. She doesn’t even know it, but she’s a survivor too. She’s wicked smart—come on, she has to be since she’s a librarian. She’s tough—my balls would agree—and she’s not above serving me my own slice of justice, sleeping pills in my wine style, which I totally saw her fiddling with when I was making sandwiches, by the way. But I knew she wouldn’t kill me, so I drank it down anyway. When I started feeling a tad tired, I knew she’d found the sleeping pills I suddenly remembered were in the medicine cabinet upstairs.
She should have given me the whole package if she wanted to put me down. They’re only over-the-counter shite that don’t really work, but then, she probably figured she could poison me, and she didn’t want to risk that either.
She’s also like me that way. No matter what shit life hands us, it hasn’t managed to break us, but it also hasn’t managed to break down the good streak in us, either. Yes, I’m a bad man who does good things, but I also like to think I’m a good man beneath the baddie exterior.
“Are you actually going to do anything with that pickle, or are you just going to threaten me with it?” I ask smoothly and obnoxiously.