Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Maybe I was. Although I didn’t feel like it right now. I just felt… tired. And yeah, angry, I guess. Mostly at myself, though.
But guys who were angry at themselves were usually the most dangerous, weren’t they?
“Did you know?” I repeated to Nora. “About what she went through?”
I felt a little guilty for my harsh tone. Nora was fucking gentle as all hell, one of the kindest people I knew, and didn’t deserve me speaking to her like this. But I couldn’t help myself.
“Does it matter?” she said, voice sharper than I was used to. I fucking hated the way she looked at me now. With disdain. “Does it matter what she went through in the past? Did you have to know in order to treat her decently here in the present? She didn’t know about your past, and yet she didn’t kick you out, divorce you, scream at you like you deserved.”
I swallowed her venom, the kind I didn’t know sweet Nora was capable of. Then again, she was someone who loved fiercely. Fiona meant a lot to her.
And I’d hurt her. It was well deserved.
And every single word was true.
I shouldn’t have had to know what she’d gone through in the past in order to treat her with honor in the present. But fuck, maybe if I did, maybe then I wouldn’t have been such a selfish, self-destructive piece of shit.
Or maybe I would’ve been.
“You’re right,” I told her. “About all of it. I fucked up. On a royal scale. There isn’t shit I can do about it now. But I’ll be better.”
Nora glared at me. “I don’t give a shit what you are and aren’t planning on doing,” she told me. “I’m going to go sit with my best friend. Be there for her, like I have been the whole fucking time.”
She shoulder-checked me as she walked past.
I didn’t blame her. Not one fucking bit.
Rowan hadn’t been talking to me. It made sense. I’d come at his wife in a way that was completely inappropriate.
He might’ve taken me outside if Tina and Tiffany hadn’t arrived, both of them wild with worry and not even acknowledging me before rushing to Fiona’s room. Calliope wasn’t far behind them. She was a little more composed, but I knew her well enough to note the crease between her eyes, the purse of her lips. She was shaken. For the first time in months, her eyes found me. It was hard dealing with all the shit from everyone—shit I deserved to fucking take—but it was the absolute worst having Calliope cut me off so effectively.
Her attention might’ve felt like some kind of relief in other circumstances. As it was, priorities had changed.
Through my haze, I was surprised to see Calliope not only look at me but walk toward me, stopping in front of me to reach out and squeeze my hand once. Her grip was firm and dry.
“She’s okay,” she said, obviously having been updated before she arrived. “They’re okay,” she added. “You haven’t lost it all… yet.” Her gaze sharpened, and the grip on my hand was tight with warning, not reassurance. “Consider this the wake-up call you needed. You already lost everything once. You had no control over that. It wasn’t your fault, not a lick of it.”
I wanted to open my mouth and argue with her, but Calliope didn’t give me space for that.
“This, though? You don’t step up for her and something else happens, that’ll be your fault,” she said. “And you’ll carry it with you for life. And, sweetheart, as strong as those shoulders are, they can’t even bear the weight of what you already think is on them. Get it together.”
She gave me a squeeze hard enough to hurt before she let me go and walked in the direction of Fiona’s hospital room.
I might’ve ruminated on her words a little more had Finn, the sheriff, not turned up right afterward. The fact that he was even here told me something. That this wasn’t a fucking accident, and I had someone to punish.
A short conversation with him told me I was right.
Fiona’s room was likely closed to me now. Her ladies had were all there and still all hated me in varying degrees. Beyond that, Fiona didn’t want to see me.
I’d told her everything, spewed out my sob story. And it hit her. I saw it. Gutted her. Because even with everything I’d done to her these past months, she still had some soft spot for me. My pain hurt her.
But while she might’ve been soft in some places, she was hard as fucking rock in others. Therefore, my story did not serve as a catalyst for her to forgive everything. As it shouldn’t. I was going to have to work a lot harder to win her back. That was fine with me.