Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80495 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“I don’t think so. I’m not letting him go anywhere. I’m going to stay right here, with a gun pressed to this fucker’s head, and you’re going to go to the police and turn yourself in. Once I know you’ve been arrested—you do get a phone call, so make sure it’s to me—I’ll let him go.”
“And what if she refuses?” Beau cuts in smoothly. He’s so eerily calm, though I know it’s not real. I can see the tiny tremble run through his body. And it’s not fear. It’s adrenaline.
“Then I open that window and throw you out face first.”
Aiden’s savage retort makes Beau laugh. Not a little chuckle but a big belly laugh that can potentially set the gun straight off. I still want to surge forward, but the tiniest shake of Beau’s head keeps me where I am. If I charge at Aiden, I could make him accidentally squeeze the trigger. I have to remember that Beau is trained for situations like this. That’s why he’s so calm.
He’s waiting for an opening. For the right moment.
“Where the roof’s concerned, you’d have to get in line, dude. I’ve already been there, done that. I survived.”
“Shut up! Don’t you call me dude.”
Beau once demanded the same thing of me, and there he is, using that word now. It feels like he’s doing it for me, to reassure me somehow.
“Okay, dude. Go ahead. Throw me over the roof. I’ve been craving round two all week. Come to think of it, you probably greased the shingles the first time. It was a real adrenaline rush, I can tell you that much.”
“Kind of like Russian Roulette?” The disembodied hand presses the gun so hard into Beau’s temple that I see the flesh start to wrinkle and dimple. “Hmm? How about we give it a try, asshole? I have to tell you, though, this thing is fully loaded. The odds aren’t in your favor.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Beau’s too calm. He is so unflappable, but if I know one thing about Aiden, it’s that he’s not. He wasn’t ever moody in our relationship, and maybe I can’t judge what was real and what wasn’t given that it was all a lie, but whenever he got angry, he’d get so angry that he couldn’t breathe, and whenever something upset him, he’d be basically inconsolable.
I can’t see his face, but my heart contracts to the size of a hard little stone when my eyes shoot to his hand—the one holding the gun. It might not look like it’s connected to a body, but it is. Those knuckles are white, and the palm is probably clammy. Aiden isn’t the kind of person who bluffs about anything. He’s a great liar, but the truth behind the lies? That’s always perfectly sincere, even if it’s perfectly wrong. The safety is off on that gun. It’s real. One slip of a sweaty, nervous hand, one trigger, and Beau’s life could be over.
It could be over before he knows how wonderful it can really be. Before the glass heart bursts wide open and learns to let the sunshine and feeling and warmth back in. Even if it hurts to feel those things, it’s worth it. It is. I want so badly for him to see that and believe it. If I could, I would stick myself into his heart and vacuum out all the bad and all the wrong that’s ever been done to him. I would make him see that he is wanted, even if he was given up at birth. He was loved so deeply, and he could be loved again. He could learn how to manage the pain if he chose love.
Isn’t love always supposed to win?
Or is that just for fairytales?
I want this to be like a fairytale. I want his story and my story to have happy endings, even if they’re not together. For the love of all watching-the-stars-on-a-greasy-roof-on-a-perfect-summer-night, I want to see what it would be like together. This can’t be the end.
Beau might be calm, and he might be breathing steadily and regularly. He might be trained for this, and he might be brave enough to figure he can talk his way out of this as a tactic, but getting Aiden worked up and wild isn’t going to help. I know that. But Beau doesn’t.
“Okay.” I take one step to the side, and there. Yes, I can see Aiden’s face now. Waxy and white with sweat beading his brow and a curled upper lip. There’s a ring around his pupils that isn’t right. Fear. He doesn’t want to be doing this. He truly is that desperate. “Aiden, look at me.”
Beau tries to sway his body, so Aiden can’t look at me. But I step to the side again so he can. I don’t look at Beau’s face. I know he’s furious. I know he’d try and signal for me to stop, to not say anything, and to just let him handle this.