Total pages in book: 238
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 231781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1159(@200wpm)___ 927(@250wpm)___ 773(@300wpm)
Erika Fane stood off to the left with her arms folded over her chest, while Winter Ashby straddled a bench off to my right.
As I let the door slide closed behind me, everyone turned their eyes, staring at me.
The black-haired one, poised over Alex, pierced me with her green eyes, and I saw Winter shift and turn her head to train her ears.
“Those are my clothes,” Alex said, panting.
I chewed the corner of my mouth. “Yes, I know.”
She hooded her eyes and pushed the other woman off, rising from her knees and standing up. Sweat made her skin glow, and her shorter hair was pulled back into a low ponytail as she walked to the treadmill and grabbed a towel.
Erika inched over, her arms still folded. “Alex filled us in.” Her eyes fell down my body. “You’re okay?”
I nodded. “Thank you for asking.”
No one had yet.
Erika cast a glance at Alex, who was downing some water, and then back to me as she started to walk past. “We’ll leave you two alone.”
“Don’t,” Alex told her.
Erika stopped, and Alex capped the bottle and faced me.
Splotches of sweat darkened her white workout top, and she stepped toward me in her black yoga pants and bare feet, hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. “In the moment, you actually didn’t know who you were going to choose down there, did you?”
I tipped my chin up. “Was it that I might’ve chosen Will or that I might have chosen Aydin that bothers you the most?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and I didn’t quite feel satisfied that I’d annoyed her, but I didn’t feel badly about it, either. She and Will still failed to understand that it wasn’t a choice I was making between the two men in Aydin’s bedroom.
It wasn’t about them at all.
She approached, glaring at me like she was judge and jury. “You broke his heart.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” I retorted, remembering Will’s taunts. “I’m sure you provided loads of comfort to him all these years. ‘In his bed, in the shower, on the beach, against the wall, on the hood of the car, and in his backseat.”
She growled, coming right for me, but I shot out and caught her, pushing her away before she hit me. “I’m not going to fight you.”
“You don’t get to decide!”
She lunged into my face, and I pressed my palms to her chest, pushing her back again.
“And you’re not going to fight me,” I told her. “I’m tired of bleeding.”
What had been happening in my head in that house was the same battle I’d always fought. A battle between how I always saw the world, and how I craved to see the world instead. I needed to change as much as I needed Will.
I needed to like myself as much as I loved him.
I stared at her, feeling the eyes of everyone else in the room, and while I kind of understood where she was coming from, because I felt the same jealousy thinking about her and Will as she did thinking about Aydin and me, her notions of who I was and what I deserved weren’t my problem.
“I will make amends for my crime all those years ago,” I told her, “but what goes on between Will and me is none of your business. I don’t give a shit if you’re his friend, his mom, or God. You’re not entitled to a grudge against me. This isn’t about you.”
A glint hit her eyes, and then she cocked her head, silent for a moment.
“You sound just like him,” she finally said, crossing her arms over her chest. “He got to you quick, I see.”
He.
Aydin.
She shook her head. “Like a true, manipulative monster—”
“Like a father.”
It wasn’t at all like she was thinking. I barely knew Aydin, and I didn’t want to sleep with him. She was taking something far more complicated, and whittling it down to fit her own shallow perceptions of the world, so she could understand something she was determined not to ever comprehend.
I didn’t want to fuck him.
I cast a glance at the others before turning my eyes back on her. “I thought I’d remember my parents better since I was almost twelve when they died,” I told her. “I didn’t realize what a burden it takes off your shoulders to have guidance. I didn’t realize I’d missed it so much until I had it again.”
Aydin Khadir had an agenda. He stole me, put me in a dangerous position, and manipulated me.
But people change people, and while he was no hero, I couldn’t help but feel a little grateful. I’d been dying before I woke up in Blackchurch.
“I was safer in a house full of criminals than I was with my brother, because of Aydin,” I gritted out, “so you may as well exhale, because I won’t apologize for seeing something good in him. You did at one time, after all.”