Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 144(@200wpm)___ 115(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 144(@200wpm)___ 115(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
I was weak.
Unable to armor myself against her charms.
It was impossible for me to be selfish, I could put on an act, but at the end of the day, all I’d ever wanted.
Was to be by her side.
I never wanted to be her hero, the knight in shining armor, I wanted to be the partner that helped bury the body, the one you called when you were in prison, the one you weren’t afraid to pee in front of, the guy that changed a lightbulb not because she wasn’t capable but because she wanted to stare at my ass.
I wanted to be the one that was her biggest cheerleader and I’d thought it was enough to let her live her own story. I just didn’t expect her to write me out of it.
Chapter Four
Bri
Shock would be one word for it.
The other? Horror or maybe it was terror, wait were those the same thing? I was too panicked to actually think about Webster’s Dictionary all I knew was that if Ace’s name was in it, the actual definition would be gorgeous, capable, and the sort of guy who never needed to mansplain anything.
When I bought an Ikea shelf, he straight up looked at me and said he’d be in the living room. I had to actually beg for help and even then he read the instructions and said. “You can do this, it’s good for you to know how to screw.”
Double entendre, but I loved that he didn’t take over, on top of the fact that I knew in my soul if I begged him to just do it so I could sit and drink wine, he would. But no, he wanted me to learn on my own, he wanted me to be independent, he wanted me to have freedom, maybe that was why no guy ever compared. Despite knowing my past, knowing my depression and failed attempt to end it all.
He never once treated me like I was fragile—rather, he treated me like I was strong, not made of glass, but steel, refined by life. Ace thought higher of me than I thought of myself, that’s probably where my insecurity crept in when everything happened. You can’t love someone else fully when you aren’t able to love yourself—and I had trouble most days doing just that. The self-doubt was so strong, the guilt, the shame, the constant wondering when he was going to find someone who was whole. What day would it be, I always wondered, when he’d wake up and realize the person sleeping next to him was a chaotic mess of broken pieces of glass she continuously cut herself on in order to remind herself that she was nothing special? That she didn’t deserve him?
I shook the errant thoughts away. Therapy had been huge for me, and maybe if I hadn’t been an idiot and deleted him from my phone and life—I would be able to look at him in the face and at least apologize for ruining one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. But that meant telling him the truth, not just about my own feelings of self-loathing, but of what happened and why it set me off.
What if he looked at me the way I looked at myself that day? Like I messed up, like I wasn’t good enough to even do that.
Interns suddenly scrambled around me, one ran into my shoulder and nearly fell onto their ass. Clearly, they were pumped about their new apartments within the Villa of the main hotel.
Several grabbed their phones and started taking pictures and video of their key cards, going immediately to social media and posting how lucky they were to be getting a free luxury fully furnished apartment plus a paid internship—I’m sure they left out the whole but also you must go through gaming hell in order to power through part.
Others were starting to meet their partner, the bosses, that unbeknownst to them, suddenly found out they were participating.
Five minutes ago.
And Ace. Ace just sat and stared at the screen in front of the boardroom. Max paused, waving toward him.
And Ace looked ready to burn the entire building down.
It was a means to an end, I guessed?
I could get all of my student loans paid off on top of making money at this internship and gaining experience, plus, again, it was my only hope—Ace was suddenly my only hope. Wow, and back to square one when we met in that elevator when I was ready to truly end it all.
It wasn’t just my headspace, it was my sense of self-worth, it was looking up into the sky after my last rejection and going what is the actual point of all of this?
“Hi.” I finally found the courage and blurted out.
“Your hair’s longer.” His response wasn’t typical, he looked gorgeous but tired.