Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“What favor?”
The force that’s crushing my chest increases but I ignore it.
I thrust my hand down my pocket—I’m still wearing last night’s clothes so I never got a chance to put it away, not that I ever put this thing away but still—and fish it out. His eyes flick down to the object I’m holding in my hand before looking back up to me.
“I want you to give this to her,” I say with difficulty. “For real this time.”
“Why?”
I set the ring down on a nearby cart with the flowers. “Because you’re the right man for her.”
“How’s that?”
“You love her.”
“And you don’t?”
I press a palm on my chest.
On the left side where my heart is. I have to. Because my heart’s racing fiercely.
And I wish I could punch my hand in and feel it.
For real.
The way she makes my heart race. It feels like music, something she could dance to, rather than something threatening, something dangerous.
Then, “I do.”
I love her.
I’ve only come to find out a few hours ago and since then I’ve said it to myself one hundred and eight times. And yes, I’ve counted because now that I know I’m never going to stop saying it.
I’m going to fill the entire sky with my I love yous as if they were stars. As if they were flakes of snow. And they say you can’t count stars, don’t they?
I’m going to prove them wrong.
For her.
“But?”
And for her, I say, “But she deserves someone better. She deserves someone less damaged. Someone without issues. Someone who knows how to handle his emotions. Someone uncomplicated, someone who doesn’t hurt her. Like I keep doing.”
“In short,” he concludes, cocking his head to the side, “she deserves someone who isn’t our father.”
I press my chest again.
Exactly.
Even though I love her, even though I will spend my entire goddamn life loving her, she deserves better than me. She deserves better than someone like our father.
Someone who doesn’t constantly battle with his demons. Who can be there for her one hundred percent. I mean I couldn’t be there for my own family, my own siblings, my own twin brother because I was so wrapped up in my own shit.
How can I guarantee that I can be there for her?
I want to though.
I fucking want to.
There’s nothing I want more.
To be that man.
To be her man.
To make her happy.
To live that life with her. The temporary, dream life that we’d been living. To make it real, to make it permanent. To be able to call her mine. To be able to protect her, keep her safe, make her laugh.
There’s nothing I want more than to love her, to show her how much I love her.
Nothing. More.
But the only way I can do that is by asking my brother to step in.
So again as much as it fucking kills me, guts the fuck out of me, I nod. “Yes.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I’m not giving her the ring back.”
I clench and clench my jaw as I stare at his unforgiving features. “Look, I –"
“No, you’ve talked, and you’ve talked a lot. Now you’re going to listen to me,” he cuts me off, anger palpable and clear on his features now. “You’re right. I always thought that I got stuck with you. I got stuck with a twin brother who’s got no clue how to feel things. Who doesn’t feel anything for anyone let alone me. And it pissed me off. It would piss me off so much that I’d deliberately try to provoke you. I’d deliberately try to egg you on, make you angry, make you upset. So you’d fight back. So I could see that you felt something, that you cared about me. But there was nothing. No sign of emotions. No sign of life. Not ever. And yes, I’ve hated you for that. For years.
“For years I thought it was you. You took it away from me. You took away the twin brother that I used to play with, that I used to fight with, argue with, the brother who I used to love. Who cared about me. Who cared about things. Who had some life in him. Who wasn’t a fucking winter wasteland. Years, Stellan.” He pauses to swallow thickly. “But it wasn’t you, was it? It was him. He did that.”
This time when he pauses, it’s to grit his teeth.
It’s to deal with the flickering emotions that I can clearly see on his face.
“I’ve always hated him. Not a big surprise there. We’ve all hated him, despised him for his drinking, his neglect, the way he’d disappear for days, couldn’t hold a job. The way everything fell to Mom. To Con. And now I…” He swallows again. “I can’t even begin to fathom, to fucking comprehend what she went through and it… It fucking pisses me off. It pisses me off that I didn’t know. But what pisses me off the most, what makes me hate him the most right now is what he did to you.”