Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106779 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
I slammed the door with her inside the cab, and glared at him.
“Take one step fucking closer and I’ll kill you,” I told him. I would have. I could have ripped his heart out and left it at her feet for what the bastard had done. “I’m fucking serious. Stop fucking moving!”
He raised his hands in front of him, as if to tell me he didn’t mean any harm. But everything he fucking did was harmful. Everything he did hurt her. I wanted him gone for-fucking-ever.
“I just want to say goodbye,” he told me, his voice dark. “I won’t bother you again, I swear. I’ll never come back. Just let me say goodbye to her. Wish her luck.”
The cab driver honked his horn and I nearly jumped him at the sign of danger.
“Why the fuck would I let you do that?” I asked him, practically growling. “She’s barely over what happened. Didn’t you see what seeing you did to her? You pathetic fucking moron.”
“Please.” He came up to me, and I saw new lines in his face that weren’t there a few weeks ago. “Please, just let me say goodbye. I won’t touch her, I swear.”
My hands shook with held-back punches as I opened Pet’s door. I knew she could see outside, but the windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see her.
I blocked the view inside the car and looked at her. Her face was so pale it looked white, and she stared at me with her eyes blank.
“Do you want to say goodbye?” I asked. “Tell me if you don’t, I’ll tell him to fucking go.”
She shook her head, then nodded. She swallowed, hard. She looked scared as fuck. I wanted to kill him for that already.
“I’ll say goodbye,” she whispered, and I moved aside, my arm draped over the car door so I could fucking hurt him if he made me.
I watched him watch her. As soon as he saw her, his eyes got misty. It fucking hurt, seeing another man stare at my girl like that, and I wanted to hurt him even more.
He didn’t come much closer, just a step or two, and then he kneeled down next to the car. Fucking dramatic as always, pretentious sonofabitch.
“Sapphire,” he said, and just with using her real name, he earned my fist loosening up a little. “Sapph. I just want to say goodbye.”
I could hear her sobbing already, soft little cries with his name dying on her lips. This was really the end. I could tell.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Say goodbye.”
I watched them stare at each other for the longest time, trying to read their expressions and failing miserably.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, and she nodded, over and over again. “I’m so fucking sorry for what happened, I’m sorry for all the awful shit I’ve done to you.”
“Okay,” she repeated. “Okay, that’s okay.”
It hurt to watch them. It hurt to see her this way, this invested, this fucking in love with another man. I wanted him gone. But for once, I knew better than to interrupt. This was her final goodbye to what she had with him, and she needed this moment. I guess they both did.
“Goodbye,” he said, his voice heavy. “Goodbye, my pretty Pet.”
I pulled him up by his lapels as she cried out, and shoved him backwards.
“Fucking don’t,” I growled at him, and he raised his hands again.
A small crowd had gathered on the steps of the gallery, including my parents and his date. I wanted them all to see, but as we glared at each other, I heard my mom whisper my name in a shocked way. All my fault again, then. Fuck that. Fuck all of it.
I slammed Sapph’s door shut and went to the other side of the car, getting in next to her. I ignored her sobs that usually turned me on like nothing else, gave the shocked driver our address, and stared out of the window the whole ride home. I didn’t dare touch her, and she didn’t reach for me, either.
I felt like she would never be fully mine.
I held her that night, tightly in my arms. I held her hair back when she was sick again the next morning, just remembering what happened in the gallery. I always held her, every step of the way. And it still didn’t seem to be enough. I just wanted her to be alright. I wanted to fix her, but it felt like I never could.
“You know I’m not going to break when you’re not looking,” she told me the next evening, and I just pulled her closer instead of giving her a reply. “Come on, F. I’m going to be fine.”
She’d started calling me F after teasing me for ages that my name reminded her of a cat she had as a kid. I kind of liked it. No one had called me that before, and it felt nice, felt intimate.