Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I told her we should call the cops.
With hollow eyes that shattered a piece of me I would never be able to reclaim, she told me she wasn’t ready, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. She trembled in my arms as she spoke in broken whispers. Josh was rich. His dad was the mayor. She’d borrowed his tent, told him where she was going, and then had been waiting in it naked.
All of which was my fucking fault. She didn’t say that part. She didn’t have to.
It was around two in the morning when she finally fell asleep in my arms. Her back was to me and I stared at the side of her face, her sparrow-colored hair tickling my nose. I thought about my mother.
She’d never looked back in the six years since she’d left. No phone calls. No Christmas visits. Not even a birthday card dropped in the mail. I tried to forget about her as much as possible. However, as I watched Thea sleeping, I closed my eyes and thought back to when I was a kid.
We’d had woods behind our old house, and when my father was on one of his tangents, she’d take Nora and I out to feed the sparrows. I remembered one particular day when I was eight. It was in the beginning when the abuse first started, or maybe it was only beginning to me because I was finally old enough to see my father for who he truly was.
Regardless, we were hanging out with a bag of bird seed. Of course, the birds were hidden, waiting on us to drop the food and go. But I was pissed, probably more about the fact that my dad had slapped my mom before we left. The birds caught all my wrath that day. I yelled, kicking and screaming like a toddler and not a kid who in less than a year would have to wrestle my father off my mother. Nora cried at my outburst and I told her to shut the hell up. That was when my mom had had enough.
She snatched me up by the back of my shirt, tears streaming down her red cheeks, and got in my face. “The sparrows don’t come because you need them, Ramsey. They come because they need you.”
I’m sure all of this was followed by a quit-yelling-at-your sister lecture and threats that the sparrows would never come if I didn’t shut up and be patient. But the only thing I heard in that scolding was that somebody needed me. For an angry kid who felt worthless and out of control, it gave me a purpose.
My mother was my first sparrow. I did everything I could for her until the day she left us.
Nora was next.
And then there was Thea.
Yes, I still believed that everything happens for a reason is the biggest bullshit adage that had ever been spoken, but the minute I discovered Thea Hull—with all of her flowing, dark hair and her sad, green eyes—was just as broken as I was, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that someone had sent me another sparrow.
I’d never been more wrong. Thea hadn’t shown up at that tree that night because she needed me. She’d appeared because I needed her.
Thea was a fucking eagle—majestic, fierce, and strong.
I was the sparrow.
But that night, Josh Caskey had turned my warrior into a sparrow too. I couldn’t let him get away with it. She was never going to tell her dad or call the cops. The spotlight wasn’t Thea’s place. And if she went to the police, that was exactly what would happen. Gossip would make its way around school, and with Josh’s father being such a public figure, the whole town would know before the week was over.
I wanted to respect her decision.
But I couldn’t lie there in her bed while she suffered emotionally and physically, knowing what he’d done to her. I couldn’t let him get away with it.
Something had to be done.
My sparrow needed me.
And for that reason alone, I kissed her shoulder, crawled out of her bed, and then destroyed us all.
Twelve years later…
I stared at his back as he gave up shaking the gate and walked away. Nora chased after him, but he snatched his arm out of her grip.
“You’re a coward!” I yelled, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Would you stop?” Nora seethed at me while jumping in front of Ramsey to stop him.
“Why the fuck did you bring her?” he snapped.
“You know why,” she replied.
“No. I really fucking don’t. She was my middle school girlfriend. You got Suzie Jenkins from third grade hiding in the trunk too?”
Yeah. That hurt. But pain was the name of my game where Ramsey was concerned.
I couldn’t see her face, but she cocked her head to the side. After all these years, I knew Nora well. I’d bet my bank account that she had her eyebrows pinched and her chocolate-colored eyes narrowed into slits. She was tall. I was five-five and she had me by at least four inches. But there was literally nothing menacing about Nora Stewart. Willowy was the adjective that came to mind. However, don’t for a second think her stature made her weak. I’d seen her verbally destroy far bigger men than her brother.