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)
He rolled to the side, coughing and spitting out blood.
And then Josh Caskey sealed his own fate.
He laughed, pushing up onto all fours. “If it’s any consolation, she wasn’t nearly as good as your sister.”
It was a verbal knockout punch. A wave of nausea threatened to take me to my knees and I stumbled backward, barely able to stay on my feet.
I couldn’t process anything.
The crunch of tires on the dirt road.
The roar of the engine.
The headlights getting brighter.
Everything moved in slow motion.
By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late.
For him.
For her.
For me.
“No!” I screamed as Nora ran over Josh.
Betrayal, the likes of a knife, plunged into my chest. My whole body jerked and the room tilted as though the Earth had suddenly fallen out of orbit.
I flicked my gaze between Ramsey and Nora, the same desolation showing on both of their faces. “What are you talking about? That’s not possible. You weren’t even there.” Tears started to fill my eyes. “You told me you were at home asleep that night.”
“Thea,” Ramsey rasped, attempting to pull me into a hug.
Confused and becoming angrier by the second, I ducked out of his reach. “Don’t you touch me.” I swung my irate gaze back to Nora, not giving the first fuck that she was now trembling. “Explain.”
Ramsey lifted his hands in surrender and stepped between me and his sister. “I’ll tell you everything.”
“I didn’t ask you,” I hissed while leaning around him to keep my gaze locked on my best friend.
“I never meant for this to happen,” she croaked. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
With all patience exhausted, I yelled so loud that it shook the window. “What did you do!”
She swallowed hard, her breath shuddering. It might have made me a horrible human being, but I didn’t feel a lick of guilt for forcing her to tell me how she had ruined my entire fucking life and then lied to me about it for half of hers.
“He raped me when I was twelve,” she confessed.
My stomach soured, and Ramsey let out a pained groan.
She kept talking. “I thought I was cool because one of the ninth-grade boys wanted to hang out with me. He told me to keep it a secret because he was worried Ramsey would get pissed he wanted to date his little sister.” She laughed and it was wholly sad. “Date. That was all he had to say. I was so desperate for someone to love me and he was this hot older guy. I thought he was my knight in shining armor.”
Screwing his eyes shut, Ramsey pinched the bridge of his nose. “Stop. Please.”
“I can’t,” she breathed. “He convinced me to sneak out and meet him at the high school baseball field one night. It started out sweet, with him saying he wanted a picture of me to put in his wallet. It didn’t stay that way long.”
“Jesus,” I breathed. Bile burned the back of my throat as memories I’d long since packed away came clawing to the surface.
His heavy weight as he held me down.
The pain of his teeth sinking into my flesh.
The panic when I realized I wasn’t strong enough to fight him off.
I slapped a hand over my mouth and tried not to gag.
She moved around Ramsey, getting closer with every word spoken. I was still raging with betrayal, but I didn’t trust my legs enough to back away.
“He told me he’d show everyone the pictures if I told. I had no idea what images he’d captured, but I knew how filthy I felt on the inside, and I was mortified that someone might see that.” Her breath lodged in her throat. “If I’d told somebody, I could have stopped him right then. But I was too scared. I didn’t know there were other girls. I didn’t know, Thea, I swear. Or I would have said something.”
It wasn’t her fault. At least not that part.
“What did you do?” I whispered, wishing like hell that the time machine I’d mocked Ramsey for was real.
“I was sitting in that car, watching Ramsey beat him up, and when I’d heard what he’d done to you, I broke. Shattered into a million pieces. But one of those pieces put the car in drive and stomped on the gas.” A sob tore from her throat. “You and Ramsey were the only real family I’d ever had. And two years after I’d let Josh get away with what he’d done to me, I learned I’d all but allowed him to do it to you too.”
My entire being from my heart to my soul, past and present, ached.
I hated that she’d had to survive Josh Caskey too.
I hated that she’d had to suffer in silence for so many years.
But most of all, I fucking hated that the woman I viewed as my sister and the man who I thought was my soul mate had lied to me over and over every goddamn day for almost thirteen fucking years while I’d drowned in an ocean of guilt.