Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I finished cutting the last piece of fat off the chicken, then gathered it all up in my hand and dumped it into the trash that was sitting next to my legs.
I turned the water on in the sink that was on the opposite side, and then washed my hands quickly and efficiently.
Once I was done, I turned, crossing my arms over my chest to study her.
“I was an asshole kid. I did drugs. Had sex before I was thirteen. Ignored my family. Did everything I possibly could do to be anything but responsible. Married a woman that I hated. Divorced her,” I said. “When I say I was a bad person before…I wasn’t joking. I’m the man that nobody ever wants to take a chance on or trust because my track record is shit.”
“You have an ex-wife?” She asked, picking that out of all that I’d just told her.
“I don’t talk about my ex-wife,” I growled, turning away from her.
“Why not?” She asked. “The torture of knowing you had a wife at all is killing me. It’s like some big dark secret that you refuse to tell me, and all I can imagine is the worst!”
I whipped around.
“Nothing you can imagine is anything close to the truth. There’s ‘the worst’ in your mind. Then there’s ‘the worst’ in mine. And in mine, ‘the worst’ doesn’t even register on your scale,” I growled furiously.
I did not want to talk about this. Not even a little bit.
“So what happened?” She asked. “How’d she trap you?”
I walked swiftly to the table, pulling out the chair and taking a seat before allowing my head to drop into my hands.
I looked at my feet, resting both of my elbows on my knees.
“She was going to accuse me of rape if I didn’t give her baby a name. Claim it as mine. All so her father wouldn’t skin her alive for getting pregnant by some nameless, one-night stand. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the baby’s father,” I murmured.
Silence surrounded us, but I didn’t chance a look up to see what she thought about that little announcement.
It wasn’t pretty.
Not at all.
“Then what happened?” She persisted.
I closed my eyes.
“I denied it. Refused to do it. And she accused me of rape to her father,” I said. “He didn’t believe her at first. But I was a good guy at that point…got my shit straightened out even though my brother refused to see that. Had a good head on my shoulders, so he offered me a deal. To make it all go away, he offered to let me marry her instead.”
I let that digest for a moment before I turned my face to look at her.
She was crying.
“And what happened then?” She cleared her throat.
I wanted to wipe those tears away with my lips.
I stayed where I was.
“At first I balked. I knew I could get out of the rape charges. The night she claimed I did it was a night I was on shift and at a scene of a residential fire. However, he was the financial advisor for the city,” he said. “He started to cut pay scales. Reduce funding for the fire department. Soon, all our equipment didn’t get updated like it was needed, and it was causing injuries where there never should have been.”
“You gave in?” She asked.
I nodded. “I gave in.”
“Then what happened?” She asked.
“I married her. Lived my life away from her. Didn’t date. Lived like I was married, just didn’t live with my wife,” he said. “I fell in love with someone, a dispatcher at the fire department where I used to live, and Marissa, my ex-wife, showed me really quick that I couldn’t pursue that dream. So I just kind of lived, without really living.”
“You were in love?” She said in a small voice.
I nodded. “I was.”
“What happened to her?” She continued.
I closed my eyes and thought back to Erin.
The memories were bitter sweet.
She was married now with four kids, and her husband had been on the San Antonio Fire Department with me.
It’d been pure torture to be there during my last six months at that station.
Then Adam had died, and I finally got my excuse to leave.
Jack had arranged for my ex-wife problem to be taken care of. However, by the time it was, there was nothing to salvage with Erin.
I explained what had happened, leaving nothing out.
“That’s terrible,” she whispered.
I grunted.
“Yeah, it was.”
“Does she still contact you?” She asked.
“Erin?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, your ex-wife.”
I shook my head.
“No. Not anymore. Not since Jack fucked with her life. With her father’s life. Now they both leave me alone,” I said.
“Hmm,” she whispered.
Hmm, indeed.
“And why does your brother think you’re a fuck up?” She wondered. “You’re not…and I can see that. Why can’t he?”
I just shook my head.