Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
He squeezed the hand I hadn’t realized he still held. “I promise I will never tell her.”
Nodding, I leaned back against the sofa. “I was pissed, Jared. I was so pissed at them for lying to the world and then making me feel like I was the bad guy. They both avoided me for weeks, and I was a kid who’d just found out her dad was cheating on her mom.” I turned my head on the cushion toward him. “Do you know my mother was named the Sexiest Woman in the World four times?”
He shook his head.
“Four times. Sexiest Woman in the World. I grew up in a place that rewards good looks, and I think it kind of warped my perspective. If my mother could get cheated on, anyone could. And if my father could cheat, then anyone could. Growing up, I really only had Aria. Mamma ‘retired’ and returned home when I was a teen, but she still wasn’t there there. And so, I’d tell myself that it was fine because when you grew up, you fell in love, anyway, and that person became your safe place. But seeing Dad do that to Mamma … Love suddenly didn’t feel safe at all, you know.
“Anyway, I got angry and started looking for an escape. I approached a kid at our school who I knew partied a little harder than the rest of us. I fell in with his group of friends and we went clubbing, partied, drank, did drugs. One night we went to this club in the city that turned a blind eye to our fake IDs because we all had money to spend …” Grief burned in my throat. “That’s where I met Ashton.” I pulled my hand from Jared’s. “He was eighteen. He grew up in Chino, but when he was thirteen, his mom had married this bigshot defense attorney and they’d moved into his mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Ashton hated his stepfather. So he partied hard.
“I … I just wanted to disappear. To not feel so angry. To not have to hide from Aria why I was so angry. And I started dating Ashton. No one knew. I kept up appearances at school, kept my grades up, stayed on the honor roll. But all the while, he and I were texting and emailing constantly.” A sad smile curled my mouth. “Ashton loved to write. He wrote short stories. And he liked to write me these long emails. I still have them.
“Anyway … I’d head into the city almost every weekend to see him, and we’d hook up and we’d take whatever drugs he could get his hands on that day. We’d drink until neither of us could think. I doubt either of us remembered half the times we hooked up because we were so drunk or high. For me …” I finally looked at Jared again and hoped that tender sympathy in his expression didn’t disappear once I’d finished my story. “It was just an escape. I cared about him as much as I could, considering my parents had broken my belief in love. But he wrote me love letters in those emails. He told me he loved me all the time. And he started getting moodier, more depressed. He was always talking about running away together. Then …”
Tears flooded my eyes again. “And then he emailed me one night. He needed to tell me something because he was afraid if he didn’t tell someone, he’d lose his mind. He told me … he told me his stepfather had been abusing him since he was fourteen. That he was so fucked up and angry that he was afraid he might kill his stepfather.”
Jared let out a haggard breath. “Allegra …”
“I was just a kid,” I pleaded with him to understand. “And I was scared. I didn’t know how to deal with something that big, that messed up. My first thought was to tell my parents, but I didn’t trust them anymore and I was afraid they’d have Ashton arrested since he’d been sleeping with a minor. I didn’t even think about what they’d do about his threat to kill his stepfather. So … I emailed him back telling him I was sorry but that we had to break up.” My gaze did not want to lift to Jared, to see his expression, but I had to know.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell what the hard look in his eyes meant. So I pulled my knees in tighter to my chest and continued hollowly. “Ashton killed himself a few days after I broke up with him.”
“Oh Jesus … fuck, Allegra, you know that wasn’t your fault. Right?” Jared moved across the couch, his touch gentle on my chin as he forced me to look at him. His expression was grim, eyes gleaming with sadness. For me. “You were just a kid.”