Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
“What do you think you’re doing? Being a selfish brat, like you always are. Get out there right this instant, Trinity. I will not let you embarrass this family,” she spit at me with the disgust and hate in her eyes that I hadn’t seen since the day Hayes had met me at my car after church and asked me out.
I started to stand up.
“She’s not going anywhere until she’s damn well ready to.”
The deep voice startled Tabitha. She hadn’t seen the man in the darkness.
She opened the door further so that the light filled the room and shot her angry glare toward him. “Excuse me, sir,” she said in her haughty voice. “You do not have a say in what she does or does not do. She will go to the sanctuary and stand there like her fiancé would have wanted her to.”
The man stood up, and Tabitha had to tilt her head back to look up at him. “She’s a grown-ass woman. She can do what she wants to do. And you, lady,” he said, nodding his head toward Tabitha, “don’t know shit about what Hayes would have wanted.”
Tabitha’s eyes flared, and her lips thinned. She wasn’t one to be talked down to. Even before she’d married the mayor, my father, when I was ten, she had looked down her nose at the world. Tabitha felt important, but I had no idea why.
“You don’t belong here,” she stated. “I have never laid eyes on you in my life, and I’ve known the minister’s family for over ten years. I’m going to go get Officer Randal to escort you out. You shouldn’t have been in a room alone with a young girl, and language such as yours is not accepted in these walls.”
I wanted to groan and cover my face. I didn’t know this man, but Tabitha was embarrassing me anyway. Being connected to her was just another one of the things to add to why my life had been hell. Bad luck had struck on the day I was born when my entrance into this world had killed my mom, and it never stopped.
“Damn, I sure hope you try,” the man replied with amusement in his voice rather than anger.
I lifted my gaze up to look at him now that the light was illuminating his face. Although I immediately wished I hadn’t. I hadn’t expected him to look like that. Sure, I had noticed the defined angles of his features in the darkness, but good Lord, that man looked like sin. I swallowed hard and thought about praying for forgiveness, then remembered I wasn’t praying anymore. I had given up my belief in God when I got the call that Hayes was dead.
He didn’t look back at me though, and I found myself relieved. I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing his eyes. Not if the rest of him looked like that.
“Trinity, now.” Tabitha’s voice was sharp and clearly near hysterics.
She wasn’t used to being spoken to that way. I, however, would pay money for this to continue.
Hayes wouldn’t want this though, and I knew it. He had wanted me to try and find peace with my stepmom. I stood up and walked over to her, not looking at the stranger, for fear I’d see disappointment in his eyes. He didn’t take orders. He was his own person, and he’d just witnessed how weak I was.
Tabitha grabbed my bare arm so hard that her nails bit into my skin. I winced, but said nothing as I went with her out of the room. Perhaps if she squeezed hard enough, it would hurt bad enough that I could go into the sanctuary with tears in my eyes. Because they would want me crying. They would want to see me completely broken and devastated.
What none of them understood was, I had been broken and devastated so many times in my life that it took more than the death of someone I cared deeply for to make me cry. Tears didn’t come for me anymore. I was twisted inside. Hayes had seen something else in me that I wanted. I truly wanted to be the girl he had thought I was.
Unfortunately, I never had been. There was a darkness in me that I couldn’t flush out. It wouldn’t go away. It called to me and made me think things. Terrible, sinful things. It was no wonder God had never once answered one of my prayers. Hayes had been the only break I’d ever gotten, and God had only allowed me to have that for six months before snatching it away too.
“You are a disgrace,” Tabitha said through her teeth as she dragged me toward the entrance of the church.
I didn’t argue with her because I probably was. She stopped when she saw Officer Randal and dropped her death grip on my arm.