Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 290(@200wpm)___ 232(@250wpm)___ 193(@300wpm)
With a sigh, I shut the door and then consider opening up a cardboard box I know has nonperishables in it. Pushing the hair out of my face, I decide not to do anything else. I need to sleep, not rearrange my kitchen at nearly five in the freaking morning.
Rubbing my eyes, I move without thinking.
The cabinet door opens, and I resign myself to a bedtime ritual I’ve used countless times in recent years.
I won’t do anything that’s going to keep me up any longer, but I put water on for tea. Chamomile will calm me down and help me sleep.
With my hands gripping the edge of the counter, I find myself looking out the kitchen window as I try not to think about the day. This lease is for a corner lot on a busy street. It’s cheap, though. The building across the street has a yoga studio on the ground level. Through a crack in the curtains I can see the polished wood floor, which takes me right back to gym class in middle school.
To Declan Cross and the first time I spoke to him, well the first time I wanted to. To the man I know is going to keep me up at night.
I can still smell the lemon polish of the floors and hear the echo of voices in the large gym.
It’s crazy how much time has passed, yet how it still feels like yesterday.
So many years ago. Our shoes squeaked on the floor as the teacher herded us out into the sunshine; it must have been late spring or summer, because it was so warm. I dip the tea bag in the hot water, remembering. Declan sat by himself. He had dark circles under his eyes and a haunted look to his face that was there more than it should have been. Even as a kid I knew, but then again, there were whispers about him and his brothers. Everyone knew.
That day in particular, his expression was ragged. I knew his mom had died, and he just wouldn’t do what we were supposed to do for class. Jump rope. We were supposed to count the jumps. The smack of the rope hitting the pavement, the chatter around us—it’s all there in my mind, just as it was then. And it all means nothing now, just like back then.
I swung the rope over my head and counted. One. Two. Three. Nobody went near him. They were afraid of him, because of his brothers. He was all alone in his hand-me-down clothes. Like mine, because all of my clothes came from my older cousins. He wasn’t so different from me.
He was wrecked. He was alone.
It hurt to look at him, so I looked down at the rope. And at my feet on the ground. One. Two. Three. But I couldn’t look away from Declan for long. That was the other thing about him. We weren’t so different, but I felt this pull to him. A similarity between us. I was afraid of the Cross brothers, just like all of the other kids, but I thought … if I could talk to him, maybe we’d understand each other.
I stole a glance at him as the rope came over my head and found him looking my way. He stared right at me, as if he’d heard my thoughts.
A shiver ran through my body. He’d caught me.
The rope fell from my hand and I could hardly breathe. He didn’t look away and I knew I had to say something. His mother, I remembered. His mother died. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, but the sound didn’t make it to him. We were too far apart. I hated to see him look so down, but I also knew it was beyond me to fix it. The fact his mother was dead … it was too much for me. How could I ever help? But I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone.
Because being alone is the worst thing there is in the whole world.
A whistle screeched to my right, scaring me and ripping my eyes away from Declan. The coach rattled off statistics about the number of jumps and who’d gotten gold and who’d gotten silver and bronze.
As if I cared and as if any of it mattered.
When I looked back at Declan, he wasn’t there anymore.
I turned in a slow circle, looking at all our other classmates, but he was gone.
My phone pings again and snaps me back to the present. With my tea in one hand, I grab my phone in the living room, once again wishing it was Declan, but it’s a string of messages from Scarlet.
Scarlet: Did he hurt you before? Hello? Hey, where did you go? You okay? You sure it’s okay?
Braelynn: Sorry. Just made some tea for bed. He didn’t hurt me, Scarlet, I promise