Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 191421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 957(@200wpm)___ 766(@250wpm)___ 638(@300wpm)
“Reign —”
“But I already have a job.”
“What job?”
“None of your fucking business.”
If my brother thought that I’ve been starving all this time without our father’s money, then he really doesn’t know shit about me.
I’m nothing but resourceful.
My college tuition is already covered by my scholarship. I always knew my dad would never pay for my education, and that he’d find a way to look like a martyr by blaming me for it. Which would’ve been fine; I really don’t care.
Not for college or soccer.
I’m not like Lucas. I’m not interested in making a career out of soccer. The only reason I went was because he was going there. And I accidentally got a scholarship too, to the same college. So I thought why the fuck not. If it got me out of this hellhole town, which was the only thing that I’ve ever cared about, then I was all for it.
As for the rest of my shit, I do have a job.
I fight.
For money.
The gym that I was about to go into, before being waylaid by my brother, isn’t only a boxing gym; they also organize amateur fights. Mostly, they are legal and all the fighters are paid well. Some fights, however, are not and the fighters are paid obscenely well for those.
So well that I only have to work over the summer and I’m set for the rest of the year.
Basically, this is like my summer job, has been for the last two years.
“I know I haven’t been there for you,” my brother begins because he doesn’t know when to quit. “I’ve never been there for you. In fact, I was happy. I admit that. When Dad cut you off, I thought you deserved it. After all the years of crap you put us through, your partying, your drinking, your drugs. All the times you’d get arrested or expelled or all the times people would simply quit on you. And then, when everything happened with that girl, the Adlers… Instead of blaming her, I blamed you. I thought that it must’ve been you. Because it’s always you, isn’t it? You’re the problem. You do things. You wreck things. You ruin them. And so I thought you must’ve done something to her; you must’ve pushed her into doing what she did. I thought after all that cutting you off, disowning you was the least Dad could’ve done and…” He shakes his head, grimacing. “I failed you. I fucking failed you, Reign. I wasn’t a good big brother. I wasn’t… But I —”
“No.”
“But —”
“You were right.”
He frowns. “About what?”
“To think that,” I tell him, my hands fisted at my sides. “To think that it was me.”
Because it was.
I was responsible for it. For pushing her into doing what she did.
While I make no apologies for all the other shit I’ve pulled in my life, I do take responsibility for this. For making her do what she did, and consequently ruining her life.
If I hadn’t been so angry at myself for what I’d done, so much so that I took it out on her, she wouldn’t have done what she did. If I hadn’t said all those cruel things to her, she wouldn’t have committed a fucking felony.
When I found out that she had though, and that she’d been arrested for it, I went to my dad. To confess. To tell him that it was me who’d provoked her and that he should let her go and punish me instead, which he did by disowning me.
Something he probably would’ve done one day anyway, but I guess he had the opportunity then and he took it. But while I thought that would satisfy him and save her, it didn’t. He still sent her to that reform school.
So yeah, it was me.
I was the problem, not her.
The only good thing is that she’s out of that place. She must’ve graduated by now. She must be back where she always belonged, with her parents, at the manor.
Before I fucked it all up for her.
So protecting her from the new Lucas is the least I could do.
Exhaling an angry breath, I focus on my brother. “I don’t want your fucking money, all right? Don’t come back here anymore.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tonight, I’m a criminal.
And it’s not only because I go to St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers but also because I’m stalking.
For real.
There’s no two ways about it. No gray area.
And yes, there’s tons of hiding and crouching and sneaking around involved.
First, to get out of St. Mary’s.
It’s the middle of the night and way past the 9:30 curfew. Which means I should be in bed, fast asleep, but I’m tiptoeing down the concrete hallway of my dorm so I can sneak out of the building and go off campus: to a house in Bardstown.
Where a party is being thrown in my ex-boyfriend’s honor. And while I’m against all forms of stalking and still afraid of any dire consequences for me, I’m going there for a second chance to do what I couldn’t two days ago.