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)
Bossman
No.
Fuck no.
Haven’t I already told you that? All you need to worry about right now is yourself. I don’t need you to fix anything for me.
Except maybe toning down a little of your drama. Because all I did was buy you a fucking phone with a bunch of books on it. You don’t have to drench me in your thankful tears.
I don’t even flinch at this.
At the barrage of his rude texts.
One, because I know — for sure — that he’s deliberately doing that, to put me off. And good thing that he didn’t call my phone a ‘piece of shit’ again. Or I really would’ve drenched him in tears. Just to annoy him.
And second, because something else comes to me in this moment.
Something about that night.
The night my dad pounced on Reign.
I remember everything about it, all the chaos, all the mess. But for some reason, it’s only now that I’m realizing that all the commotion had come from everyone else but him.
My mom was screaming at my dad. I was screaming at my dad, and my dad was screaming at him.
But this rude guy on the other side of the phone, somewhere across town, didn’t say a single word.
He was silent. And he was passive.
He took it all. Whatever my dad said to him. Whatever he did.
Servant Girl
Why didn’t you do anything? That night.
Bossman
Do what?
Servant Girl
When my dad grabbed you. When he was threatening you. You didn’t say a single thing. You just took it all. Why? You’re the boss. You could’ve done anything. Why didn’t you?
I wait for his reply.
But it never comes.
Seconds pass. Minutes. With no reply forthcoming.
As disappointing as his silence is, I don’t need him to tell me why.
I already know.
And I can’t believe it took me all this time to realize this. That he could’ve said something, done something. He could’ve been his usual asshole self that people always talk about, that I have always witnessed, and made my parents’ life even more difficult.
But he didn’t.
Because of his guilt.
Everything, all of this, is because of his guilt.
And it just makes me ache. And ache and fucking ache.
It makes me hurt.
For him.
It makes me want to run to my window and sneak out to go find him. Wherever he is.
Because he’s not here, is he?
He’s not across the green grounds. Something that I’ve always hated, our bedrooms on the same level, our windows so aligned with each other.
But not anymore, not in this moment.
In this moment, I want him here.
I want to tear open the drapes and look at his window. I want to know that he’s up there, and not somewhere in town that I don’t know. I get so desperate that I’m about to text him. I’m about to ask him about where he’s staying, why is he not here where he should be.
When I notice a shadow on my window.
A dark silhouette.
Of a large body and broad shoulders.
And even before that shadow moves and I see an arm lifting and tapping on my window, I’m out of my bed. I’m already dashing over and tearing the drapes open.
To reveal him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He’s here.
Here.
Here. Outside my window.
Just like he was that night. The night of my sixteenth birthday.
He’s perched on the nearest branch, his muscular arms propped up on the frame, looking all casual and athletic.
Beautiful.
With his summer skin and reddish-brown eyes.
So much so that I freeze.
And he has to command, “Open the window.”
“You’re here.”
He stares at me for a beat or two.
And when it looks like I’m still not going to act like a normal human being, he repeats, “Open the fucking window, Echo.”
Echo.
That’s my name, yes.
But that’s not what he said that night. That’s not what he called me.
He called me by his own name.
He hasn’t called me that ever since he came back, and I was happy about it. Glad and thrilled and ecstatic. But in this moment, I wonder.
If he’ll ever call me that again.
I shake the thought off though and reach for the window. I throw the latch and let him in.
He’s just as graceful and athletic as he was two years ago as he climbs in. His leg lunging over, his arms flexing as they grip the windowsill and he pulls himself inside.
It takes him about two seconds to accomplish this but to me, it feels like two years or so.
When I get to watch it in slow motion.
Every dance, every twitch, each play and flex of his muscles.
God, he’s a soccer player through and through.
All sleek muscles and artistic grace.
And I was wrong before when I said that he’s just as graceful as he was two years ago.
He’s not.
He’s more graceful than before.
Larger too, dwarfing every single thing in my childhood bedroom.
Dwarfing me.
“You came,” I say, as if I called.
I did.
Only not in so many words and not outwardly.