Total pages in book: 217
Estimated words: 207224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1036(@200wpm)___ 829(@250wpm)___ 691(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 207224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1036(@200wpm)___ 829(@250wpm)___ 691(@300wpm)
I recoil, stunned, turning on the spot, looking for the source of the voice. “I didn’t tell anyone that.”
You told me.
I lose my footing and fall into the nearby wall. I try in vain to save myself, but my drunken body isn’t responding to my slowing brain nearly fast enough, and I land with a thwack, smacking my head on the toilet. “Shit,” I mumble, my words slurring now too, as I fight my way back to standing, somehow managing to still have the bottle in my grasp. Chuffed with myself, I finish my vodka, tilting back on my heels, my face pointing at the ceiling to make sure I get every last drop. It’s now official. I’ve never been so drunk.
Finally. May the numbness commence.
I gasp, release the bottle, and raise my foot to break its fall, catching it on the bridge. I remain on one foot, and it’s a fucking miracle given the state of me. I see Beau. On a ladder under the spotlights of my office. I see her carrying endless equipment. Bumping into me. Dropping it all.
“You know, I’ll get this finished much faster if you give me some space.”
“Space,” I replied quietly. “I was just trying to help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
She never did finish decorating my office. Because Beau finally decided whether she hated me or wanted to fuck me.
She took the latter.
Is she regretting it?
I gasp and reach for the wall when I wobble, placing my foot down.
Do I regret it?
I look down my chest, my hand coming up, my fingertip moving in on the bruise on my pec from where the love of my life, my blood, my fucking heartbeat, fucking shot me. I miss it by a few inches and am forced to close one eye to turn ten bruises back into one. “Fuck me,” I breathe, letting my hand drop heavily. I go to the mirror, bracing my palms on the edge of the sink, leaning in, so close I’m practically kissing the glass. I take in my hair that’s fairer these days. Lighter.
From being in the sun.
From being in the light.
“But you’re not enough,” I slur, watching my mouth move slowly, my eyes blink slowly, my body sway slowly. Even in my drunken state, I can appreciate how impossible Beau and I were. How . . . toxic. Harmful to ourselves but more harmful to each other.
I’ve failed to keep us in the light.
I curl my lip at the letdown staring back at me, closing my eyes, unable to face him. I pull my head away, inhale, and send it crashing back into the mirror.
When I open my eyes again, what I see matches how I feel.
Shattered.
I shy away and turn, feeling my legs failing me completely now. I make it two staggered paces and fall into the tub on a grunt and a clatter. I roll to my back, close my eyes and sigh. The cool enamel on my disgusting skin feels good. Better than the reason for those scars. Trying to save a woman who didn’t want saving. Still doesn’t.
Failure.
“I bought an apartment for us.” I laugh out loud, thinking how ridiculous it was to ever believe we could be normal. So fucking absurd. Danny was right.
“If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t need to be doing this. But we can’t play dead. And we can’t live a normal life.”
“And we can’t be without them,” I’d answered. Like a fool, because I may not get that choice.
“So let’s get the fuck on with rising and make sure we never fall, because that, my friend, is the closest we’re ever getting to normal.”
Failure.
I settle and doze off, the bathroom spinning like an out-of-control merry-go-round, slowing every so often, not enough to get off, but just enough and for long enough to give me a complimentary memory. All Beau. She’s dominated my thoughts since I met her, and slowly over that time, my tortured past has been replaced with another kind of torture.
Loving Beau Hayley.
32
BEAU
It’s agony seeing him like this. Knowing I’m the cause. James told me once about the aftermath of his parents’ deaths. How he coped. Basically, he didn’t. He lost himself in drink and when Otto finally pulled James out of his self-destructive mode, all hell broke loose. Many people died and are still dying. I wonder now if that’s why he doesn’t drink himself into oblivion anymore. Because it takes him to places he wants to forget. Hopelessness.
I’ve taken him back to those times. Those feelings.
I approach him quietly, watching his face, lines still cutting his features in his sleep. His long, hard body spans the tub and then some, his shoulders slightly bunched to his ears, his face turned in. I lower to my knees and reach for his forehead, seeing a crisscross of tiny cuts in the center. “What did you do?” I ask, brushing his hair off to get a better look. It looks like someone’s pushed gravel into his flesh. And he has a tidy bump near his temple. “You are enough,” I whisper, scanning his exquisite, tormented, damaged face.