Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 62679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
I take a minute to answer. I know this broken record.
“It’s what happens. What the Willow Girl does.” I walk to the door but stop and turn back. “Here too,” I say, holding up the notebook. “With your aunt. Only then with extreme consequences. I won’t let that happen to my brother and me.”
“You want it all. You want me. You want him. It’s not going to work. Don’t you see that? Someone’s going to get hurt. Maybe all of us.”
Fuck.
I run a hand through my hair.
“I need to find my brother.”
She shakes her head, turns away.
I walk out the door, down the stairs. I drop the book on my desk before heading out of the house and I find my brother exactly where I think I’ll find him.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing taking that thing out? Taking her in it?” I ask.
Gregory’s sitting on top of the upside-down canoe smoking a cigarette. He’s stored it back where I’d left it that day years ago. The last time I took it out.
He takes the last drag on his cigarette before dropping it to the ground, burying it in the sand. He stands, looks at me.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, walking toward me, then past me. “She’s back, safe and sound. I didn’t tip the canoe.”
I grab his arm, stop him. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Please. I’m not fucking stupid. Ethan wasn’t ever a good swimmer and you knew it. You wanted to punish Lucinda? What did you do instead? You destroyed any chance of Ethan having a normal life.”
“Like you give a shit about him.”
“He didn’t deserve what he got.”
Fuck. He’s right. “I didn’t…It wasn’t like that.”
“No? How was it?”
I release him, look out toward the water, run a hand through my hair. “What I did to Ethan,” I start through clenched teeth, “it was a mistake. One I’ve paid for.”
At that he chuckles. “You paid? How did you pay exactly?”
I follow him with my eyes as he turns a circle around me.
“Because from where I stand, only one person paid and that was Ethan,” he says. “And he doesn’t even fucking know it.”
“You don’t know anything. You don’t know what it was like for me.”
“Bad enough you almost killed your brother. Oh, sorry, not your brother. I guess that makes it okay.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you. First-born Scafoni son. What a joke, you’re not even that. And yet, you get everything. Every fucking thing you want, while the rest of us pay for it.”
“How do you pay, Gregory?”
He just looks at me for a long time and I think I see how he pays. I see what Helena sees. What she keeps trying to tell me. That aloneness.
Maybe it’s that that draws her to him.
“Fuck. What the fuck is happening?” I ask no one.
I sit on the canoe, run a hand through my hair.
“I fucked up, Greg. I have no excuse. I’m not making one. I fucked up. When I think about what happened, what I wanted to do—what I did do—to Ethan, I’m sick. I’m disgusted with myself.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not really good enough, is it? Not when you look at Ethan.”
I look at the ground. He’s right. “And I’m fucking up now. With her. With you.”
“I just don’t get it. God or karma or something should deal with you. Should make you pay. But here you are, king of the world. You get everything, and on top of it, she fucking loves you. You!”
I look up just in time to see him blink away, shake his head.
“After everything, she loves you. A real piece of work that one. Fucking masochist through and through. You two are perfect for each other.”
I stand.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask.
He turns back to me. “Like you don’t fucking know.”
“Helena.”
“At least call her the fucking Willow Girl. At least fucking pretend that’s all she is to you for my sake.”
“She’s been hurt. What Lucinda did—”
“Fuck what Lucinda did. Just fuck it. She’s the fucking Willow Girl. It’s what’s supposed to happen. We’re not supposed to fucking fall in love with her. You take her and you break her. It’s the rule. And it will be when it’s my turn.”
“Greg.” But all I hear in my head is: “We’re not supposed to fucking fall in love with her.”
Helena’s wrong. He’s not lonely.
He’s in love.
Or at least he thinks he is.
“No. Fuck you, Sebastian. Just fuck you and fuck her and fuck it all. You let me have pieces of her while you watched. You let me touch her, but you want her eyes on you when I do. You punish her when she looks at me. You punish her when she comes and it’s not on your dick. You know what? She’s right. It’s not fucking fair.”