Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92777 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Why?
I was focused on revenge.
Revenge?
Yes. What’s wrong with exacting revenge when a wrong is done to you?
The Pelion Police Department, along with the newly formed community relations committee…
He’d done this. Travis had done this. I felt hot, woozy. Whispers picked up, people murmuring. I heard my name, the person’s tone full of scorn.
“Well, they don’t seem like people we’d want here permanently,” someone said.
“It seems kind of mean,” someone else answered. “But I agree,” they amended softly.
“Can you imagine the trouble they’d cause?” someone else asked. “It seems like they’ve already started.”
“What trash.”
I dared a glance at Easton to see his gaze focused in the direction of the firehouse captain, whose head was bent as he read over the paper outlining all Easton’s sins. My brother’s gaze lowered. I’d seen that expression before. He’d worn it as he’d sat on the sidewalk, two fingers pressed to our mother’s wrist, her track marks glaringly red in the light from the raging fire.
This was killing him. I was watching his soul slowly die. Again.
My gaze flew to Travis’s stunned face and he seemed to suddenly remember how to move, dropping the remaining flyers and moving toward me.
Run.
Only I didn’t seem to be able to.
I stood, trying desperately to sink into the floor as Travis approached. “Haven,” he said, his voice a mere whisper as though he was having trouble breathing. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“No, evidently not,” I said, and my voice sounded dull and lifeless even to my own ears. I held the flyer up, my hand trembling. “Did you do this?”
He swallowed, his eyes clenching shut momentarily. “I…no. I did not have this flyer printed, but it’s my fault. I asked my recruit to look into Easton.” He glanced at my brother, then away. “I take responsibility for this. But I didn’t think…” He breathed out a sharp breath, running his hand through his hair as my heart slowly shriveled.
“Your…revenge,” I said.
His shoulders dropped and he looked at me pleadingly. “Yes. My revenge.”
Voices began to rise as more people gossiped about what they were reading. It looked bad. It looked terrible. I wouldn’t have wanted us as part of this idyllic community either.
What trash.
We were. We were trash, and this flyer didn’t even detail the half of it.
Easton made terrible choices. There was a list of them grasped in my hand. But I had dragged him across the country because of my issues, and he’d acted out because of it. I was selfish and thoughtless. He’d needed to stay home and heal, to remain with the people and things familiar to him, and I hadn’t let him. I was the one who’d caused the trail of wreckage in our wake. Me.
Travis reached out. “Haven, please,” he said. “Let me make this right. I’m so sorry.”
The loud whir of a plane flying low overhead could be heard above the murmurs. “It’s trailing a banner,” someone near the window could be heard saying.
Travis’s eyes widened. “Oh, dear God, no,” he gasped.
“It’s an ad for parasailing lessons over in Calliope,” another person answered, turning away from the window back to the more interesting drama unfolding in front of the crowded room. Travis’s eyes closed briefly and his shoulders dropped and he exhaled a big gust of breath, evidently relieved about something.
Most unwanted.
Us.
Travis looked at Easton and then back at me. “Let me explain this,” he said.
My gaze moved slowly over the room, the people a blur, hurt a gray pulsating fog before my eyes. Perhaps Travis hadn’t meant this to happen, or perhaps not to this extent or in this way, but he’d had a hand in it nonetheless, and now the damage was done.
Give us a chance, Haven.
His words, they’d been lies.
And I’d been lied to over and over and over and yet I’d kept on hoping.
I’m clean.
I’ll never use again.
I won’t spend the grocery money on drugs.
And the worst of them all: I’ll be there this time.
All those old wounds ripped wide-open and I bled, fresh pain in the light of this betrayal. He’d said he cared for me and he’d let this happen. Somehow.
“Congratulations,” Easton said, his voice still dull, his lips tipping humorlessly. “You exacted the perfect revenge. You waited, and you struck, just like you said.” He held his hand out. “Brilliant strategy. The win goes to you.”
Travis’s lips thinned, and his jaw ticked as though he was clenching it. He looked down at Easton’s hand but didn’t take it. “This isn’t how it seems—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, lifting my chin. I felt a sob moving up my throat and I could not cry in front of these people. I could not. “There was no need to make flyers to get rid of us,” I said to the crowd at large. “I’m sorry you wasted the ink. And the research time. We were never staying anyway. Let’s go.” I batted Easton’s hand down, still held out in the air, yanking at his sleeve.