Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106953 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I think of her, only a few steps away, crying in the bathroom because she loves me and she’s hurting and it’s my fault.
I don’t know what the right path is any more. It’s clouded—by her tears and my longing. I don’t want to let her go because…I love her. My heart formed when I found her. She created it with her trust. She nurtured it with her hope. She protected it with her love.
She asks so little in return. She asks not to be hurt again. She asks not to be abandoned again. She asks to be loved.
I swing out of my room and into the bathroom to find her sitting on the counter, legs tented over the sink and head tucked into the corner of the wall. Her face is blotchy and her eyelashes are wet from her tears.
My heart caves in. I saved her all those years ago so that she could have an ordinary life, but we never lived like regular people. I wear a jacket every day of the year, no matter how hot, because I’m almost always packing. I left her at night while I was out doing things I knew that were wrong. My justification was that the money was going toward making Bitsy safe, but while I may have been protecting her physically, I was damaging her sweet heart.
What’s really keeping me back? Is it that I fear for her safety, or is it more that I fear for mine? Is it because, like she said before, that I’m a coward? That I’m afraid she’s going to wake up one day, look at all blood on my hands, see the darkness in my heart and run screaming into the arms of one of those suit-clad bankers who cheats on his wife and snorts his millions up his nose? Is that the bolt that keeps my feet rooted to the floor?
Because if it is, then I should be taken to the basement of Marjory’s and stretched over the Butcher’s table and filleted until all my stupidity is taken out of me. I am hurting her. Right now, every second that passes, her pain deepens, expands, driving out the joy and sweetness that make up my Bitsy.
I open my hands and let the crumbled remains of my resolve fall to the floor.
"I surrender."
"I don't want you to surrender. I want you to want me." She jabs a thumb against her chest, a finger catching on the tiny lace ribbon that keeps the whole nightgown from sliding down her shoulders.
I ball my hands at my sides so I don't tear the fabric off her. Digging deep, I find a few strands of composure left. Gathering them up in a mental fist, I give her one last chance to escape.
"You're not even nineteen, Bitsy. I'm old and not just in years. These hands"—I spread my fingers wide—"they're so dirty that a hundred showers won't clean them off. You deserve someone as decent and pure as you. Not this aging gangster who doesn't even know where he came from."
She scoots to the edge of the counter. The nightgown catches under her butt and pulls down to display a set of perfect tits hanging down like ripe fruit ready for the picking.
She grabs my palms and presses them to her chest. She's hot, and I can feel her pulse galloping madly under my fingers.
"Like my origin story is so perfect? Like I didn't hide under my bed while my junkie mom sold herself to strangers for drugs? Like she didn't leave me to be used by those same strangers while she was sniffing coke off the kitchen table? Like you didn't save me when you were just a kid yourself? How in the world could you imagine that there was someone better out there for me than you?"
A lump, unfamiliar and unwelcome, lodges itself in my throat. "I just want the best for you, Bit. That's all I ever wanted."
"Then let me have you, because that's what's best." She slides my hand lower, under the soft cotton, over the rise of her breast until my entire palm is engulfing her. She exhales, and the hot, pointy nub of her nipple blazes against my skin. "Take me, Leka. I'm yours. I've always been yours, just as you've always been mine. Take me." Her eyes pierce mine and a smile tilts the corner of her precious lips upward. "Take me, you coward."
"Coward, am I?" My fingers close roughly around that soft mass. A shiver wracks my body. Perhaps I am. I have never felt this alive. I’ve been plugged into a current so potent that I will never be able to return to the life I once led—a life of drab, colorless gray.
I scoop her up and carry her into my bedroom, settling her in the middle of my bed. The sight of her there hits me like a fist across my face. I crash to my knees beside the mattress.