Total pages in book: 235
Estimated words: 224334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1122(@200wpm)___ 897(@250wpm)___ 748(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 224334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1122(@200wpm)___ 897(@250wpm)___ 748(@300wpm)
Ava goes to the kitchen, and I watch her the entire way until she disappears. Even in another room, her absence is excruciating. I can’t fix this with my power over her. I can’t use what I’ve always depended on. Our chemistry. Our attraction. The explosions we create when we’re intimate. Things are too broken. You must give her words. But where the fuck will I find the right ones? And is she prepared to even listen?
In complete despair, I drop my heavy head into my hands, willing my brain to back me up and give me something. Anything.
Nothing.
It feels like the whole fucking world is against me.
Even myself.
As I stare down at the threads of the carpet, feeling like the worst kind of shit on every level, her bare feet appear. Her perfect bare feet. I lift my tired head to face her. Her eyes are swimming. Despair to match mine. I can’t bear it, and in a knee-jerk move, I reach for the water, laying my hand over hers, desperate to feel her. For her to feel me.
She jumps out of her skin, startled, and my heart jumps out of my chest, pained. Cold water drenches my hand, spilling up over the glass, my shakes not helping. My shakes are the least of my worries, and they look like the most of Ava’s. God, she thinks she knows, when she knows nothing. Absolutely nothing. This here, me now, it’s just a smudge on the vast canvas of my fuck-ups. And look at her reaction. It’s not natural for us to be this . . . distant.
“When did you last have a drink?” she asks quietly.
Of all the questions she must have, she asks that? Ask me if I love you. If you mean the fucking world to me. If you’re the difference between life and death.
I take some water to wet my mouth and hopefully loosen my lips. “I don’t know,” I admit. Each sip, each bottle, went that little bit further to complete oblivion. It was the only way. Lose the memories. Lose the days. “What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“Saturday?” I choke, scanning the room for empty bottles, finding none. Did she clear them? Did she count each and every one of my sins as she tossed them in the bin? “Fuck,” I breathe. I should be dead. And if I don’t somehow fix this mess, I will be.
Find the words, Ward.
Except . . . nothing seems adequate, which leaves more silence, me playing mindlessly with my glass and Ava going back to the chair, meters away from me. If I could only hold her. If she would only let me touch her. I’d apologize with every inch of my skin on hers. Make her remember.
“Jesse, is there anything I can do?” she asks, sounding helpless.
I laugh on the inside, but there is not one scrap of humor, only despair. “There are lots of things you can do, Ava,” I murmur, my eyes on the rippling water in my glass. “But I can’t ask you to do any of them.” Because it isn’t fair. She deserves more than I’m capable of giving. For weeks, I agonized over what to tell her and how. For weeks I swayed from courageous to cowardice. And here we are, every reason for me to keep my mouth shut proving itself. She’s had only a fraction of my unbearable tale. The rest? The rest will put the nail in the coffin for me. And it will kill her too. And yet, selfishly, I can’t bear to tell her to leave before I do any more damage.
“Do you want a shower?” she asks.
A shower. A few weeks ago, such a question would’ve had me up out of my chair like a rocket and carrying her like a caveman to the bathroom. Today, I can hardly find the energy to pick myself up. She won’t join me. She’s merely caring for me. Out of guilt? Duty? Because she feels sorry for me?
Or because she loves me?
“Sure.” I hiss my way up to my feet, mentally begging her to help me. She doesn’t. “Shit.” The blanket falls to a pile at my feet, my hands not fast enough to stop it. I look down my naked body. Limp. Flaccid. Useless like the rest of me. I struggle to reach down and hide myself. “I’m sorry,” I say lamely, covering my body. I’m sorry for everything.
She looks insulted for a moment, and I very nearly blurt out that my condition has nothing to do with her and everything to do with being broken. Does she realize she’s the medicine?
Ava sighs and leads on, and I follow, my feet dragging, my heart following. I’m even more fucked by the time we make it to my bathroom, out of breath, aching, feeling weaker.