Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Nice.
She told me about the new house she was going to buy. The car, the clothes. All for her, of course.
For a short period of time, my mother forgot that I was the complication that ruined her life and had anchored her to our small town. Her mind was on the riches that she was sure were coming.
Me? I wasn’t so sure. Hal had worked at an insurance agency. One of the three in town. He made decent money—not up to my mother’s standards, something she told him often. But enough so she didn’t have to work. Mom was sure that working at an insurance agency, he would surely have some big-ticket life insurance policy.
Maybe he did. But I also knew he did not live a healthy lifestyle. He was a smoker who loved fast food. Although I wasn’t exactly worldly. I’d left our town exactly three times, once on a field trip to Washington DC, another time to the funeral of a great aunt I’d never heard of, and lastly on a trip to Roswell with one of Mom’s boyfriends who was obsessed with aliens.
No, I wasn’t worldly at sixteen. But I liked to read. Research. Mom always told me how stupid I was, so I’d made it my mission to learn as much as I could about anything and everything. I got straight A’s. Mom used my report cards as ashtrays.
But I knew that an insurance agency wasn’t likely to give mid-level employees huge policies. And even less likely to pay out if they could find an excuse not to.
I also knew that the money would be a good thing. Sure, I’d likely never see any of it, and certainly none would be going to a college fund. But I was getting scholarships anyway.
All I needed was for it to be enough to distract my mom for two more years. Two more years, then I could move across the country and never ever come back. Two more years of her being so preoccupied with the money that she’d forget I existed.
Yes, that would’ve been a good thing. A great thing.
I might not have been a worldly teenager, but I knew great things did not happen to us.
So the money was not going to come.
I was grieving, I was relieved, I was trying to come to terms with the feelings left on my skin after being assaulted. And I was terrified.
Preston was the quarterback.
One of the most popular boys in my grade.
His father owned the bank in town.
Owned it.
His family was rich. Super rich. In a way I couldn’t even comprehend.
It had been established that my family was not. My mother didn’t exactly have the reputation of being trash, but she’d been through three husbands. That kind of thing wasn’t looked kindly upon.
I wasn’t popular at school, but I wasn’t bullied either. I had friends I sat with at lunch, nothing more than that, though. I didn’t get close to people. Didn’t trust them. Especially after what started happening with my stepfather.
I was pretty, though. I knew that. Knew on some level that was why my mother hated me so much. As much as she tried to fight it, her looks were fading, and I was just growing into mine.
Boys had asked me out before, but I’d always said no, uncomfortable in my own skin, at the idea of my stepfather finding out.
But he was dead.
And Preston noticed me.
It was as simple as that. One day he walked up to me at lunch, told me I was pretty, asked me out.
“He was charming, even then.” I found my way back to Swiss, who hadn’t moved but was watching me intently, hanging on my every word.
“I didn’t know if he saw how vulnerable I was then,” I shrugged, thinking back on it. “I don’t think he was that calculated. Maybe he was. Maybe at sixteen, he saw exactly what I was and how easily he could control me. All I saw was the boy everyone loved, noticing me, making me feel like I mattered. Making me feel suddenly so very far away from the girl I used to be. That was huge.”
I remembered it clearly. Despite the trauma I’d gone through, my emotional wounds, I was still a teenage girl. And the most popular boy in school noticing you can conquer all your demons… for a while, at least.
“I was desperate to redefine my sexuality. To replace what had happened with something consensual, something… normal.”
I rolled my eyes. I definitely did get normal—a teenage boy who had no idea what he was doing, no consideration about my pleasure. But he said he’d loved me after it was done.
I had felt dirty. Odd. Uncomfortable. But I’d focused on Preston’s blue eyes, his sandy blond hair falling across his face.
“I got pregnant two months into dating,” I exhaled loudly. “We were using the pull-out method, so it shouldn’t have been that surprising. But to me it was. I loved him in a way a teenager could love the first boy that made her feel like she mattered. But I wasn’t delusional. I wanted a life. I wanted out of that town. Away from my mother. So I was devastated.”