Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 104165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
I sigh, rolling my eyes. All his exercises are so tedious. I can’t imagine any of them ever being helpful. “Yeah, yeah, learn how to turn up the light on my room,” I repeat. “And the longer I do therapy and other shit so I can discover myself, whatever the fuck that means, the more I’ll see the decorated room in the light.”
“Exactly.” Dr. Ezra smiles kindly, looking far older than his early thirties. “Good luck, Anna.”
“You’ll tell him why I had to go?” I ask, a knot curdling in my stomach.
“He already knows.”
I nod, knowing he’s right even if I hate it, and walk out of the room. I pause at the door, heart thumping in my ears. “But he knows not to come down while I leave? She might be mean, or go catatonic. I don’t want that to be his last memory of me.”
“He knows not to come down.”
I turn the doorknob, half-hoping Domhnall will have ignored the doctor’s instructions anyway.
But when I yank the door open, I breathe out. There’s no one there. Just an empty hallway. I don’t hear a single thing besides a ticking clock as I walk through the eerily still mansion. There’s only Professor Roberts waiting for me at the front door, ready to escort me to a waiting car.
I walk with her down the steps and glance back up at the large mansion. In the sudden bright light of day, I can’t tell if a curtain upstairs just moved.
“Did he tell you to say anything to me?” I ask Professor Roberts with a tight throat.
“You decided you didn’t want to communicate with him,” she says, opening the passenger side door for me.
Does that mean he did have a message for me? Everything in me clenches, wanting to know what he’s said. Instead, I hurry inside the car and yank the door shut. I squeeze my eyes closed.
I’m nobody’s good girl now.
For a while, I need to belong just to myself.
It doesn’t make the pain searing through my belly any easier to take as the car pulls out of the driveway.
FORTY-THREE
DOMHNALL
One Year Later
The phone rings and I snatch it up just as quickly as I’ve done every time it’s rung or pinged for the last year.
The sudden quick beat of my heart dulls when I see the caller ID. I consider not answering but know he’ll just call back. And back, and back, until I do finally pick up.
I thumb the green button.
“Caleb,” I answer without inflection.
“Dom!” he cries, always enthusiastic enough for the both of us and then some. “How the hell are you?”
I roll my eyes. “The same as I’ve been every other time you do these ridiculous check-up calls. I’m fine. I’m always fine.”
“What’s the point of life if you’re just fine, though, eh? I know you’ve gone all celibate monk, but why not come out to the club sometimes? Just to hang out with everybody, maybe watch a scene or two? Quinn’s got a new pain pig, and you know how she likes to make the new piggies squeal.”
“Yeah, uh, thanks. Think I’ll pass.” I rattle the ice in my soda water and stare down at the fat copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses I’ve got open in my lap. I’ll sit here and torture myself with Irish literature instead. I’ve been a hundred pages into this monstrosity of a book for a month and it’s not getting any less painful. Not exactly as satisfying as a lash on the back, but it’ll have to do.
“Come on, man. All you do is work.”
“I do leisure activities. I’m currently reading. Later, I’ll meet with my trainer. We’re working on lats.”
I can all but hear him rolling his eyes through the phone. “Where’s the guy who used to street race to get his jollies off?”
I glare at the floor. “He grew up. Goodbye, Caleb.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Come on, man. You’re my best friend. I’m just worried about you.”
I’m a millisecond away from snapping that we’re not best friends, that we were never best friends; he was always just a means to an end. But then I count to five and breathe in and out. Because my other not-so-leisure activities are twice weekly meetings with the therapist Dr. Ezra referred me to.
Fucking therapy. On the bad days, I wish I’d never let any of those fucking vultures into my house. Brooke and I would have found our way if I’d just kept her safe from the world, locked up in my dungeon.
I should have protected her better. My hands clench around the book. I want to rip it apart. Then pick up the chair I’m sitting in and throw it through the fucking window before trashing the rest of my nice, orderly, professionally decorated study.
“Dom? You still there?”
My teeth clench and I close my eyes, trying to remember to breathe. Breathe, breathe—my therapist’s always telling me to breathe before I react; he’s got a fucking hard-on about it. Notice when something triggers you and then breathe through it, so you don’t lash out.