Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Am I afraid? I’m terrified. I’m terrified that all the things I’ve told myself for so many years are true. That I can’t change. And what I just put out there is my fate for the rest of my life. My own flesh and blood didn’t want me. Why should anyone else? I abandoned Jace to come back here. I abandoned the man whose back I should have had. I know he’s not here, and it’s not because of me, but I’ll feel the guilt for the rest of my life. He was more of a family than I ever had, and I just left. I don’t deserve to even lick his sister’s toes. I know how kinky that sounds, and yeah, I totally don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve to even get close enough to lick the ground around her.
“I think you’re a little bit scared.” I knew she’d call me out. I’m not afraid to admit it. Being scared only makes you aware of everything around you. It helps you prepare. Fear is a natural response, and it shouldn’t be ignored. It can be transformed and bent to one’s advantage. It can be changed to adrenaline. But this? I know less than shit about all this. “You’re scared of being free from all the things you never wanted to feel in the first place. You want to hang on to that bitterness instead of forgiving.”
Forgive? We’re going there? Fuck no. I wish I could ask for forgiveness from Jace, but I can’t, and who the fuck else deserves it? Anyone who could have begged me for it is gone. “No one has ever asked me to forgive them. Never once.”
“I know,” she whispers as her arms tighten around my waist. “I’m sorry they didn’t. But you can still forgive them without them asking.”
“They’re dead for the most part, so it would be quite difficult for them to do so.”
“Giving forgiveness is what would make you feel better. It’s not for them.”
“Alright.” My hands flex on the sink. I can’t look at myself in the mirror. I can’t look up and see Aspen holding on to me so tight. I can’t look because I’m afraid I’ll see she’s the one doing all the holding. Keeping me upright, keeping me standing. That she’s the one with all the strength right now. “Alright, you win. I’ll work on the forgiveness part. But the violence? That’s ingrained in me. It’s trained into me. The dirt and the blood and all the sins on my hands and soul…that’s a real thing. You don’t need to get near that. I’m not talking about anyone else. I’m not comparing myself to anyone else. They might not have felt that way, and I’m not saying they lived or died in the same way, and I can’t speak to where they are now, but this is me. I know me, and I can speak for myself.”
“I think you’re more than you can ever imagine. You don’t have to work at it. You already have it. You just have to find it,” she says in response.
“Dig deep into the old, unused, unknown parts of me, is that it?”
“Yes. That’s it exactly.”
“Alright. I’ll do that. I’ll do that, and you’ll leave, and you’ll have a lovely life, and we’ll keep in touch like we planned. You can follow up on my progress. I’ll get some self-help books—”
“Stop it.” She swats at me but grasps my arms and makes me turn to face her. She does the face-cupping thing, so I have to be brave enough to look at her dead-on. “You don’t have to be sarcastic about it. If you want to do that, then I’m glad. But I’m not going back to Atlanta. I’ll find my own apartment and a job here. I’ll make my parents understand.”
She’s hinted at this before. Throwing her life away for something she thinks she sees in me. “You can’t do that,” I say.
She cocks a brow. “I’m pretty sure I can do whatever I want. It’s my life, or did you not just say that?”
“I think that’s an argument of semantics again,” I say with a sigh.
“And I think you should leave this house and come back to Atlanta with me. Come and let me find you a place to stay. Come and stay with my parents until you’re settled, or rent one of those long-term stay hotel rooms. Come back with me. We’re family, and we want you. You’re more than what other people have spent years turning you into. Jace knew that, and he wanted us to know it too. He wanted us to know you. He wanted you to be a part of us.”
“No. I was his insurance plan. He knew I had too much of a sense of honor to turn him down when he asked me to protect you because he couldn’t do it. Fair or not, I’m roped into it now. I’m going to be connected to you for life.”