Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
“By all means, Colten. Whatever you want … whatever you need. I’ll try to care, like you cared the day you obliterated my heart seventeen years ago.” I hold out my wrists. “I cared then. I care now. So back the fuck up and tell me who doesn’t care?”
Colten stares at my arms.
I drop them to my sides. “I don’t blame you,” I whisper.
“I do,” he whispers back to me.
I blink back my tears. “I’ve wanted one thing since I was a nine-year-old girl trying to win my dad’s heart, trying to make friends, trying to find my place in this world.”
Colten’s gaze lifts to mine. “What?”
Swallowing past the lump of vulnerability in my throat, I ease my head side to side. How can he not know? “You.” My hand quickly bats away a tear. “I’ve hated you so much for so long. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hate someone for that long?”
His Adam’s apple bobs as his gaze shifts again, unable to keep it locked to mine.
“It takes so much love, the kind of love that relentlessly aches, eating away at your soul. And here we are. You want to live with me, marry me, do all the things that other people do. But I’ve never been ‘other people.’ I want you, Colten. Any way I can get you. However, I feel like you want me the way … you want me. I’ve never been normal. If something really fucked-up is going to happen to someone after a near-death experience, it’s going to be me. If that’s too much for the adult version of Colten Mosley, then you can have a pass. No hard feelings.”
He flinches, shaking his head.
I measure my next words carefully. “The reason my job exists is because not everything in life is what it seems. So even when you show up to a crime scene and find a body that has a bullet hole in the head, you can’t definitively say the person died from that gunshot wound. Maybe they died of a drug overdose first, and someone shot them in the head anyway. I am the person who goes through the proper steps to make that determination. I deal with facts in my job. I don’t write death certificates based on speculation. There is a process. So I’m going to Tennessee because I think it’s part of the process. And you can stay here and wait for the chance to say, ‘See, I told you it was the bullet to the head.’ But I won’t care if you’re right. It’s not about ego. It’s about following a process. Facts matter. Sometimes being right is just dumb fucking luck.”
Colten blinks a few times and murmurs, “I don’t want a pass. Not ever. I’ll go with you to Tennessee. You lead. I follow. That’s just what we do.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Thirteen.
Officially teenagers.
I didn’t feel a new level of confidence, nor did turning thirteen prompt my parents to give me more freedom.
The very day Josie turned thirteen, she was ready to demand full adulthood freedom. Chief Watts chose that very day to tighten the reins on her.
“Oh my god! My parents gave me a curfew. I mean … they’ve always given me a time to be home, but it’s not the same time. It’s always been dependent on the situation. But now I have to be home by nine on school nights and ten on the weekends. It’s ridiculous!” She nearly fell out of the tree from her animated ranting.
“Did you ask them why?”
Josie huffed, blowing the hair away from her eyes. “They said I’m at the age where I’m more likely to get into trouble or be influenced by other kids. As if I’d do something stupid because someone else told me to do it.”
I had a mile-long list of stupid things I had done because someone else told me to do them, and by someone else … it was Josie.
“You don’t have a curfew. I have one because I’m a girl. That’s not fair. If my dad is going to call me ‘Jo’ and dress me in camouflage on the weekends to go hunting, then he needs to give me a boy curfew.”
“What’s a boy curfew?” I asked, swinging my legs to the same rhythm as hers.
“It’s no curfew. Gah! Haven’t you been listening?”
Listening? Sure, I was listening. I just wasn’t focusing on everything. Josie had the best rants. You could tell she was well-read because her vocabulary and ability to build a strong case for her demands far exceeded my abilities or anyone else’s who was our age.
“Listen, I heard a group of kids are going to sneak out and spend the night at the cemetery. I think we should go,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“You don’t think anything is a good idea if it involves risk.”