Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Ramsey probably knew this too, because when she failed to answer him with words, he turned his fury on me. With tight fists and an angry scowl, his gaze hit me like a sledgehammer. I held my ground, twelve years of heartbreak and hatred fueling my courage.
“What is wrong with you asking her to bring you here today?” he snarled. “How many times do I have to scrape you off before you finally get it?”
I locked my greens with his browns. “After everything we’ve been through? More than once, that’s for damn sure.”
Once.
That was exactly how many times Ramsey had “scraped me off” while he was behind bars.
Once was actually the only contact he’d made with me at all.
Six years of promises.
Six years of never leaving each other’s sides.
Six years of planning a lifetime together.
Six damn years and he’d written me one letter the entire time he was gone. If I hadn’t realized that it was going to be his last, I would have lit the damn thing on fire and mailed him back the ashes.
Move on, he’d written.
Start a new life, he’d urged.
I don’t love you anymore, he’d lied.
I’d sobbed the day I got that letter—big, fat, grief-stricken tears. I hadn’t believed it any more then than I did now, but each and every word on that page had felt like a stake through the heart. My Ramsey never would have written that. Not to me.
For over a year, I’d traced my fingers over the sloppy handwriting just to feel him. It was as close as I could get to him after he’d refused to add me to his list of visitors. I’d never been given the opportunity to speak with him in person. I wrote letter after letter. Each one containing a million questions. A million apologies. A million I-love-yous. A million pleas for him to let me come visit.
They all went unanswered.
Once, when I was at the end of my rope, desperate for him to know the truth, I snuck a note inside one of Nora’s letters. I still had no idea if he’d read it. Nora was the only connection I had to Ramsey at all, and he hadn’t mentioned it to her.
Two years, five months, one week, and six days after Ramsey had gone to prison, I was forced to accept that he was done with me.
However, I had been nowhere near done with him.
I’d told him I’d never leave. I’d sworn it. He’d sworn it too. So there was no damn way I was accepting a breakup letter a month after he’d been sentenced to sixteen years in prison.
If he didn’t love me anymore, fine. I couldn’t change that. But if he expected me to truly move on with my life, then he was going to have to tell me to my face. I didn’t give a fuck if that was said sixteen minutes or sixteen years later. Until then, I was going to keep my word and be there for him if, and when, he was ready.
With a renewed spirit, I’d tucked his stupid letter under my mattress and set about making a life for myself, because one day, when he got out, that life would extend to Ramsey too. Whether he wanted it to or not.
“You’re still holding on to that shit? Jesus, woman, you have issues,” he stated matter-of-factly.
I nodded. “Yep. And I can trace every last one of them to when I was ten years old and this kid jumped out of a tree and broke my leg.”
He cocked his head and then cut me to the core as only Ramsey could do. “Funny. I can trace all mine back to that same goddamn day. Considering you were the reason I ended up in this hellhole, you got a lot of fucking balls showing up here today.”
“Ramsey!” Nora scolded. “Don’t you dare!”
I deserved that though.
The color drained from my face. It was his one valid argument. I’d considered it countless times over the years. I’d spent a lot of nights sitting under our old tree, wondering if he would ever forgive me. God knew I’d never forgive myself.
He’d never cast any blame though. Not in his one letter. Not to Nora. Not until that moment outside the prison when he revealed the only scenario in which I deserved exactly what he’d given me over the years—nothing.
I rocked back a step, the sheer force of my guilt becoming more than I could withstand.
He stared at me with a malevolence that was so unlike the boy I’d once known that it felt like a physical blow. I’d prepared myself for him to be different. Nora had warned me over and over again. There was no way a person could have lived through everything he had and still be the same sweet boy who’d spent the majority of his youth hiding in trees.