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)
The touch set me on edge. We hadn’t been allowed to touch or hold hands. Not even at visitation. A hug when she arrived and a hug when she left. That was all we had been permitted.
I snatched my hand away. “Stop touching me. Everybody, just fucking stop.” I put my elbows on the table and dropped my head into my hands.
Yeah, this was definitely too much.
“Okay,” Thea mumbled. “He’ll have a twelve-ounce rib eye, medium-rare, house salad with ranch, and a loaded baked—”
She was doing me a favor. Clearly, I was overwhelmed and about thirty seconds from losing my shit, and Thea had come to my rescue. But I didn’t want Thea to rescue me from anything. I didn’t want her to be there at all.
My head snapped up. “Don’t fucking order for me.”
She jerked to the side as if she were trying to dodge my words. When she opened her mouth to speak, I knew with an absolute certainty it was going to be an apology. I could see it in those damn green eyes that had haunted me for too many years. I wasn’t going to be able to handle another apology from her. The first one had been bad enough. I’d have rather served the last three years than experience that again.
Pushing off the table, I stood up. “I gotta get out of here.”
“Ramsey, wait,” Nora called, but there was no stopping me.
I was done.
And as sad as it might have been, part of me actually longed to go back to that cell. It was a horrible and soul-sucking place, but I knew how to navigate life on the inside.
Freedom was foreign territory.
There were few times in my life that I’d been more devastated than when I was watching Ramsey unravel while attempting the simple task of ordering lunch. I shouldn’t have stepped in and tried to help. I was already crossing a scorching desert barefoot when it came to him, but I couldn’t just sit there while he’d been floundering.
After he’d stormed out, Nora followed him, while I apologized to the waitress and handed her a twenty-dollar bill for her time. I couldn’t convince myself to go after him. Not with my emotions on the verge of overflowing. So I stood at the restaurant door, watching through the glass as Nora opened her car and Ramsey slid into the back seat. She didn’t climb into the driver’s seat though. Instead, she got her phone out of her bag, casually leaned against the hood, and gave Ramsey a few moments of solitude.
My heart broke all over again.
Nora was handling this so much better than I was. I could barely breathe. My emotional grid was all over the place—hate, love, regret, pain, happiness. I’d been waiting for that day for so long. Dreaming about it, really. And while I’d managed to keep my expectations low, I’d hoped for a lot.
I’d hoped seeing me would make him remember that we were made for each other.
I’d hoped being out of that hell would make him smile again.
I’d hoped he could finally start his life the way it was supposed to be.
Yes. I loved Ramsey. I would always love Ramsey. But if that life didn’t include me, I could be content until the end of my days as long as he was happy. That’s all I’d ever wanted for him.
Though, on what should have been the best day of his life, he was crumbling in the back seat of a car, his head leaned back on the headrest, his absent stare aimed at the roof.
When Nora saw me standing at the door, she curled two fingers for me to come out. I ran a hand over the top of my hair to smooth it down. It wasn’t messy. I’d brushed it a dozen times while I’d been hiding in the bathroom, willing my heart to slow after nothing more than sitting next to him at a table. It was something so common that I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.
But I had.
Oh God, how I’d missed it.
He was pissed off and overwhelmed, but I’d missed feeling him next to me.
A thick blanket of unease shrouded the car on our way home. Nora put on the radio and she and Ramsey made small talk about how shitty music was these days. I offered no opinion. He was more comfortable that way—when he could forget I was there.
We lived almost two hours away from the prison, so I had plenty of time to think on that drive. Everything I’d ever wanted was riding in that car with me, but the emptiness within me was more prominent than ever.
What if that was my natural state of being now? What if this was my life, sitting in the front seat while the man I’d been in love with since I was old enough to understand the concept sat behind me completely out of my reach?