Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63967 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Good. It’s for the best. It doesn’t matter if Noelle thinks I’ll be out soon. She can’t guarantee that, and I refuse to believe it until my feet hit the asphalt outside these walls.
I refuse to put Sophie in danger for my own selfish needs, and the best fucking thing I can do for myself is stop wishing for a woman like her and keep my dick to the club whores. They’re guaranteed and easy.
And most of all, they don’t make a man wish for things he can’t have.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sophie
I’m in jail. The lawyer says it could be a while. I know things were getting good between us, and I can’t stop thinking about you. But you need to move on. You deserve better than what I can give you right now—maybe ever. You matter to me. A lot.
That’s why I’m writing this.
Take care of yourself, Sophie.
Yours truly,
Tank
How often can a woman read and re-read a letter before it becomes torture? I don’t have an answer—yet—but it’s not twenty. Or thirty. That’s how many times my eyes glide over Tank’s words, replaying them and trying to make sense of them. I mean, the words themselves were clear as day. Forget about me. Whatever we could have been, might have been, is in the past.
It’s good advice.
The smart thing to do.
It’s exactly what I should be doing.
Yet here I am, re-reading this note like some lovesick teenager, which I guess I am in a way. Or maybe I’m just a fool.
Another attempt to see Tank backfired tremendously. Not only has he not added me to the visitor’s list, but there was a woman there to see him. A very busty, beautiful woman, I might add. I saw them leaving a private conference room together while I practically begged the policewoman to let me see him.
I can get over the beauty, maybe, but what kills me is that she knows what’s going on in Tank’s life right now.
And I don’t.
Who is she anyway?
Is she his wife or a girlfriend? And if so, does that make me the other woman? Is he just like all the other men, a fucking lying piece of shit?
And then comes the one thought that hasn’t left my mind since Hannah told me about the arrest: why didn’t he tell me his real name? Was he hiding it from me?
Of everything we shared about our lives, our families and hobbies, he never told me his real name, the one on his driver’s license and birth certificate. The one on his dog tags.
If he can keep that from me, then there’s a lot of other shit he could be keeping from me. Like a wife. Two-point-five kids. A house with a white picket fence.
“Well, fuck,” I half-laugh, half-shout to myself. Here I am, thinking I’m being progressive and open-minded because I don’t care that Tank is a biker or an ex-con when the truth is that he’s just a lying fucking cheater like all the rest.
I bawl my eyes out, a big ol’ ugly cry that I’m happy no one is around to see, not even Josie. She’d give me so much shit for crying over a man that she’d mock me and tell me, ‘I told you so’. But I let it all out, crying so hard that my shoulders shake and my chest heaves under the force of the grief.
It should feel cathartic, crying over something I lost, something I never actually had in the first place, but it doesn’t feel healing at all.
I feel stupid, used, and sad.
I feel angry.
Pissed off.
And then I feel sick to my stomach. So stick that I toss the letter aside, practically leaping over the coffee table as I rush to the bathroom. Sinking to my knees, I hug the bowl and empty out the oatmeal and blueberries I ate for breakfast and then some. It goes on and on until there’s nothing left but bile, and then I frown.
The same thing happened yesterday, but I didn’t eat breakfast yesterday.
The day before that, I was sick as soon as I opened my eyes.
The same thing happened the day before and the day before that.
“Shit. Oh no,” I murmur to myself as panic sets in. “Don’t freak out yet, Soph. Let’s diagnose first.”
I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, but I nearly puke again from the smell in the bowl. I push up to my feet, flush the toilet and rinse my mouth and face, taking a long, hard look at my reflection. Pale with hollow cheeks, a sure sign of weight loss, which isn’t completely abnormal since I’m heartbroken and unemployed.
But the nausea and the dizziness could be anything until you add exhaustion for no apparent reason and tender breasts. I hate that I’m even thinking of what I’m thinking, but I’m an adult and a medical professional, which means I can’t ignore reality forever. Just a little while longer, I tell myself as I head back to the living room, where my phone is with my period tracker app.