Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
“That never comes off your fucking finger!” He glared at me. “It has a GPS in it. If anyone tries to take you again, it’s how I’ll fucking find you. I see that ring off your finger for any reason that tells me you’re planning to run. You planning to run?”
I shook my head no.
“No?” Heat and rage were all I could see in his eyes.
I shook my head again.
“Why was it off?” he demanded.
My head dropped to the pillow and I covered my face with the blanket. He ripped it right off me and tossed the blanket behind him so that it fell on the floor with the cereal and the laptop. I shrieked and pulled a pillow against myself and backed up against the headboard.
“What is your fucking problem?” he shouted. He picked up my phone and turned it on and it made a whole bunch of bleeps. Obviously, he’d been messaging me, lots.
“Done feeling sorry for yourself yet?”
“You’re the one who left!” I yelled, my voice hoarse. It might’ve been days since I’d spoken.
“You’ve been fucking catatonic. Obviously, you didn’t care,” he retorted.
“I don’t fucking care!” I retorted snottily. “I’m tired of fucking caring. Everything I care about means nothing. My father, my mother, you. Nothing.”
“Why am I nothing?”
“You’re not nothing. I’m nothing. I’m just…” I put my hands over my face.
He sat on the bed and leaned forward and took my hands off my face and weaved his fingers through mine. His face was seriously pissed off-looking, but his touch was gentle.
“I told you that you’re everything.”
“What do you want from me? You want to hit me? Go ahead and hit me. You want to fuck me? Go ahead and–”
He let go of me and got up. “Fuck,” he stared at me a beat and then said, “I’m taking a shower.”
I lay there for a second and then lifted the phone, which he’d tossed on the bed, and scrolled through the texts sent throughout the time he was gone.
Come down to the office, baby.
Tia?
I’m flying to Italy with my brother for a few days. Tell no one. Just that I’m away on business. I’ll text when I land. Love you.
P.S Delete my texts after you read them.
I’m here. You okay?
I’m laying here wishing you were beside me, baby. I can’t seem to sleep without you beside me. I should’ve brought you. I know you’re upset. I’m sorry you’ve been through so much in the last month. I’m working on fixing things. I’m on that road to making things better. Promise I’ll find a way. Love you.
I heard Etta James on the radio today in a restaurant and miss you so much. I didn’t know I was lonely without you until I had you. Now I don’t think I would want to live without you. Can’t wait to marry you and dance again with you to that song.
Then there was a link to a YouTube video link. Then another text.
I miss the smell of your hair & how you wrinkle your nose at me & the way I wake up every morning with you all wrapped around me. Love how you keep wearing pink since I bought that pink fishing rod for you. Miss you. Write back?
That was four days ago. He’d given up on messaging me. I touched the link to the video and it opened a YouTube window and started to play the Etta James song. It was playing to images from the Disney Wall-e movie. I loved that movie.
As the song filled the air, so much emotion surged through me I thought I was going to fall over. When she sang about her heart wrapped up in clover the night she looked at him I thought about us in that field on his farm with me in the grass, him over me with sunrays practically bursting from him and how much emotion I’d felt in that moment.
I thought about him dancing with me and singing this song in my ear. I pushed away thoughts of him screaming in my face with his belt in his hand and then I saw that couple on the stage in Vegas embracing one another after he gave her what she needed and she gave him what he needed. I thought about how amazing it was when I declared I was his in the bathroom in the hotel that night.
The look in his eyes, the heat, the emotion. The freedom in being his was something I wanted now. Right now.
When I gave into being his, I didn’t have to feel anything but the bliss of giving myself over to him. I put the phone down and ran to the bathroom and hit the brakes when I got to the shower door.
He was still in the shower. Did I want to climb in there with him and bridge the gap between us? I was so fucking scared of what I felt for him, of what he’d made me into in such a short amount of time. I was so scared of who he could be. Did I embrace our relationship and take the good with the bad? Or did I stay in this shell, this sub-existence I was in for the past several days?