Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96112 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96112 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 384(@250wpm)___ 320(@300wpm)
She threw me an infectious grin over her shoulder. “How was the outing today, mijo?”
Same as every Sunday. I got to look into people’s lives. It was a constant reminder that I was on the outside. “It was nice. Did you make it to church?” Because when she did, she stopped by the market near her church, where she picked up treats from her country for me.
She chuckled. “Maybe. I might have left you something in the fridge—no, no! You stay there. You’re gonna eat a meal first.”
Damn it.
Vincent joined us soon enough, and he reminded me I had an extra appointment tomorrow.
I nodded. I already knew. It was that other thing that happened once a month. A meeting with Richard, who, besides making sure this household still ran like it did when Mom and Dad were alive, also managed their money. Or my money. Whatever. I didn’t like thinking about it.
* * *
It brought me some strange sense of giddiness to hate Mondays. It was something I had in common with others. On Monday morning, for instance, I could go on Twitter, post a meme about how much Mondays sucked, and I would get tons of likes and retweets. It was like being part of the gang for a minute.
It was nice.
After that, it was all suffering.
My meeting with Richard went as expected. He gave me his monthly report, his concern, and his advice. While he transferred funds to this and that account, he told me—again—I should visit more often, but I shook my head. It was too painful. Our families had spent so many holidays together that everything had shattered when Mom and Dad died. There was no recovering. Every conversation was stilted. Richard’s two daughters tiptoed around me. We couldn’t speak about anything outside of boring current events. There were too many memories. And two empty seats at the table.
I saw Richard once a month, and I saw Linda, his wife, whenever she needed help with a new fund raiser she was organizing. That was enough.
I made it through the meeting and breathed a sigh of relief when I was back in the car. Next stop, the spa, which was anything but enjoyable. My skincare treatment was an itchy, tickly affair. But if I skipped an appointment, I suffered even more. Something I’d learned from experience.
The only funny part about my session at the spa was the banter between my dermatologist and my tattoo artist. Sometimes, I didn’t know if they were out to murder each other or fuck.
“Stop scratching,” Vincent reminded me before I got out of the car.
I huffed and smoothed down the sleeve of my button-down.
The facility I went to across the river in Alexandria was big. Health club, fitness center, clinic, spa, cosmetic surgery—all wrapped up in one. Thankfully, my surgery days were over. I hadn’t needed laser treatments in a while either.
Supposedly, I was almost done healing.
Vincent waited in the car as usual, and they called my name after a short wait.
Dr. Cohen was a nice woman, and she had the best treatment room I’d ever been in. It faced the building’s courtyard and had one-way mirrored windows. So my view was of a sliver of nature that belonged in the tropics while Dr. Cohen and Kirk—if he’d get here already—worked on my upper body.
Dr. Cohen checked her watch and rolled her eyes. “Why is he always late?”
I kept my smirk to myself.
She offered an apologetic smile and gestured at her examination table. “We might as well start. You can remove your shirt and take a seat there.”
I left her office chair and unbuttoned my shirt. These days, it didn’t bring me as much pain to show my body. It was why my last play partner hadn’t wanted to continue, because I’d refused to be shirtless—unless the light was off.
A mirror on the wall waited for my flinch, but it didn’t come. I carefully draped the shirt over the examination table and side-eyed my reflection. I’d always be slight and short, and my hair would never be tamed, but the scars…I’d done something about the scars.
I had no recollection of that part of the accident. I only knew I’d flown through a window at a high speed, and the glass had shattered, leaving my upper body riddled with cuts and scrapes. The smallest ones had faded in the first year.
What I did remember was waking up to blistering heat and the smell of gasoline and fire.
I swallowed uneasily and closed my eyes for a second. Don’t think about it. Don’t go there. The bigger scars, the ones skin grafts couldn’t fix completely, from sharp edges of glass and metal, as well as from the burns…they weren’t going anywhere, though Kirk had done an amazing job at covering them permanently. My entire torso, arms, back—all of it—and even a bit of my neck, had been his canvas.