Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Her movements were wooden as she fumbled forward and slowly dipped her hand into my bag like she might be reaching for a bomb. She pulled out the fragment of white tee, which was stained a blackened, gruesome red.
She stared at it for a moment before she turned to me. A mess of tears already tracked down her cheeks. “Aria.”
Grief filled my name. So gutting it nearly dropped me to my knees.
“Mom, it’s not—” I rushed for her with the intention of ripping it from her hand. In those precious seconds, I tried to figure out what to say that could make this right.
Too bad I already knew there wasn’t a chance.
There was already too much history.
Too much fear and pain.
She grabbed me by my sweatshirt. I gasped when she jerked it up to expose my stomach.
“Mom, no.” My hands flew to the fabric, pushing it down, trying to protect the secret I couldn’t give her.
“Where is it, Aria?” She gulped through the question. Around the sob hitched in her throat.
“It’s not—”
Before I could stop her, she yanked down the collar of the sweatshirt. It exposed an inch of the wound where it started on my shoulder. “Aria. Please. No.”
It was me who was frozen when she moved around me, and she pushed the sweatshirt up my back to expose the rest.
A mournful whimper rolled from her mouth.
She’d thought I was recovered. That I was no longer hurting myself. That it was all in the past. But I would never be recovered, not as long as I breathed.
“After all this time? I thought . . . I thought you were . . .” She choked over the words she couldn’t fully get out.
I hadn’t been burned in two months, and she hadn’t discovered one in four. I should have known that my luck was running out.
Air skidded in and out of her lungs as she fought the war that suddenly broke out in her spirit.
One I could physically feel.
Her greatest fears flared to life, anguished and aggrieved in her love for me.
She finally snapped out of the shock and moved, the fixer who could not fix what was broken inside me. “Are you taking your medication?” she demanded.
“Yes—” I hadn’t gotten it out before she turned to my desk in search of it. She started to rummage around on top. I grabbed her arm, needing to stop her, wanting to plead with her to turn around and see me.
Didn’t she see it when she looked at me?
Didn’t she feel it the first time she’d held me after I was born?
Didn’t she know?
“Mom, please, it’s not—”
“Please don’t lie to me and tell me it’s nothing, Aria. I love you too much for that.” She ripped open the drawer on the left to find what she was looking for—the bottle of the generic antidepressant I took.
Frantic, she could barely get the lid off, her desperation clawing through her, body and soul. She finally managed it, and she dumped the pills onto the desktop. She counted them under her breath, swiping them one by one back into the container.
When she found the right number there, she whirled back around, begging, “What is wrong, Aria? Please tell me. Has someone hurt you? Bullied you? Your friends? A boy? What is it? Please God, just tell me. Let me help you.”
Her sorrow was stark.
Staggering.
Unbearable.
I wanted to wipe it away. Hold her. Protect her the way she wanted to protect me. My chest ached, my ribs clamping around my heart, which throbbed with dread.
“Mom, please, don’t do this. I didn’t—” On instinct, the defense fell from my tongue. One I knew better than to give.
Because it only doubled my mother’s agony and amplified her fear.
“What did you say?” Tears poured from her eyes.
My throat locked, and I curled my arms over my chest like it could protect us both from this.
“What did you say? That you didn’t do it?” This time, she grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “Was he there?” she demanded.
I couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t breathe.
“Was he there?” Her words escalated to a shout.
My eyes squeezed closed as visions of Pax raced through my mind.
The beautiful boy who would never be mine the way I wanted him to be.
My love.
My heart.
My soul.
“Tell me,” she pleaded. “Was he there?”
“Mom,” I croaked around the disordered riot that crashed through my room.
Heartbreak twisted through her expression. I could feel it. Feel it like a wound. Her hope dwindling into hopelessness. Succumbing to the belief that her daughter was insane.
This was the mother of a little girl who at four couldn’t wait to go to sleep because there she would see her best friend.
Pax.
At that time, she would sit at the edge of my bed, pull my covers to my chin, and smile in soft encouragement as I told her the fantastical stories about a little boy who was four years older than me. A boy I would play with beyond the boundaries of this world.