Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
“I know what you mean,” she said softly. “I looked up how to register for a concealed carry yesterday. It’s like . . . I’ll never feel safe again, you know? I haven’t even left the house.”
He returned to where he’d been sitting on the bed next to her, taking her hand in his, running his thumb over her knuckle. They were still scraped, but they were healing. The bruise on her face looked better too. “Your dad . . . Noelle, how are you?” he asked. “Really?” Was she even able to grieve amid everything else she was trying to bear? The memories, the nightmares. He didn’t have to ask if she was having nightmares too.
She let out a shaky breath. “I just keep thinking about him here in this house alone and so terrified. They say he died of a heart attack, but I think it broke. I think it just broke in two. He couldn’t stand the torture of not knowing what was happening to me. He couldn’t stand another sudden loss.” Tears welled in her eyes, and he took her in his arms, rubbing circles over her back. He’d wanted to do this so many times over those long weeks when she’d come back from that upstairs room, the one that would be burned into his memories for all time, kept in the dungeon of his soul. He’d wanted to comfort her this way, but he hadn’t been able to. He was able to now, though, and it soothed him as well.
He kept rubbing her back as she cried, and then he began whisper-singing. “If all the little snowflakes were candy bars and milkshakes, oh, if I the little snowflakes, were candy love and milkshakes, oh what a you that would be.”
He felt her lips move into a smile, even though her tears were still wetting the crook of his neck. He leaned back so he could look at her and offer her a smile, too, as small as the one she wore, as pulled by that unseen current.
Their eyes held, and something shifted, some deeper need that each realized could be fulfilled with the other. His heart beat harder, and he saw her pulse pick up speed in her throat as she exhaled, her tears ceasing.
The sex was the same as that in the motel room in Mexico. Frantic, confusing, yet so desperately wanted. Like that day, he both rushed toward his orgasm and regretted it after it’d exploded through him. It wasn’t the point of what they’d done, and yet maybe he should have tried to make it pleasurable for her. She hadn’t seemed to want that, though, and truth be told, neither had he, necessarily. His body was different, however, and it simply couldn’t be stopped.
Whatever need they were fulfilling in each other, it was like a drug, and like any good narcotic, it made him briefly numb.
“Noelle,” he said, when he’d rolled away and they both lay staring up at the ceiling, “we didn’t use anything, this time or the last—”
“They did a rape kit on me at the hospital,” she said, her voice monotone. “They gave me a morning-after pill.”
“Oh.” He reached up, running his fingers through the front of his hair and clenching a handful in his fist. “But this time . . .” God, he hadn’t even thought about that. Both times, he’d just become pure need, no thought. Jesus.
“I got an IUD put in at the hospital,” she said. She sat up, bringing the bedspread with her and bending to retrieve her clothes. He hated the look on her face. She looked remorseful and confused, and just plain sad. This was hurting her. He was hurting her, and it was the last thing he wanted.
“We have to stop doing this,” he said. He felt confused and upset. And he’d felt like he needed the release, or her touch, or just her, but he didn’t know why, or if it was right or wrong anymore. Because it’d stopped the pain for a moment, but not longer than that.
“Yes,” she agreed without turning. “We do. We need to stop this. It’s not right.”
That was the thing, though. It didn’t feel wrong exactly either. It just felt like they were substituting sex for something else, and for the life of him, he didn’t know what the fuck that was or how to get it. If he could have, he would have. He opened his mouth to say something just as loud banging met their ears from below.
Evan sprang off the bed, going to the window and pulling at the slat again. “My dad,” he said, letting out a whoosh of breath. What the fuck was his dad doing there? They both dressed as rapidly as possible, he rehooking his sling and rushing from her room to the stairwell and looking over to where Paula was arguing with Evan’s father in the doorway.