Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 81333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 325(@250wpm)___ 271(@300wpm)
My lungs fail to operate as I see not Branch, but Callum, on the screen. With a shaky finger, I press the triangle to play the video.
With every laugh, every line spoken, my emotions grow deeper. More confused. More infected with the poison of his actions.
I should deny this, I should be outraged, I should look at Branch and see what he’s thinking. But I can’t. I’m stuck in this state of disbelief that I can’t even look up from the phone.
My mind keeps reeling that Callum is purposefully painting this picture of me. To the world. To everyone. To Branch.
Tearing my eyes away from the phone as the next video begins to play, I look into his handsome face.
“Branch . . .”
Some of the fury in his face is gone, but in its place is nothing better. There’s a distance there, a wall similar to the one I saw the day I met him.
“This isn’t true,” I insist. “You surely don’t believe this.”
His response takes too long. It gives just enough time for all of my fears to break the shock of what just happened and send me into a nearly full-blown panic.
“This is bullshit,” I say, my hands trembling. “This is complete bullshit.”
“That’s what I said.”
That quells a touch of my anxiety, but not nearly enough. “You don’t believe this, do you?”
Images I’d allowed myself to consider—holidays at the cabin, sitting in the stands and watching him play with our child, him holding the baby on his lap while they’re both asleep—trickle through my brain, teasing me with the future.
Even if those things could be my reality, so would this. Headlines. Gossip. Me and my child being fair game.
“No, I don’t believe it,” he says. Blowing out a breath, he sticks his hands in his pockets. “I’m right not to believe it, right?”
“What? Are you seriously asking me that?”
He looks to the ceiling.
“If there’s any part of you at all that believes that asshole, then I wouldn’t want you anyway.”
His head drops slowly, his gaze landing on mine. The Branch I know, the one I might even love, looks back at me.
“You know I don’t believe any of this shit. It’s not a question. I know you and you shouldn’t want me.” He laughs to himself, hanging his head.
“It’s not you I don’t want. It’s this. I don’t want this.”
“I don’t want to give you this, and I’m not just talking this ridiculous gossip,” he says. “I see it in your eyes. It’s the start of the hatred, the ruination of your world. You were right. You deserve so much better than this.”
“Branch . . .” I say, tears rolling off my lips.
“You don’t think things like this are going to keep happening? They’re saying you’re a whore, Sunshine. That you don’t know whose baby this is.”
The vein in the side of his temple pulses like he’s ready to blow a gasket.
“What will it be next?” he asks. “What will they have me doing next? What situation will I be next to in a hotel in some other city and all of a sudden, because of the life I’ve led, I’m lumped in with those things? What will you think then?”
I don’t answer because I don’t know how. He’s right. As much as it feels like a punch in the gut, he’s right.
“Maybe this is a warning shot for you to not fuck up your life with me,” he says quietly. “My life is a weapon half-cocked. It’s a game of Russian Roulette with me.”
“Do you really think that?”
“It was you that thought it. Now I see it. I can’t control anything in my life and you want to control it all. You want a plan, to know what’s happening when, and I have a life that changes by the minute sometimes. And I can’t really keep you separate from that because . . . eighty percent.”
His face is blurred through the tears filling my eyes. My hand goes to the little cross at the end of his necklace that’s tucked under my shirt. Even if I could find the words to argue with him, there’s no point. You can’t argue the truth.
“I can’t do this to you,” he says, brushing his thumb along my jaw. I lean against his hand, feeling the warmth touch my cheek. “Especially when this is the one thing you don’t want and the one thing that should never happen to a girl like you.”
“So, what are you going to do?” I ask meekly through the tears, shocked that I’m holding it together this well. That works just fine until I see the blues of his eyes cloud too. That does it. The dam breaks and my cheeks are soaked.
In one swift move, he pulls me into his chest. Smelling like soap and cedar, he presses my face so hard into him that I couldn’t pull away if I wanted to. I wrap my arms around his waist, feeling him against me.