Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74554 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“What do you want, Velle? Huck send you in here?”
“Nah, you know Huck,” he said, leaning in the doorway. “He’s got that dad vibe. He figures if you want to be a bitch then we should leave you alone to be that.”
I snorted at that.
“He can be a dick sometimes, but I think we both know he actually does care.”
“Sure.” I sounded anything but sure about that, though.
“To be fair, Kylo, did you even tell him you had feelings for the girl?”
“Not in that many words.”
“And you thought that he was the mind-reading, emotionally intelligent sort?”
“Even if he knew, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“I think you underestimate Huck. He’s dealt with a lot of shit brought about by the women the men of this club fall for. He would have found a way around this if he knew you cared about Rue like that.”
“There was no way around this. It was too late the first time I opened my mouth and lied to her.”
“I think we both know it was over the second you put your hands on her,” he clarified. “She probably would have understood up to that point.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Yet as much as I regretted the shocked betrayal on her face, the way she barked at Huck that I better not show up in her life again, I couldn’t bring myself to regret what we’d shared in that hotel.
Maybe that was selfish.
But at least I had those happy memories to go along with all the ugly ones that were dominating my mind then.
“I can’t undo it,” I said, shrugging. “So what’s the point in talking about it?”
“The point,” Velle said with a little laugh, “is that you stink, your room stinks, and you haven’t eaten anything in days. That’s the point.”
“Fine,” I said, folding up and hopping off the bed.
I shoved my feet into my shoes.
“If you guys are sick of me being in bed, I’ll go be in my bed in my place.”
He didn’t try to stop me.
I didn’t expect him to.
If anyone else called to me when I rushed through the house, I didn’t hear them.
I didn’t even really see any of them.
It wasn’t until I was on my bike and about to pull out of the driveway that I did notice something.
Someone.
Not Rue.
No.
Claudia.
Shit.
Before I could peel out to avoid her, though, she was rushing across the street in her green and white house dress, a determined look on her face.
She moved to stand in front of my bike, staring at me until I did the right thing and cut the engine.
Up until that moment, I figured Claudia was all light, all fun. But this was a woman made of concrete standing in front of me. Fierce, hard. And clearly very, very angry with me.
“Claudia,” I greeted her, ignoring the way my stomach knotted.
“I don’t know what you did to my girl,” she started, making my heart—already so brittle—crack a little more. “But you need to fix it.”
“I can’t,” I told her.
There was no fixing it.
No one got over that kind of betrayal.
“I trusted you with her. She came alive when she was around you, when she talked about you. Then, after a date she was bouncing on her feet telling me about, she is someone I don’t even recognize anymore.”
“Is it the depression?” I asked, blood turning to ice.
“No. No, this is different.”
“The anxiety?”
“No. This is something colder, harder. There are glaciers in her eyes. She’s frigid from the inside out. What did you do?”
“Things she will never forgive me for,” I admitted.
“Did you even try to explain?”
“She wouldn’t want to hear it.”
“Why do you think it is your place to decide for her what she does or doesn’t want to hear?”
“Claudia, I know you want to think that I can fix it because I broke it, but that’s not the case here. She made it very clear she doesn’t want to see me again. I’m going to respect that. I’ve done enough damage.”
With that, I moved around her, started the engine, and peeled off before she could say anything else.
I wanted to be relieved that Claudia didn’t think Rue’s depression and anxiety were spiraling. But I was too horrified at the idea of a cold version taking over the sweet, warm woman I’d grown to know, to like, to maybe, just possibly, love.
“Fuck,” I growled at myself as I slammed the door of my house, moving into the mostly empty space that still somehow felt full of the ghosts of her.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” I snarled, seeing one of my plants wilted near the window.
I grabbed it, rushing upstairs to stick it in the tub, fill the tub up, and let it drink up as much as it wanted.
It couldn’t die.
It was completely fucking irrational, but I had to keep the plants alive. If they were the last bit of Rue I was ever going to get, I was going to take care of them, dammit.