Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87142 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 290(@300wpm)
“You want to know about my little sister?” He folded his arms across his chest and glared at me with the same face he’d shown Cheryl. The face that sent everyone running.
“Yes.” I leaned back against the wall next to the door.
“Really.” There was that dismissive scoff again. “Why? What good will it do? She’s dead. She’s not coming back. She had eight summers in this shitty world before he snuffed her out like a weed he found growing in the sidewalk. Is that what you want to hear, Zoe?”
“I want the truth. No matter how ugly or sad it is.” I swallowed and stuffed my hands in the pockets of my jeans to keep them from shaking.
“He killed her! It wasn’t an accident. I don’t give a shit that he was drunk, or that the charges were dropped to manslaughter and abuse. I don’t care that he swears it was only the one time, or that Cheryl is so desperate for that asshole’s love and approval that she still claims it was an accident. I’ve seen the report. The force with which she hit the bottom of the stairs could only have come from being thrown down them.”
I gasped and pressed my lips between my teeth.
“Still want the truth, Shannon?” He lifted his brows.
“Yes,” I whispered. I’d take whatever he’d give me because I knew this moment wouldn’t come again. “I want to know what makes you who you are, Nixon.”
“Jesus, you really are just like everyone else!” He shook his head. “My head isn’t public property! The only person who owns the rights to my past is me.” He thumped his chest.
“I only want to help you!” I pushed off the wall.
“Bullshit! You want to crawl inside my head and try to fix me!”
I floundered. “That’s…that’s not true. Do I want you to be fixed? Yes. I love you. I want you healthy, and I want your nightmares to stop, and I want you to be okay. But I don’t care if I’m the one who fixes you, Nixon.”
He tilted his head as a corner of his mouth lifted. “Right. So, you don’t want to be the one who unlocks my secrets? The one who gets in here”—he tapped his chest—“and turns me into a changed man?”
“That’s not fair.” I wanted all those things romantically. To be the woman he trusted with his secrets because he wanted to.
“What if I made you choose?”
“Between?”
“Between fixing me and loving me?” He motioned down his body. “Just like I am. Right now. Addictions. Nightmares. General asshole. The whole package.”
“I already love you.” I moved forward, and he retreated.
“You love who you think I can be. Who I’ve been here in this house. But it’s not enough for you, because I’m not perfect. I’m not…healthy. So, you chip, and you dig, and you ask, and you prod at me, like I’m the next square to check on the Zoe’s gotta-fix-it list. I’m the phone you can’t put down at night. The mess you can’t quite clean up.”
“That’s not true.” I lifted my hand to my chest, right above the tearing sensation behind my ribs.
“It is. We both know it. You’re literally only here to keep me from fucking up. Maybe your heart got tangled up in the process, but the mission has never changed. So, I’m asking you to choose, Zoe Shannon. Would you rather fix me? Or love me?”
My feet were still on the floor, but I felt gravity shift as he stared at me, waiting for my answer. I loved him, and not only the version of him who existed in this house. I loved all of him. But I was also smart enough to know my love might not be enough to hold him. I might not be enough—not in the long run. And he’d still have the nightmares long after I was gone. Still carry the weight of his past.
“Choose.” He shrugged, like it meant nothing.
“It’s a ridiculous hypothetical.”
“Choose.”
“Fine.” I ran my hands over my face. “If it came down to me loving you, or me standing aside so you could be healthy enough to love someone, I’d choose that. I’d fix you.”
“Right.” He turned away from me and zipped the first bag. “Right,” he repeated to himself. “Well, so much for love, huh?”
“That’s not what I mean. You can’t just make me stop loving you.” I couldn’t even stop it if I tried. Loving him was a force so strong there was nothing I could do to protect myself.
“Sure I can.” He zipped the second bag.
Gravity shifted again, turning my stomach inside out. And when he hits the self-destruct button, he takes out everyone in his path. Quinn’s warning sounded in my ears like the wail of an emergency alert for a flood that hit two minutes ago.