Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59739 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
But I lose it.
I don’t mean to, and I don’t want to, but I do. The first sob bubbles up and before I can even try to force it down, it expands, until it fills me, until it’s all I can do to breathe through the pain. He doesn’t say anything stupid like Don’t cry or It’ll be okay. He just rubs my back in slow, careful circles, letting me cry until there’s nothing left in me.
I don’t know how long I sit there, ugly-crying into his chest. He doesn’t move. My breathing gets raspy and I finally pull back, swiping my face. It’s pitch dark but I can feel those eyes on me. “Sorry,” I mutter.
“For what?”
I shake my head. “I shouldn’t be like this. I should be the strong one. I should...”
He cuts me off. “You don’t have to be anything. We’re all just doin’ the best we can.”
“This is all so fucked.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he murmurs, against my hair.
“I don’t see how.”
“You let me talk to you, you let me back in, let me explain...”
I pull away.
An automatic reaction, but one that hurts him. I can hear it when he sucks in a breath.
“Gracie...”
“I know that you regret what you did, Ace. I can see that in you. But a choice was made, and that choice has cost us all so much. I don’t...I just don’t know if I will ever feel the same way after that.”
He falls silent, for a long moment.
“I’m fuckin’ sorry, for whatever that’s worth.”
“I believe you,” I whisper. “But I have to ask myself what kind of man you really are, if you were willing to hand innocent girls over to be sold, just to pay off your own debts.”
“It wasn’t...”
I cut him off. “Maybe it wasn’t, honestly, I don’t want to know the reason why because it doesn’t feel like any reason will justify it. You were going to sell us, Ace. You were delivering us to a fate so bad, I wouldn’t even send my worst fucking enemy to endure it.”
“I know,” he growls, low. “I fuckin’ know.”
“Then stop asking me to forgive you,” I whisper. “Because...I just fucking can’t. I can’t. Please, just stop. Leave me alone. You’re making this so much fucking harder than it has to be.”
Someone shifts before he can answer, and then I hear the shuffling of feet.
The conversation is cut short, and I scoot away from Ace with an ache in my heart that feels unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. It’s deep and jarring, like someone has their hands around it and is squeezing so hard I find it hard to breathe.
I don’t want this to be the end of the story for Ace and me, but I don’t know how I can ever look past what happened.
Right now, I don’t know anything.
I just want to get off this island.
3
I SHOULD PROBABLY SAY it was some sense of purpose, or even hope, that gets me moving again a few days after the pirates leave. But that would be a lie. What really gets me moving is sheer, miserable anger. The kind that starts somewhere behind your ribcage and eats its way outward, so by the time you’re upright, you can’t think about anything else except how badly you still want to punch a hole through the universe.
Which is how I find myself at the water the next day, leaning against a tree, pathetically attempting to tie three large branches together, strong enough to wedge against a boulder in our shelter, so the rain stops fucking coming in and hitting us. I watched Kellen do it yesterday. I know for a fact it’s possible. Yet for some reason, my hands are numb with cold and every knot I attempt slips out and immediately bites me in the arse.
I manage one, then go to anchor the second, and the whole thing collapses, sending the timber tumbling to the ground in front of me. It makes a sound so pathetic, I want to scream. Instead, I slam the sticks into the ground, hands balled into fists. The second I do, I realise how badly I’ve been shaking. My vision is rimmed in black, like I’m about to pass out. Maybe I am. I feel like shit, maybe it’s exhaustion or maybe it’s just me wanting all of this to end.
I press my forehead to one hand and try to just breathe. I can feel in my blood that the migraine I’ve been holding off for days is coming back with a vengeance, and it is eating holes in the inside of my skull. I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to remember what it felt like to be an actual person, with actual problems you could fix in a day, instead of problems that simply keep reminding you how much worse things can get.