Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Or what he’s going to do with me.
I want to ask him, but I know he won’t tell me. I also know there’s every chance that if I do ask him, he may get angry and really do what he said he would. He may kill my best friend’s brother. I know Peyton hates her family, but I’m sure she doesn’t want them to be killed.
And isn’t this my fault?
This whole situation.
I’m the one who acted stupid, who was fooled. He may be looking for payback, but I’m the one who made it easy for him, who kept writing him letters, who went looking for him. So it’s my fault. I can’t let anyone be killed over it. So I have to do what he says.
But I turn to him and ask, “What did you do?”
Even though we’re only a few feet apart, I can’t really see his eyes. They’re covered by the low brim of the trucker’s cap he had on the first time I saw him. I study the intricate R on it. I think about the R branded on his shoulder blade. About how he doesn’t even know that the letter he has on his body is the first letter of my name.
I wonder if there’s some cruel poetry in that, some cosmic sign that this was going to happen. That we were going to meet this way.
Waving silly thoughts away, I prod: “To get put away. What was your crime?”
I know Bo was caught in a drug bust, but he’s not Bo, is he? So what did he do, then?
His jaw moves back and forth, and even though it’s light out, the car seems to grow dark inside as I watch his soft mouth move and say the most heinous things: “Aggravated assault and attempted murder in the first degree.”
“You t-tried,” I say, stuttering over my words, “to kill someone?”
He dips his chin, but I still can’t see his eyes. “That’s what they charged me with. But that wasn’t my real crime.”
“What… what was your real crime?”
I see his jaw pulse once again. “I failed to finish what they started.”
“What?”
“But I’m gonna fix it now.”
Before I can ask what he means by that, he reaches his arm back and grabs something from the back seat. It’s the same paper bag he was staring at this morning. He sets it between us and, finally, tips his hat up enough so I can see his eyes.
They’re dark as always. But now they have a stillness to them that I haven’t seen from him before. Like his eyes aren’t simply dark; they hold a darkness that goes beyond just the color.
Then, “I’m gonna take their daughter to the courthouse in a white dress I bought her and make her mine. Because death alone isn’t enough for the family who took everything from me. I’m gonna take everything from them and it starts with you.”
THE WHITE DRESS he bought me is beautiful.
It’s made of delicate lace and embroidered flowers. It’s held up by two fragile spaghetti straps, and the silky fabric molds around my large breasts and flares around my big hips, hitting me just above the knees.
As I look myself up and down in the bathroom mirror, I realize I’d never pick out this dress, which would probably be doing myself a disservice. Because it’s stunning. Not only due to the intricate needlework on the lace, but also because instead of hiding things like all my other clothes do, like the dress I wore to meet him did, this dress highlights them. My pillowy breasts, my small waist, and my rounded hips that give me an hourglass figure.
It’s like he knows me more than I know myself. He knows how to turn what I think are my flaws into something beautiful.
Even though my hair’s all over the place, messy and unkempt, and my blue eyes are terrified, I do think I look pretty in the white dress.
At the courthouse.
Somehow in my perusal of this town from the car, I missed the big white building with the big white pillars. I missed the lettering on the front that said, “Broken Ridge County Clerk of District Court.”
I missed it, and now here I am, gripping the sink tightly because my knees are about to give out. I’m either about to hit my head on the ceramic on my way down, or I’m going to puke all over myself. Either way, I’m ultimately going to die.
Or at least, that’s what it feels like.
Like my life’s about to end. And it is, isn’t it?
It took me a bit to understand what he meant back in his car. I couldn’t put two and two together. Not until we got inside the building, and he told me to go change in the bathroom, pointing toward the brown paper bag I was clutching to my chest like a shield. That’s when it hit me. What he meant by the white dress in a brown bag, the courthouse, the daughter.