Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 395(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Given everything that had happened just hours earlier, I’d expected to see something in his expression.
Anything.
But there was nothing.
Not even contempt.
At most, the only thing I saw just before he turned and disappeared into the barn was the reflection of my own self-disgust. All the terrible things I’d said to Flynn had worked. My words had driven him away, and I now had legitimate proof that I was as ugly on the inside as I so often felt on the outside.
The porch door slamming just behind me forced me to straighten my shoulders and bite back the sting of tears.
“You ready?” I called without looking over my shoulder. It was a futile attempt to get control of myself. Thankfully, Brooks was too preoccupied to notice the catch in my voice.
As soon as Brooks got in the passenger seat, he began talking about the events of the day. What had started out as an outing with Xavier and his younger sister, Sara, to check out the county fair had ended in the discovery of a web of lies and deceit that had changed the trajectory of Xavier and Brooks’s budding romance when they’d still been teenagers.
Brooks was talking so fast that it was hard to keep up with all of it, but the bottom line was that James Cunningham, Brooks’s father, had used his political and financial influence to railroad officials into prosecuting Xavier as an adult rather than as a juvenile for a crime that it was no longer clear that the then sixteen-year-old had even committed. Xavier had ended up in prison and Brooks had been manipulated into believing the older boy he’d fallen hard and fast for had betrayed him.
Brooks had made decisions, life-altering ones, after learning the teenager he’d fallen in love with had tried to kill Brooks’s father. Brooks had chosen never to return to Eden rather than face the pain of Xavier’s supposed betrayal. He’d never once tried to communicate with Xavier after the terrible night when the Cunningham barn had been burned to the ground. Thankfully, James Cunningham had survived, as had all the horses who’d been stabled in the barn.
“I never gave him the chance to explain,” Brooks muttered as he toyed with his phone. “After it happened and not when I came back here, either.”
“It’s fixable, Brooks. That’s all that matters.”
Brooks shook his head. “I don’t know if it is. As of an hour ago when I was talking to that attorney who gave me a ride home from the fair, Xavier never once told me about any of it.” He put his elbow on the spot between where the window met the door and then rested his chin on his fisted hand. “I never gave him a chance to.”
A chill swept over my body as I was reminded of the same mistake I’d made hours earlier when I’d refused to give Flynn the benefit of the doubt and let him explain his response to our intimate encounter. While I’d been licking my own wounds that now seemed minor in comparison to what he had been through, Flynn had been forced to listen to me belittle him. And instead of being able to tell me about all the things that he’d felt when he’d woken up from his second brush with death, he’d had to blurt it out just so he could get me off his back.
Flynn had wanted to confide in me and I’d acted like a spoiled brat.
“Tell me what’s going on with you,” Brooks said.
I let out a dramatic sigh and said, “You know, cooking, fighting off those bitches every morning for some eggs—which, I’m sorry but let’s face it, it’s not like they need them for something else—and watching out for every pile of something disgusting that’s just begging for me to step in it with my Dolce & Gabbana studded sneakers.”
As much as I would have liked to see Brooks smile, I couldn’t blame him when he barely reacted.
“I’m sorry, Jules,” Brooks said out of the blue a few minutes later.
“For what?” I asked in surprise.
“I should have given you time to grab your stuff. Since we’re going to the airport, you could have found a flight home and gotten back to your life so you didn’t have to keep babysitting a friend who can’t seem to get his shit together.”
Brooks’s comment gave me the opening I’d been looking for ever since I’d met him. I’d never been romantically interested in him, but I’d felt like we were kindred spirits and I’d pushed him into a relationship that I’d thought we’d both benefit from.
Friendship.
Although I doubted it was fair of me to call it a friendship since much of what Brooks knew about me was a lie.
“While I’d love to ask for a raise for the so-called babysitting, I can’t really insist on something that I needed just as badly,” I admitted.