Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
The he in our life doesn’t require a name. Even dead, he has one foot in the room.
I suppress a shiver. “Did you write about that day?”
There are so many I could be referencing but none more pivotal, haunting, or fatal than the day she killed Denver and I jumped off the cliff.
“Yeah, Wolf. I did.”
“You confessed to murder?” I whisper, horrified. “In writing?”
She gives a single nod.
“Bad idea, Frankieberry. If this fell in the wrong hands…”
She pushes it toward me, her eyes shimmering with trust.
Dammit.
I stare at the faded cover until it blurs, and I’m suddenly on the shower floor, the tile dark with icy water, my heart punching, punching, punching, trying to jailbreak my ribs. Then I see Dove’s silhouette crouched beside me, and I hear her whispered words.
You’re okay. I’m here. Breathing with you. Just breathing.
I feel the cancerous, unwieldy parts of me I need to amputate. Fear, rage, shame, and the one that’s growing harder to carry. My virginity.
That one belongs to Dove. But she deserves the whole story, not just the bits I’m willing to part with.
I return my attention to the book. The autobiography of a woman who murdered her captor and lived to write the ending.
Pinching the edge of the cover, I open it an inch, then another, and another, until the past rises out of the paper like breath on a cold day.
The first sentence I half-read speeds up my pulse. I close the book because if I don’t, I’ll fall into it and not sleep for a week.
“You don’t have to read it.” She touches my hand. “It’s my story. The stupid brave parts and the brutal parts. There are pages where I’m proud, when I was strong and fought hard and loved harder. There are pages where I’m rotten, when I was mean and reckless and made bargains with the devil. There’s grief, too. Constant, fathomless grief after we lost you on that cliff.”
My face numbs, and my fingers go cold. I want to apologize, but it’s far too late for that.
Maybe reading about the pain I caused them is a start. Perhaps experiencing my suicide through her eyes is the only mercy I can offer.
I press my thumb to the cover until it hurts. “I’ll read it.”
I’ll read every page like penance. Not to pull pity from my death, but to stop acting like the worst thing I did was survive.
“There are parts you shouldn’t read.” She places her hand over mine on the book. “The messy, sexually graphic parts.”
“No shit?” I slide the book out of her reach because now, of course, I have to read it.
“I’m serious.” She tries to grab it back. “I describe your brothers’ anatomy in shameless, vivid detail.”
“Did you exaggerate size and stamina? Or did you keep it realistic?”
She groans. “Please, don’t read those parts.”
“Do you even know me?”
“Why did I say anything?” She drops her face in her hands.
“Hey.” I duck my head, trying to meet her eyes. “What’s a little brotherly porn shared between friends?”
Her face is still in her palms, but when I pry her chin up and angle it toward me, we’re locked, her eyes on mine, mine on hers.
We try. Frozen bones and fuckberries, we try to remain serious for the sake of this conversation. Her mouth tightens. My molars clamp together, but the longer we stare, the faster we crumble.
Her expression cracks first. A flutter at the corner of her lips. That’s all it takes to wrest a grin out of me. It splits across my face, lopsided and unguarded. Then we’re both grinning like assholes, shaking our heads, laughing without sound, and just being… Us.
“Wolf.” She says my name like a thought she’s been holding in her mouth to keep it warm.
“Hm?”
“I’m giving you my story because maybe it will help you tell yours.” She grabs the second book and stacks it on her journal. “This one is yours.”
I thumb it open and flip through the pages. They’re blank. Every damn one.
“Write your story.”
I bark a laugh and hate how it sounds. “I did, remember? It’s a dark comedy titled Already Dead.”
“And I said to rewrite it. Change the narrative. Remember?”
Yeah. That night, I told her I would live, that I would survive for her. I said it, knowing it was a lie. I’d already planned my dramatic exit.
But fate had other plans, and here we are.
I stare at her, processing her advice with better clarity than I had that night. Maybe I’ve matured, learned a thing or two since that jump off the cliff.
She wants me to write my story, put the past on paper. Words on a page won’t stare back at me with judgment. I can shape them, scrub them, cut the parts that don’t fit. Easier than saying it out loud and watching Dove’s face rearrange into pity or disgust in real time.