Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 90211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
“I need you to talk. No more bullshit. Tell me why, Luke, and make me get it.”
He looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes. “I did it for you. I did it for Mom too. I wanted to break Dad’s power over both of you, and he only has what he has because of the company. I thought if I took that away from him, he couldn’t hurt either of you anymore. I know, it’s stupid, but that’s the truth.”
I hug myself tightly. I wrap my arms around my stomach to hold my guts in, otherwise they’ll spill out and sop into Liam’s nice rug. I press my teeth into my lip, trying not to scream, as I take steadying breaths.
“I kept telling myself I was the one who would save you.” The confession hurts, but he needs to hear it. “I rationalized marrying Liam because it meant you might be safe too. I told myself I could fix it, but now… I was making it worse…”
“Regan, don’t do that,” he says as I cry. I dig my fingernails into my thigh but it doesn’t help. He burned his life, nearly ripped our family to pieces, and he did it for me and Mom. He did more than I ever could, and I hate myself so much in this moment, so much it hurts. It takes a few deep breaths as pathetic self-pity floods my guts before I gather my shit together and face him.
“Tell me how it happened. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything, Luke, or else I can’t help you. Make me understand.”
He takes a breath, looks like he wants to blow me off, but exhales instead.
“Kieren was smart about it. He laid the groundwork. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got here, especially out there in the woods, and I keep coming back to this conversation me and him had one day, on a random Sunday over a year back. We were drinking on the porch and he looks at me out of nowhere and goes, your dad’s pretty intense, huh? And I was like, oh wow, he’s talking about it, and nobody talks about it. At the time I didn’t think it was a big deal and I was just like, yeah he can be pretty crazy, and sort of laughed, but Kieren wasn’t smiling. Then again like a month later, he mentioned how tough dad is on mom, which was weird, and again a few days after that, he said he thought Mom should try to stand up for herself or something like that… and soon the comments turned into conversations about our fucked up dynamic. I thought I could open up to him, that’s the sickest part. I thought he really cared.”
Cold, ugly dread fills me. Kieren can be charming and charismatic, and when his attention is fully on you, it’s hard not to get sucked into him. My head’s boiling as I start to question everything we did together, all the time we spent, the promises he made, the life I thought we were building. Was it always some lie he spun to get something he wanted? Then there’s poor Luke, looking for any affirmation from someone outside the family, desperate for someone to see the fucked-up shit he’s been seeing all his life, falling for Kieren’s trap.
Exactly the way I fell for it.
“He told you to take the blackmail stuff, didn’t he?”
“Not at first, but eventually. We sort of planned it… I mean, I planned it, that’s the worst part. Now I think he was walking me toward it the whole time, making me feel like it was my idea from the start, when really it was what he wanted all along. But he can’t really be that big of a bastard, can he?”
“I think he can, Luke. He cheated on me with Vera Baranov in our own bed. I don’t think he feels things the same way we do.” Even now, after everything, Luke’s still trying to justify what happened.
His head hangs low. “I know you’re right. I don’t want you to be though. I want Kieren to come running through that door and explain everything… tell you how we did it to save you… to save Mom from Dad… but that’s not going to happen.”
“No, Luke, it’s really not.”
The grunt he makes breaks my heart. He sucks air between his teeth and meets my eyes, his own streaming tears, jaw gritted.
“What’ll happen to me now, Regan? Don’t bullshit me. Don’t you dare lie, tell me the truth. What are they going to do to me?”
My voice cracks. “I don’t know.”
“Regan, damn it. They’re going to kill me. Come on, you know they are, just admit it.”
“I can’t let them. It won’t come to that.”
“Regan! Don’t do this, not right now, not when I need you. Please, fuck, be here with me, be here in reality and don’t try to pretend like everything’s going to be okay. I’m dead, and you know what? I fucking deserve it.”