Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 105231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 351(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 526(@200wpm)___ 421(@250wpm)___ 351(@300wpm)
She only needed to ask Lacey.
Although this feeling of protectiveness and possessiveness was different than what he felt toward his cousin.
“Your parents didn’t want more kids?” he asked curiously. He couldn’t once remember meeting her parents.
“Oh no, they wouldn’t want to risk another failure.”
“What the fuck?” he snapped, making her jump and shy away.
Shit. He hated that.
He never wanted her to jump like that around him. And he wondered why she was so jumpy. She’d said that it was a rough twenty-four hours. Was that it, though?
Or was it something more? Something else?
“Another failure? Are you talking about yourself being a failure?” Because he couldn’t understand that.
“Uh, yes. I thought that was clear.”
“You can’t talk about yourself like that!”
“But that’s the way they saw me. Well, my mother. Most of the time, I don’t think that my father remembered I existed. He was a research scientist and he could get really passionate and involved in his work. I’m unsure if he even wanted a kid. I think my mother wanted someone she could experiment with. Or perhaps it was to help her image. Having a child as a child psychologist probably helped make her more relatable. And she needed that as she could be cold and formal. Unapproachable. I’m guessing she wasn’t always like that with other people, though.”
Travis just gaped at her. Why hadn’t he considered that her life at home was shit? He’d really been a selfish brat, hadn’t he?
He’d seen the expensive clothes and the big mansion and made assumptions.
“Did she . . . did she tell you that you were a failure?” he asked.
“Oh yes. All the time.”
The casual way she said that spoke volumes to him. It was clear it was something that she’d heard often. And while she might think or act like it didn’t affect her, he knew it had to have.
There was no way that something so vile couldn’t have hurt her.
“In what way were you a failure?”
She gave him a shocked look. “Well, I think it was obvious.”
“Pretend it isn’t,” he said through gritted teeth. He was holding himself under tight control. He didn’t want to say anything that might upset her or make her think that he was angry at her.
When that really wasn’t the case.
Her parents, on the other hand, could take a flying leap off the nearest bridge. And he’d happily give them a push.
She held up her fingers and started ticking them off. “I didn’t speak until I was two. Didn’t read and write until I went to school. I could barely speak. And when I did speak, I was too quiet or I would stutter over my words. I wasn’t very intelligent. I got average grades at school. Even getting A’s wasn’t really enough because I wasn’t gifted. I wasn’t special.”
Was she serious? Were these all things that her parents had said to her?
“I was awkward. I never knew what to say or how to act. I’d get nervous and bump into things, knock things over. Or I’d freeze and not know how to react. I had absolutely no musical ability. None at all.” She shuddered as though that had brought back a bad memory and rubbed at her knuckles. Then she reached up to rub her head. Her hat slipped to the side, falling off but she didn’t seem to notice.
Something was wrong. His gaze moved over her, looking for whatever it was that he’d spotted. There at her hairline. Was that a lump? Some bruising?
He sat up straighter. Had someone fucking hurt her?
“What else? Let’s see. I was ungrateful because I got to live in a beautiful house with expensive clothes yet never took care of anything properly. A fleck of dirt wasn’t allowed. I couldn’t speak any other languages. I was still wetting the bed at seven. And I can’t believe I just said that to you.” She went bright red.
“Caren, I want you to listen to me for a moment.” He reached out and gently took hold of her hands, squeezing them lightly. At least she seemed to be warmer now. “I don’t care about that. What I need is for you to promise that you won’t be scared of me.”
“Scared of you? Why would I be?”
“Because I feel like I’m about to fucking explode and I want to know if that’s going to frighten you.”
“Are you angry at me?” She blinked rapidly, trying to pull her hand away. But he held on tight.
“No, Goldie. I’m not fucking mad at you. But I want to hunt down your parents, lock them in a small room, and torture them the way that they tortured you for years. And that sort of thing might not seem sane and it might scare some people. I don’t want it to scare you. Because I would never harm you.”