Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Her hair writhes around her pale face as her sundress billows around her thighs. Her eyes are open, holding my gaze through the blue-brown, pleading for me to do something before it’s too late.
I thrust an arm into the water and shout for her to take my hand, but she doesn’t reach for me.
She just blinks, and when the ripples clear, she doesn’t seem afraid anymore.
She looks…sad. Resigned, as if she always knew this was how things would end with me, this man she should have known better than to think was someone worthy of her trust.
I try to move, to dive into the water, to swim down to save her before it’s too late, but I’m frozen, my every joint paralyzed. By the time I finally manage to crack open my jaw and scream her name again, she’s twenty feet down, almost out of sight. My legs still refuse to function, so I shove my hands against the splintered pier and push, slithering into the water with a clumsy splash.
The lake closes over me, silty and as cold as the family that turned me out when I was too young to understand everything that had been lost.
Stolen.
Beatrice is being stolen.
Why, Blue? Why? Her voice reaches me through the water, and suddenly, I know.
I’m the one who clamped a wrecking ball to her ankle and pushed her in.
I’m the one who did this.
I’m the bad guy. As bad as all the bad, bad men I thought I’d left behind. But I’m no different. I’m just as cowardly. Just as rotten.
To the core.
Iwake with a gasp, my hands clawing into the mattress.
For a second, I’m back in the dorm with the other boys, sweating in the summer heat, sticky in my damp sheets, listening to the air-conditioning rattle across the compound in the guru’s house. For a moment, I’m trapped in the past, a prisoner of my twisted upbringing as much as the walls that surrounded the commune where I was raised.
Physical walls are relatively easy to climb and leave behind.
Mental walls are harder.
I exhale sharply. Release the back of my tongue. Blink and find a single point of focus. I watch the ceiling fan spin in circles until I’m able to pull in several slow, deep breaths. But even when my pulse finally steadies, the knot in my stomach remains.
I’ve fucked up.
I’ve seriously fucked up.
I know that with the quiet clarity that often arrives in the wee hours of the morning.
I glance at the bedside table, where the clock glows.
Five a.m. The same time, I woke up for morning chores, starting when I was just eight years old. Running an off-the-grid, self-sustaining community is a lot of work, and violating child labor laws wasn’t something the Children of the Storm community thought twice about. They didn’t think twice about much, aside from how to keep their followers under Daveed’s control.
Thinking the guru’s name used to be enough to make my jaw lock and my hands curl into fists, but not anymore. His face floats across my mental screen and disappears without the slightest spike in my blood pressure. He doesn’t control me anymore. I’m not that powerless boy, who he used and abused until I grew strong enough to run.
I haven’t been that boy for a long time. And I would never push Beatrice or anyone else into a lake. Especially that one. Hawk Lake is filthy, a good place to catch a brain-eating amoeba.
But I did push her away, and I didn’t even have the decency to do it face-to-face. I told myself a letter would be less intrusive, but in the pale, no-bullshit light of dawn, I can’t believe I bought that load of crap for a second.
And the check?
The thought of her pulling it from the envelope—right behind my note assuring her I don’t believe I’m father material—makes me cringe.
What the fuck was I thinking?
Could I have been more condescending? More cowardly? No wonder she didn’t respond to my text last night asking if there’s anything else she’d like to discuss before I leave to teach a skills camp in Nebraska next week. She probably wants to kick me in the shins.
Or worse, she’s hurt and feeling more alone than she did already.
I shove off the sheets and stand, the hardwood floor cool under my feet, despite the early summer swelter outside. These days, I have my own, highly-efficient air conditioner. I also have coping skills, hard-won coping skills I’ve worked to hone every day since I climbed over that fence and left the compound for good.
But with Beatrice, they’ve been failing me. Miserably.
I need a run.
I always do my best thinking on a run, and if I leave now, I’ll be across town at Bea’s apartment around six, a decent hour for ringing a woman’s doorbell. Or at least, halfway decent.