Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
“You’d care, though. You had to live with that choice,” I say softly.
“Yeah, I have had to live with it. Every fucking day, but if I could go back ... I’d do it again. There is more shit you need to know. The night Sherry went over that cliff, I was hanging onto her, trying to pull her back up. She was pulling me down with her and I couldn’t pull her up without going over the edge, too. I had a choice, go over and die, or let her go. I let her go. I’m a fuckin’ monster, Merleigh. You have to know that.”
I swallow, horrified. Not because I think he made the wrong or right choice, but that he was faced with such a choice to begin with.
He would have died, plain and simple.
If I were in that position, I probably would have done the same thing.
It’s not always easy to assume you’d make the right choice.
“Was there no other way to save her?” I whisper.
“No,” he tells me. “She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t calm down, she was squirming and thrashing. If I could have, I would have hung onto her, but even then it would have been hours before someone came, maybe longer. I was put in a position where I had the choice to live, or die, too.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I tell him honestly. “I’m sorry all of it happened to you, but for what it’s worth, you’re not a monster, Bohdi.”
“You’re wrong about that,” he says, his voice low.
“No, I’m not. I’ve lived with monsters all of my life, I would know them even in disguise. You’re neither. You have the truest heart of anyone I know.”
His jaw tenses. “I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell you that I want to be with you, Merleigh. That I fuckin’ need you.”
I smile. “Well, you’re telling me now. Better late than never.”
He chuckles, lightly.
“Does this mean you’re choosing me?” I ask softly.
He glances at me again. “It was always you. Always. There was never a choice.”
I smile.
My heart expanding.
Finally. Oh, finally.
Bohdi is mine.
21
NOW – BOHDI
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” Isla asks, crossing her arms.
“Yeah, I am. You and I are never goin’ to be together again, Isla. I’m sorry. I know you don’t deserve a lot of what I put you through, and I’ll always be there for the boys, but I can’t be with you.”
She doesn’t blow up like I expect she will, she just exhales and sits down on the sofa, like she knew this was coming.
“I should have known better when I came here. I was holding onto some sort of hope that we could be a family again. After what happened with Daniel, I realized just how good things were with you.”
“But they weren’t,” I say to her, crossing my arms. “In comparison to what you went through with Daniel, sure, but they weren’t good, Isla. You deserve so much fucking more than that.”
Daniel and Isla got together after I went “missing” and I guess the relationship she thought she was going to have, didn’t happen. She started to see that maybe Sherry was so crazy, because Daniel was a manipulative liar. He wasn’t abusive physically, but he sure as shit was mentally. Then he would turn it around and make it look like she was the crazy one, just like he did with Sherry.
When he cheated on Isla, too, she realized she was in a bad situation.
He wants nothing to do with Sunny and wasn’t a good father.
Those are all Isla’s words; I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’m guessing it is.
“Maybe I do, I don’t know. I spent so long looking for you, and now ... I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t even know what I want. It’s tiring, being a mother, I have forgotten what it feels like to live free. I can see why you disappeared and left it all behind, it seems much easier that way.”
“You’re wrong, it isn’t,” I say, my voice a touch too rough. “It was fuckin’ hard, not being around those boys, but I truly believed they weren’t mine and I was so fucking broken, I figured it was for the best. Now, I look back, and I’d do anything to change things. I missed out on a lot.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I have to go pick Merleigh up from the hospital and take her home, then I’ll come and get the boys and take them out for a while.”
Isla tips her head to the side. “She changes something in you.”
“She fixes something in me,” I correct. “I don’t like the pain you caused her, telling her what you did, but I know why you did it. Don’t ever fuckin’ do something like that to me again, Isla. I won’t be so nice the next time around.”