Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Only, that would make me weak and I can’t ever be weak. Not with Ivy. There’s one solution to this clusterfuck, and it isn’t in this room. I pull the door shut, obscuring her from my view before I stumble down the hall to our room. My eyes dart over the space that smells like her. Warm and inviting and so sweet I can almost taste her.
Her things are mixed in with mine. Her clothes in the dresser, shoes in the closet. She has so little, but what she does have is here. I rifle through all of it before I find what I’m looking for, tucked away in a small compartment of her backpack. The tattered pages of her journal that hold the secrets I’ve often seen her scrawling when she doesn’t think I’m paying attention.
I flip through the first few pages, dated a year ago, and what I find turns the whiskey in my gut sour. It’s a detailed account of her life with Muerto. A no holds barred narrative of the sick things he would do to her and the threats he used to keep her compliant. There are so many specifics I can’t stomach to read through them all.
In the later entries, her writing changes. Hurried notes scrawled in haste about how much she misses her son. On other pages, there might only be one sentence, but that sentence says it all. She prays for death to come, the only thing she believes will set her free.
I retrieve the flask from my jacket and crack it open. It’s the only way I can see fit to get me through the rest. But there are so many pages of this shite. Too fucking many. Maybe it’s selfish, or maybe I’m weak, but I can’t finish them. A sinking feeling weighs me down as I flop onto the bed and skip ahead to the part where she meets me. Before I even get started, I know I’m not going to like what I find.
Our situation is different, but in many ways it’s the same. Ivy was right that it doesn’t matter what I do or say. In the end, what it boils down to is that she’s here because she has no other choice. These same thoughts are reflected back at me in the pages of her journal.
I don’t know how I got myself into this mess, but I need to find a way out. I can’t be with a guy like Conor. I can’t be stuck with him for the rest of my life. I just need to get through this. I need to get as far away from him as I can. I hate him. I hate him so much it pains me to pretend otherwise for even a second.
I slam the pages of the notebook shut, tucking it away from my sight. If I had any notions that this would end differently, I’m over that now. The truth is right there in black and white. Ivy hates me and that’s all I need to know.
“When is Conor going to be home, mama?” Archer asks.
“I’m not sure, buddy.”
It’s been almost a week since our argument, and I’ve barely seen him at all. He leaves before we get up in the morning and comes home long after we’ve gone to bed every night.
“But we made him dinner,” Archer whines. “Do you think he’ll like it?”
“He will,” I assure him, even though I texted Conor over an hour ago and still haven’t received a reply.
I can’t bring myself to admit that I’ve lost all hope. Not when Archer is so desperate to see him. But when the front door opens and Conor appears, the ache in my gut mellows, if only a little.
“You’re here!” Archer squeals as he runs across the room and flings himself into Conor’s arms.
“Hey, squirt.” Conor ruffles his hair and offers him a smile, which is more than I’ve seen from him lately.
“We made you dinner,” Archer says proudly.
“Aye, that’s what I hear.” Conor rubs his belly. “Good thing too because I’m starving.”
Archer leads him to the table, and I remain rooted to the floor in the kitchen. Conor barely glances at me before he takes a seat, and the chill penetrates my skin from here. He hasn’t touched me. He hasn’t kissed me. He hasn’t said more than two words to me over the course of the week. And I don’t want to admit that this cavernous space cracking open inside my chest might be what I think it is.
Heartbreak.
I miss him. I miss him terribly, and I want to make things right, but I don’t know how. I don’t know if I’m capable of hurting Conor, but I know that he hurt me. His shame and reluctance to tell his friends that I’m his wife cuts me to the core, and he owes me an explanation for that. There are so many things I want to say, but the words won’t come. In the end, we are both too proud or stubborn to admit defeat. So instead, we sit down at the table together and eat our feelings.