Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 156392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 782(@200wpm)___ 626(@250wpm)___ 521(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 782(@200wpm)___ 626(@250wpm)___ 521(@300wpm)
“After you fell down the stairs and woke up in the hospital without memories, he tried to start anew. He knew you might get worse, but he held on to the small hope that you’ll get better instead. He forbid anyone from telling you any of the painful memories and wanted you to live normally, even if it’s temporarily. When he saw that you rekindled your relationship with the cello after a long time, he became a charity’s top Patreon and forced them to invite you for a performance. He knew that if they gave you the chance once, you’d charm them with your skills and the invitations would become organic. He kept his distance, not because you stabbed him or he hated you, but because the doctor thought his face triggered you.”
My chin trembles as fragmented memories of Eli picking me up, carrying me, and gently putting me to bed play in my head in a loop. Several realizations hit me as well.
He didn’t have missionary sex with me in the beginning, because he believed looking at his face would trigger me. He only changed that after I demanded it and he saw I was okay.
He never took off his clothes, because he didn’t want me to see the stab scar and somehow regain my memories of that time.
Eli didn’t care that I stabbed him. He only cared that I’d be hurt if I were to remember.
The man who killed someone in front of me in cold blood, then used the murder to tie me to him and made a toxic number of people disappear because they breathed wrong near me shouldn’t be this psychotically endearing.
He just shouldn’t.
“Ava…why are you crying?” Cecy wipes my cheeks with her sleeve.
“Because I’m willing to forget that he forced me to marry him. Hell, a part of me already forgot that. And another part liked that he forced me, because I have stubborn pride that forbids me from admitting I wanted that. Cecy…I think I love him. No. Pretty sure I’m in love with him, which is why I broke down when I recalled everything and was hit by the lies. I couldn’t handle the betrayal or the fact that everything could be a lie.”
“Finally. It’s about time you realize what we’ve all known for years.” She smiles. “Are you going to talk to him?”
I shake my head frantically.
“Ava…you might not see him for months or years after you’re admitted.”
“That’s okay. I can’t trust myself not to splinter to pieces and become an emotional mess if I see his face. I let myself believe in an impossible fairy tale where we’d form a happy family together, but it was all an illusion.”
“If anyone can make it happen, it’s you.”
“Not in my current state. I stabbed him, Cecy. Even if he’s able to overlook that, I can’t. I’m terrified about the thought of hurting him again—even unintentionally. It’s why my brain chose amnesia. The idea that I caused him pain broke me so much that I couldn’t survive with my memories intact.”
“So you’ll give up? Just like that?”
“Just like that. Unless I make sure I’m no longer a threat to him, and most importantly, to myself, so that he doesn’t have to deal with an invalid.”
“You’re not an invalid. And you can tell him what you think. If the unholy number of calls he makes to Ari and me is any indication, I’m sure he’ll wait for as long as it takes.”
“I don’t want him to wait. It’s better if he moves on.”
“That’s virtually impossible.”
“He’s a man with a lot of responsibilities on his shoulders. He’ll get over this bleak chapter in his life.”
“And you’ll let him?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Ava…you turned into a raging witch at uni whenever you saw a female around him. You made it your mission to chase them away as if they were poisonous flies, and we both know you did that because you couldn’t handle seeing him with someone else. You still can’t, considering all the murder plans you’ve had about other women flirting with him over the past few months. And now you’re telling me you’ll willingly watch him move on?”
“I have to. I have to be mature enough to let go of what’s never been mine.” My next words come out in a strangled tone. “Even if it hurts.”
“Aww, come here.”
Cecily hugs me as I cry softly against her.
I wish it was the last time I cried because of Eli King.
But my tears seem to believe they belong to him.
Like everything else about me.
42
COLE
Irecognized my life wouldn’t be peaceful the moment this motherfucking twat walked up to my eldest daughter the day she was born and kissed her on the mouth.
That was when he was a six-year-old twat.
At the time, my life flashed before my eyes and I swear I saw myself slicing his throat with a blunt knife—so it’d hurt more and he’d die slowly—then breaking his legs and burying him in a ditch.