Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69352 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
She whipped around and narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“You heard me,” I replied. “Take all your things.”
“But why?” she asked.
“Because I’ve fought about this topic for the last time.” I shrugged. “We aren’t compatible.”
“You’re…you’re breaking up with me?” she cried out. “What?”
“Dorie, I think I’ve told you a hundred different times, in a hundred different ways, that this was a topic that I wasn’t going to budge on. You may want a new house, you may want a life that you’ve dreamed about since you were young, but that just isn’t me. I’m not here half the time, so why the hell would I put money into a place that I don’t even want to be in?” I pushed. “And it gets frustrating to listen to you talk about this because you know my reasoning behind it. I told you. So yes, I’m breaking up with you. I want you to grab your stuff and leave my key and my shirt on the counter. I’m going to go for a run.”
She looked flabbergasted. “I just want to be in a nicer house, Cutter. It’s not a bad thing to dream of better things.”
“No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But right now, your dreams and my dreams don’t coincide well with each other.”
“But I live here now,” she pointed out.
“You might’ve moved all your stuff in, but I never said that you could. I didn’t say anything, because the pussy you gave me was good enough that I could ignore the constant nagging. But now you’re not even giving me that for a couple months now because you think you’re teaching me a lesson.” I continued, “And, just sayin’, but no pussy is enough for me to give up my dreams for my family. If you were smart, you’d realize that family is everything. And you could’ve had mine had you played your cards right.”
“Cutter…” Her voice softened.
But I’d had enough, and cut her off with a curt, “Be gone by the time I get home, or you’ll be escorted out.”
She started to cry then.
Another time, another place, and I would’ve been affected by those tears.
But not anymore.
Dorie was a good gal.
Nice. Great lay. Or used to be.
But her priorities and mine were completely different.
She liked the bad boy in me and loved sticking it to her strait-laced family.
I, on the other hand, got over the novelty of her a long time ago, and I should’ve seen the writing on the wall.
I called my sister the moment I was out of the house.
“What’s wrong?” my sister asked the moment she answered the phone. “It’s not Sunday.”
I rolled my eyes. “I can’t call you any other time but Sunday?”
“Well,” Keely drawled, “considering you do your obligatory call on Sunday, and only call during the week because you have an issue, or you think I have an issue, it’s deductive reasoning.”
She was right.
I wasn’t a phone person.
I much preferred to talk face to face—which we did twice a week when I took her out to breakfast after she got off shift. We also met up at Chevy’s house to make our weekly trek to the penitentiary on Fridays, then went to eat after.
“Broke up with Dorie,” I admitted, not seeing the point in delaying the details. “I just wanted you to know not to fall for her poor, pitiful me act when she came in to work later.”
“Goddammit, Cutter.” She groaned. “I fucking told you not to date her. I told you, and yet there you were, telling me that it would be okay, that it would never be awkward.”
“She was pissed because I wouldn’t spend the money I’m saving on a house,” I explained.
She was silent for a long moment before she said, “And you told her why you were saving it?”
“Yes,” I answered. “About a hundred times. I told her everything, and repeatedly told her why I was doing what I was doing, and she still didn’t care.”
“Fuck her, then,” Keely grumbled. “What a bitch.”
It did make her a huge bitch.
Mostly because the reason we were saving money—all three Clayborne siblings that were currently not incarcerated—was for a very good cause.
Our older brother, Copper, was currently in prison.
He would be for another two and a half years.
He’d gone in at seventeen, and now, fifteen years later, he was on the tail end of a seventeen-year sentence.
“I fucking hate him.”
She didn’t have to tell me who “him” was. Instinctively, I knew who she was talking about. I fucking hated him, too.
When the Clayborne siblings—me, Chevy and Copper—were all young, we’d thought we had a good life. Keely, on the other hand, had a shit life.
Sure, we thought on the outside that it was just our dad being a complete asshole to the one and only girl in the house. He’d always single her out. He’d make her do the dishes and the laundry. She’d have to clean everyone’s room and take out the trash.