Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
His smile.
His touch.
His endless optimism.
His love.
Then I closed it off again because it hurt too much.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Joey
“I need to head out soon,” I told Craig, who lay in bed beside me.
“You don’t have to… You don’t always have to go afterward, ya know?” He fluttered his lashes at me.
Yeah, I did have to go afterward. Craig was a nice guy, and it probably made me an asshole, but I didn’t want to stay. I never wanted to stay with him or anyone else after I fucked. He’d known the score from the start, though. I’d been sure to tell him just like I did everyone else. I wouldn’t date. I wouldn’t be friends with people I fucked. I wouldn’t fall in love. This was all I could give.
“We could go grab dinner,” he tried playfully when I didn’t answer.
“No. I don’t do that. You agreed. Is it going to be a problem now?” My tone wasn’t cold, but I also wouldn’t budge on it. I couldn’t budge. It had been four years since Gage got locked away. It had taken me two before I got into bed with a guy. I needed release, but I wouldn’t ever give my heart again. Not to anyone. Sometimes I wondered if I still had one.
“No,” Craig replied. “As long as you still don’t care that I’m getting it somewhere else too, especially since you never let me fuck you.” I’d only ever had Gage inside me. I wouldn’t have anyone else inside me ever again.
“Nope.” Why would I?
I fucked Craig one more time, got dressed, and left.
I found myself at the gym, which I did most of the time now. Afterward, I went to my apartment, showered and changed, before heading to Mouse and Romeo’s.
He was in grad school now, planning on being a professor. Mouse was working at this funky little art store in West Hollywood, and making her own art.
They were together now, of course. It was one of the only real pieces of happiness in my life. No one deserved it more than them. I was glad at least they’d found their happily ever after.
“How’s work?” Romeo asked when I got to their place.
“Pretty good.” I was working with a mechanic, which was crazy as hell. I’d never been into stuff like that before, but again, I wasn’t that same Joey anymore. When I lost my scholarship and left college, I ended up going to a trade school my boxing trainer recommended. I wasn’t finished yet, but it was something, and I knew enough to be able to work under someone.
I kissed Mouse’s cheek. “How are you guys?”
They launched into conversation then. I laughed where I was supposed to, replied where I was supposed to, kept myself engaged, even if none of it went deep, none of it penetrated the armor that had grown along my skin, around my brain, around my heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gage
Herbert was killed during my third year in prison, and with him, another part of my soul died. Sometimes I wondered how much of it I had left. He was the only person I’d let in, the only person I’d let myself care about, which I should have fucking known was a mistake.
One I wouldn’t make again.
Sometimes I had nightmares about him too, about seeing him, finding him, blood all around him. I trembled, anger filling me that I hadn’t been there for him. That I hadn’t saved him.
When Benny was taken out too, in my fourth year, I found someone else who let me fuck him, but I didn’t open that box with him, didn’t let myself pretend Deke was Jojo. It was too hard to let myself feel vulnerable.
I kept my head down.
I didn’t get into trouble.
I worked in prison.
I never fought the guards back.
I’d started training for when I got out, even took some college classes. They worked with me on reading, said it was likely some kind of dyslexia, but whatever it was, I didn’t care. All that mattered to me was I couldn’t read well. Even with the help, the words still didn’t stay in my head. Some times were better than others, but too often they were a jumbled mess I struggled to sort through. They said it was never too late to get help, but that if I’d gotten it when I was younger, it would have been easier for me. They had better results with kids, but I hadn’t had a parent who paid attention to shit like that. There was no going back, so I didn’t know how hearing that I should have fixed it a long time ago made anything better.
I’d been in for six years.
Six long, life-changing, lonely years, but due to good behavior and overcrowding, I was out on parole.
I was free.
But I would never really be free, would I? Before, that’s when I was free, I just hadn’t seen it at the time. I would always be chained to that night, trapped by what I’d done.