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)
I hated myself for it, but I hated myself for a whole lot of reasons.
“Jojo!” His voice was deeper, huskier.
I didn’t stop, kept going until I got to my building. I opened the door and went straight for the stairs. I could have closed it; that knowledge was there. If I pushed it closed, Gage couldn’t come in, but I didn’t. Why the fuck didn’t I?
Gage.
Two sets of feet pounding on stairs.
My floor.
My hallway.
My door.
His hand on my arm, warm and alive and full of a lifetime of love and pain.
He’d come…had he come for me? The thought made bile climb up my throat.
We froze again, me with the key in the lock, Gage’s hands on my biceps, his forehead against the back of my head.
We breathed.
Together. In unison. As if we were one.
He inhaled, breathed me in, even though I was sweaty. I knew without looking that his eyes were closed.
I unlocked the door, went inside, left it open and my keys in the knob. My voice was gone, as if Gage coming back, Gage being here, had stolen it from me. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, if I’d get it back. A thousand questions fought in my head: How long had he been out? What had it been like? Did he regret it? Regret me? Why hadn’t he wanted me anymore?
I kept my back to him, couldn’t look at him.
Keys jingling.
The click of the door closing.
Gage.
“You look so different,” he said softly. “Your hair…it’s longer. And the beard, that’s new too. Well, of course it’s new, just surprising, I guess…and you’ve put on some muscle.”
I went to the small kitchen, poured whiskey in a glass, drank it down.
Looked at him. His eyes were scanning the apartment. It wasn’t nice by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t the biggest piece of shit either. Still, somehow, I saw it through his eyes—the shock, the disappointment. This wasn’t what he had envisioned for me.
Fuck you, Gage.
His eyes locked with mine, and I could see the despair, the hollowness that hadn’t been there when we were kids, and knew he saw the same in mine. We were both empty now, and I hated him for that too. If he hadn’t cut me out, it wouldn’t have been this way.
“I don’t know what to say here, Jojo.”
“Stop fucking calling me that!” I gritted out. I wasn’t his Jojo anymore. He’d killed that when he told me he didn’t want me, when he wouldn’t see me, when he’d returned my letters unopened.
Gage flinched. Ran a hand through his short hair. “It was all for nothing.” His voice cracked on the last word. “It was all for nothing, wasn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
“Answer me!” he shouted, and even then—even with the anger and hate and years separating, even though I didn’t know him and we weren’t the same people we had been—I felt it, the tug in my chest, the pull, the energy that had somehow always bound us together.
“It was all for nothing!” Gage yelled again. “You were supposed to be happy! You were supposed to make your dreams come true.” He fell then, just went to his knees in the middle of my floor, and cried.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and my legs gave in, losing the battle they’d fought since I saw him, and I went down too, sobs racking my chest. It was as if there was a mountain between us, an ocean we couldn’t cross but could still see each other—Gage on his knees, in my living room, crying. Me in the kitchen, leaning against the wall, doing the same.
I didn’t know how much time passed; an eternity, two seconds…both felt true.
Then he wiped his tears. Stood up. “You were supposed to be happy, but you’re not. I see it. I feel it. That was all that kept me going—doing right by you.”
Without another word, Gage walked out.
When the door closed, I finally managed to say his name. “Gage.”
I pushed to my feet, grabbed my shit, and left.
I needed a fight. I needed to hurt because physical pain would always be easier than the constant emotional ache living inside me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Gage
I didn’t go home all night. I walked around LA, not caring where I went, what neighborhood I ended up in, what happened to me.
It had all been for nothing. The separation, prison, all of it. I’d kept myself going by telling myself I’d done the right thing. That Jojo was happy, that he’d have a life and I helped give him that by telling him goodbye, but I hadn’t. He was just as lost as me, just as broken.
My phone was blowing up with messages from Darrel, but I ignored them all. In my mood, I probably couldn’t read them anyway. At five that morning, I made my way back to the house. I had to go to work.