Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
To make matters worse, Bram didn’t even kiss me as we were married.
My entire childhood, I had nothing to do but think about the future. About how, one day, I would get married and it would be the most magical thing in the world.
Only, that was the exact opposite of what I got.
Which fuckin’ sucked.
What sucked worse was, an hour later, he dropped me off at home in his truck—he’d refused to give me a ride on his motorcycle because it didn’t feel ‘right’—he left.
No telling me where he was going. No explanation about what to look forward to from there.
In fact, he’d dropped me off at my house with instructions to call a moving company to help box my shit up.
Which, I didn’t do.
After telling me to handle getting my stuff to his place that he’d once mostly shared with Mimi, I got in my own car and moved my crap into the one-bedroom apartment.
It took me three hours to do.
Once I had everything moved, I spent the rest of the day cleaning up my apartment to ensure that I would be getting my apartment deposit back.
Only after hours of hard labor did I return to Bram’s house to find him still not home.
I went to sleep on the couch and slept there every night for the next six months.
CHAPTER 8
I have two moods. Sleepy sleepy, and overthinky.
-Dory to Bram
DORY
I’d like to say that life got better after that. But it didn’t.
Bram’s family hated me. Bram resented me.
And, to make matters worse, I finally got to sleep with Bram.
But only because he was drunk off his ass, and he wanted it, he said.
I’d given it to him, as well as my virginity, and he didn’t even notice.
From there on out, we shared a room.
He fucked me, but he didn’t love me.
The day that he graduated from his welding school and got his first job as an underwater welder, I went out of my way to plan a party for him.
No one spoke to me once.
Well, no one but Jeremiah.
He spoke to me.
• • •
“Why don’t you ever eat my food?”
I looked up at the gruff biker that honestly scared the crap out of me.
Actually, all of them scared the crap out of me.
That was why I’d battened down the hatches and tried to appear bitchy and aloof. Because if I showed them a single hint of fear, they would pounce on that thread like hungry cats.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
I’d hoped that none of them noticed that I didn’t eat any of the food that I didn’t personally make.
In fact, I didn’t even eat the food that Bram made well.
I could choke it down, but there was a fifty percent chance that I’d puke it back up later.
Mostly because I didn’t trust Bram.
He was my husband, and I didn’t think that he’d ever put me first if push came to shove.
“Umm.” I hesitated, unsure what to say.
I mean, technically, them (them being the Crow family) knowing that I didn’t do well eating their food wasn’t a big deal. I wasn’t sure that they would care whether I ate or not. And knowing that I couldn’t eat it probably wouldn’t be any skin off their noses. But still.
“Come on.” He took a seat next to me.
Nobody had approached me all night.
They’d all eaten the cake that I’d purchased, the alcohol that I’d painstakingly braved the wilds of the liquor store for, and the food that I’d asked Jeremiah to cater—that I’d paid for.
Yet, none of them had said thank you at all.
Not even Bram, who was well on his way to drunk, had said a single ‘thank you.’
It was days like today that really hammered the nail into my proverbial coffin.
I loved a man that would never love me back.
I went out of my way to do everything for him—and his family—and not a single one of them paid me even a single ounce of their attention.
Except for, apparently, Jeremiah.
And, since he was actually acknowledging me—I had a feeling it had to do with the book in my hand and not the fact that I hadn’t eaten—I decided to go for it.
I hadn’t meant to go for it quite so spectacularly as I had, though.
But once I started to talk, the words just kind of vomited out.
“When I was younger, my brother used to do things to my food,” I said. “I was diagnosed with ARFID—avoidance/restrictive food intake disorder. Pretty much, sometimes I just can’t eat. Can’t make myself eat. I try, and then I throw it up. That’s what usually happens when I eat y’all’s food. I try it. Then I spend the next thirty minutes outside puking it up.”
“What did he used to do to your food?” Jeremiah growled, sounding pissed.
I looked at him skeptically, wondering idly if he actually cared.