Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131821 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
So, what, he’s got her back now, too?
Since when?
Why?
Why am I being such a bitch about it?
I want her to have all the support she needs and more…but I want her to want it all from me first.
I thought she did.
I pick up another ball and go again. And again.
I was the first to hit the field, and three hours later, I’m the last to step off it.
“You good?” Brady asks when I finally walk into the locker room, his bag already packed and hanging over his shoulder.
“Yup.” I move right past him.
“Want me to wait?”
“Nope.”
I keep going, stepping right into the shower, and I stay there until I’m pruned.
When I move back into the row of my locker, both Brady and Chase are sitting there playing on their phones.
They waited for me.
The tension in my chest eases a bit, and I can’t help the small smile that pulls at my lips as I tug on my clothes. This is what friends are for, to understand that even if you say you don’t want them around, they know you’re better off when they are.
Brady can tell I’m off today, and Chase likely thinks he knows why.
I kind of want to scream and yell at him, demand answers, but at the end of the day, I’m too fucking scared to hear what they are. We’ve fought enough this past year when everything went down with my sister, and I can’t afford that shit right now. I love the little prick like a brother.
Once my bag is stuffed with my shit, they stand.
“Pizza with the girls?” Brady raises a brow.
“Pizza with the girls.”
As we walk out, I can’t help but remember the time I had pizza with a different girl.
That was the night I realized she wasn’t just the girl I wanted to be there for.
She is so much fucking more.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mason
Before, July
My hands are trembling with rage, my joints aching from how tense I’ve been clenching them for the twenty-minute ride back to Nate’s.
My eyes keep jumping to the broken little blond in the back seat. She hasn’t noticed me staring, she’s so far gone right now, stuck in her own head that must be full of nightmares at this point. She’s dealt with so much in such a short span of time.
All in a month’s time, she discovered she was pregnant, found the courage to escape a toxic home, got confronted by the boy she left behind, lost the boy she left behind when he came for her, and then her mother, who she ran away from, tried to rip her from her home just hours after.
I could not believe the way that woman acted toward Payton. Never in my life have I ever witnessed a parent act that way.
She spoke as if her baby girl didn’t just have her heart ripped from her chest, if only from the guilt alone. From what I’ve learned about Payton, Deaton was the only person she had in her corner back home. She was more or less alone.
I’ll be fucking damned if she ever feels that way again.
But now this?
I’m seconds from shoving my fist though the window from the mere look of defeat on her pretty face.
This just confirms what I’d already began to suspect. Deaton’s family is as bad, if not worse, than her mother. I mean, goddamn. Who the fuck sends a photo of a casket holding the boy who passed to the girl who lost him…after refusing to include her in his funeral? I thought it was the lowest they could get, keeping it a secret just so she couldn’t be there, but this?
This is some twisted psychological warfare.
My eyes lift again, her blank expression causing my pulse to pound heavy in my ears.
She’s being mentally tortured, and it’s killing me in ways I can hardly understand. It’s deeper than I have words for and heavier than I would have thought possible. I quite literally feel the ache she’s gotten good at hiding, and she is hiding.
Pretty Little’s trying to be so strong, fighting the voices screaming in her head.
I wish I knew what they were saying so I could find a way to stop them. I would take it all away if I knew how.
By the time we pull up to the house, my nerves are on fire.
Everyone opens their doors but me, and when I look up in the mirror this time, Payton’s eyes lift, latching on to mine. For a split second, her mask crumbles, her pretty face contorting with pain. Her blue eyes are begging for something, but I don’t think either one of us knows what it is she’s asking for, and then she blinks.
Just like that, the mask is back, and she’s climbing from the Tahoe. Payton avoids everyone’s gaze, and we all hurry after, Parker tugging me back to allow a few feet of space as if not to spook her. I shrug him off but stay at his side, looking his way when his arm comes down on my shoulder.