Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
“For the most part, yes. I was homeschooled until I was a freshman in high school. I knew my grandmother had been trying to protect me, but when I got a taste of that freedom, I couldn’t get enough. All the kids treated me like I was some kind of god. So many guys flocked to me, and I pretty much became the captain of the football and basketball teams without even needing to try. A lot of the girls made it clear that they were available for extracurricular activities.
“It wasn’t until I tried to have sex with my first girlfriend that I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t go through with it. She bought my excuse about having pulled a muscle in my last game. I was terrified that the fact that I hadn’t fucked the girl would get back to the guys I hung out with, and they’d start joking about me being a fag and all that bullshit. But no one ever said a word and thankfully, none of it got back to my grandmother. I was on some weird pedestal, and the kids kept me there for some reason.”
“And then one day you showed up skidding into the parking lot of a tiny, shitty park and met a big, cocky asshole just like yourself and that was it,” I said.
Cass looked at me and smiled. “That was it. That car was one of my dad’s favorites. I’d already gotten my own brand-new Porsche, but I decided it would be more fun to take my dad’s Aston Martin for a joyride, even though I didn’t have a license. Looking back, it wasn’t just a stupid act of teenage rebellion. I wanted something to happen once I was caught. I wanted to get arrested or have my dad tear me a new one… anything that would force Chandler Ashby to acknowledge I was his son. I was gone for hours while I played football with you and Sully, so it was dark by the time I got home. No one said a thing. Not about me stealing the car and not about me being gone the entire day without checking in even once.”
“Did your grandmother or father ever find out about us?” I asked. Cass hadn’t spoken much about his family when he’d been around our small, blue-collar family.
“No. My father was married to wife number three by then, and they spent a lot of time traveling overseas. They’d left behind my half-sister, Allison, when she was around fourteen, I think. Allison was the daughter of my father’s second wife. When they divorced, he ended up gaining full custody of Allison, which made no sense because he didn’t really want her.”
“Did your grandmother raise her too?”
“No,” Cass said with a shake of his head. “I honestly don’t know who took care of her. I just knew it wasn’t her mother because she’d been out of the picture since she’d lost custody. Allison died when she was nineteen… drug overdose. I came back for the funeral but none of the Ashbys attended. Not a single one besides me. My father and his third wife were too busy vacationing in Tahiti or something to be bothered with something like watching his only daughter being laid to rest.”
“So it was just you there?”
Cass shook his head again. “Her mother was there. She’d divorced my father when I was five, so I never really knew her. When I introduced myself, she slapped me and told me that my family had killed her daughter. When I told her that Allison had been my sister, her mother apologized right away and then just fell apart. No one else attended the funeral, not even any friends, so her mother and I listened to the priest and watched her casket being lowered into the ground. After that, we just sat there on a bench near Allison’s grave and watched the workers cover the hole with dirt. The last thing Allison’s mother said to me was that I was lucky I’d made it out and warned me not to go back… to never let them suck me back into their world. Then she was gone, and I never saw her again.”
“She was warning you not to go home,” I said in understanding. “Have you spoken to your dad at all?”
I’d been bracing my head on my bent arm so I could see Cass’s face as he spoke. My heart did a little jump when he turned onto his side so he was facing me. The move allowed me to see him without needing to hold my head up. I lowered it back down to the pillow. As much as I would have liked to scoot closer to him, I knew if I did, it would make it that much harder to control the needs of our bodies.