Total pages in book: 215
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
She sure as hell is.
With that, Mom heads in, hopefully taking herself straight to bed, and I make sure the door is locked before turning on my heel and stalking down the street. Pulling out the pack of cigarettes hidden within my pocket, I quickly light one up and take a deep drag, the nicotine settling my system.
I never got around to asking Zoey where the hell she had dumped my car. That’s the whole reason I was in her room to start with, apart from getting my keys of course, and a part of me was disappointed. I thought she would have at least tried to hide them, but they were just dumped right there in the center of her desk. But once she walked in wearing nothing but a towel, every train of thought I had systematically derailed, and I suddenly couldn’t give a shit where my car was. But I didn’t need to ask anyway.
Like I told my mom earlier, I know Zoey better than anyone. Everything she does has been thoroughly thought through, so if she was going to dump my car somewhere, it would be somewhere meaningful. And where better than the one spot we used to say was ours?
The park.
It’s at least a fifteen-minute walk, but I really don’t mind. The fresh air is probably the best thing for me tonight. My head is a fucking mess right now. The kiss. Zoey’s comment. Leukemia. I don’t know how to handle it, but one thing is for sure—while the kiss was absolutely everything, and I’ve replayed it a million times over, I keep coming straight back to her cancer.
Despite it being nearly ten years ago, the overwhelming need to hold her plagues me, to reiterate that she’s okay and put me at ease, to apologize for not looking beneath the surface and digging deep enough to know what was really going on with her. But I no longer have the right. So, for now, I have no choice but to settle with my mom’s assurances that she’s better now.
Reaching the park, I quickly find my car in the deserted parking lot and make my way toward it while shaking my head, knowing damn well Zoey was the one to pull my windshield wipers up like that. I can just imagine the stupid smirk on her lips as she did it.
Walking around to the driver’s door, I groan at the lipstick on the window. Not because it’s there, but because of the picture of a hand she’s drawn, a hand that’s specifically flipping me the bird. I’m going to have to remember to scrub that shit off before school in the morning.
Unlocking the door, I’m hit with more of Zoey’s ridiculous little pranks, each one getting under my skin just the way she’d hoped they would.
Well played, Zoey James.
Well fucking played.
After sliding the driver’s seat all the way back and fixing the positioning of my rearview mirror, I close the center console and finally shove the key into the ignition. The second I turn the key and the engine kicks over with a deafening roar, my car comes alive like it’s fucking possessed.
“What the fuck?” I grunt, physically jumping as music blasts from the speakers while the windshield wipers fly back and forth across the windshield so fast that I fear they might actually fly right off.
The hazard lights flash, lighting up the space around my car, and I quickly get everything under control, turning down the music just enough to not burst my eardrums.
Once my heart is firmly back in my chest, I hit the gas, unable to help sparing a glance toward the park I haven’t been able to visit since the day Linc died. There are so many memories here with both Linc and Zoey, each one of them better than the last.
My heart aches for everything I’ve lost, and as I peel out of the park and back onto the main road, I force the thoughts from my mind and focus on the song playing through the speakers. It’s not one I recognize, and my brows furrow as I glance down at the screen.
It’s a song called Fall Out Of Love by Alessia Cara, and as I take in the heart-wrenching lyrics, I realize that Zoey left this song playing for a reason. Like I said, she doesn’t make a move without it being carefully thought through. And this right here is nothing but a message.
The singer asks when I fell out of love, but it might as well be Zoey’s voice blasting through the speakers. Every time the lyrics repeat, it hits me harder than the last. This is Zoey’s way of asking me when she stopped being my whole fucking world, but surely she knows I’ve never stopped loving her.
I was maybe seven when I realized I was going to spend the rest of my life with her, but I was around twelve or thirteen when that love for her really started to develop into something a little more serious. I didn’t just want to spend my life with her, I wanted to make her my whole world. I wanted to love her in a way no one ever loved before. I wanted to be her protector, the person who put a smile on her face, and the reason she woke up in the morning. And until Linc died, I was just that.