Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
That’s what still bothered her now.
How he changed her.
Except it wasn’t the past anymore. They didn’t live there, and she was never going to get over the wall she’d built because of what happened back then if she kept trying to.
Today had landed Gracen in a different place with somewhat of an objective view over the things that happened in the past—including Sonny and their relationship. The anger might not have left, but she didn’t think it would do either of them any good for her to spill it all over him with the belief it could make things better.
That’s not how this worked.
“You know, I stopped in today for a reason,” Sonny said the longer Gracen remained quiet on the path beside him.
“And?” she asked.
Gracen couldn’t read minds. She never asked Sonny to walk through the front doors of her salon years after she needed or wanted him to, never mind park in the damn parking lot. Did he think a medal was earned for his step in her direction?
She had big news in that regard.
But an even better question to ask first.
“Does your fiancée know you’re here?” Gracen asked.
With me, she didn’t say.
That part was obvious.
Sonny didn’t ruffle. “Alora suggested it.”
Gracen blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Requested might be a better choice in word,” Sonny said, shrugging one blazer covered shoulder. “I was honest with her—and she pointed out I should do the same with myself. So, here I am. I thought, genuinely, that none of this would matter after all this time. We were kids, in high school, Gracen. A few years after the fact, we should be a little more grown than—”
“It wasn’t just high school,” she cut in.
Still quiet, but now firm.
If they were going to make some things clear, then it would be right, too. No excuses.
“It wasn’t only high school,” she insisted a second time, but Sonny didn’t argue the point anyway. “We weren’t always stupid kids. And saying as much like it’s true really devalues how you left me at what I consider to be the worst time in my life, but that’s not even the most fucked up part about it. You never even apologized.”
“It wouldn’t have made it better,” he said.
“You still could have done it for me!”
Her shout echoed down the path, but Sonny hadn’t flinched from the volume. She tried to put herself back on track; devolving into yelling wasn’t productive here.
“You couldn’t give me the respect of explaining why. Nothing,” Gracen said, the word hissing from her lips as her hand cut through the air between them when she spun on him. “Not one thing, Sonny. I got a phone call, and your sister and mother came to grab your shit the next day. You knew that I had practically no family left, you were my best friend for almost half my life ...”
“I’m sorry,” he said, averting the fire in her stare when the half-assed apology slipped from his lips.
Gracen rolled her eyes. “Do better than that, Sonny. Make all the lies you told and every minute I wasted thinking you were going to be there for me worth anything. Did you even learn from me? I grew from you! Give me something except sorry. Please.”
“It wasn’t all lies,” he mumbled while chewing on the inside of his bottom lip.
“In the end?” she asked. “Yeah, it kind—”
“The end is just one part of the overall picture, Gracen. The end didn’t adequately reflect everything that had come before it. Being twenty-something is a lot different than four- and sixteen. If I can admit that, then why can’t you?”
Hadn’t she?
Didn’t she say he had been hers, once?
Good.
A safe place.
Her first ever love.
Everything that should be precious and cherished, but also hurt more because of the growth and love that had come out of two young people taking on the world together. It had been special. It was beautiful, and she clung to the more bittersweet memories of their earliest days. Back when she believed everything he said.
He’d believed what he said, then, too.
She honestly thought that.
“The only reason I’ll even stand here with you—why I’ll look you in your face and acknowledge you exist—is because I loved you once, Sonny,” Gracen said. “Because there was a time when you didn’t hurt me. All the time, actually. Until one day you did, so that changed everything.”
He said nothing.
For once, Gracen was grateful.
“But I don’t like you, anymore, because you turned the person you were into someone I couldn’t stand, and I don’t want you in my life for the same reason, either,” Gracen added, shrugging because just saying it and getting it out there took a weight off her shoulders. If it sounded mean, so be it. The truth sometimes was. “I won’t feel bad because after everything, I get the right to say how it really is for me, and the very least you could do is respect it.”