Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 109976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Gavin
They ended up staying for two days at the end of which Giselle had stopped looking like she was about to freak the fuck out. Mom had settled her down in the way that only she can. By acting like they were long lost friends who hadn’t seen each other in forever.
She saved all the probing questions for me, not wanting to make Giselle any more uncomfortable than she had been and there was no hiding shit from her nosy ass. The kicker was when my Bryn Mawr graduate mother said and I quote, “It seems to me she went sifting through humanity’s garbage can and took home a world class piece of shit.”
I was then tasked with making sure I take good care of her since she seems to be a nice young lady. Oh and grandkids. She didn’t forget to put in her order before they left after descending on us uninvited.
Of course I didn’t share the more sordid details with her or my dad, but they seemed to know plenty thanks to the two fuckwads I call friends. The reporter was due tomorrow, the day after they left. That night Giselle was a nervous wreck until I took her to bed and fucked her into oblivion.
It had been a week and although she wasn’t completely over her angst, we were making progress. It seems the visit from my parents had done some good, and she now had two new people in her corner.
It helped that mom has no problem throwing dad’s weight around and by the time she left my wife knew that the senator was nothing more than a pauper compared to my family’s wealth and connections.
Not sure why shit like that works but it did the trick, almost like a security blanket of sorts. Not so much the money. She always knew I was wealthy, but the fact that we were way and above the senator in all aspects of life. I think it helped too that her new mother in law wasn’t a closet drunk and that my father wasn’t a sick fucking pervert.
So the woman that sat down with me to be interviewed though not completely out of her shell, was a far cry from the one I’d picked up at the precinct just a week ago.
I didn’t vet his questions; I didn’t have to. He knew that I’d own his ass by morning if he crossed the line, so the interview came off more like a society piece than anything else, which is pretty much what I was aiming for.
Then she got nervous again when she learned that the piece would be in the paper this coming Sunday, the day before we were scheduled to head back home. “If you want to be nervous, be nervous baby, just hold onto me.” It was useless telling her not to be after the one-hundredth time.
GISELLE
We’ve been back for a week and I’m still walking around on eggshells. I expect any moment for the world to come crumbling down around me. Each time the phone rings or there’s someone at the door my heart literally jumps until I’m just about sick of myself.
Gavin had given up telling me not to worry. His new thing now is telling me to just lean on him whenever I feel afraid, but how long before that grows stale? He said it won’t, that he understands, but it’s certainly not the way a new marriage should be starting.
So I tried to hide my unease, to put on a smile whenever he was around, but he saw right through me. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know you’re still afraid. I’ve decided not to take it personally. You’re the one who lived through that shit, so you’ll get over it in your own time.”
He spent part of each night before we went to bed making me go over the things I’d experienced at the hands of my ex and his dad. It was therapeutic he said, since I wasn’t about to share it with a total stranger.
“Gavin, don’t you need to go back to work?” I asked him this the following Monday morning when it didn’t look like he had any plans to leave the apartment. That’s’ another thing, we didn’t return to the same apartment, but another one he owned a few buildings down from the first.
His reason? Because he knew I was afraid of the senator or one of his lackeys showing up again. He was being so nice and protective that I was beginning to worry that all this, him having to change so much of his life for me would soon wear thin.
“I will as soon as you’re no longer afraid.” I just looked at him from my place beside him on the couch where we were watching television, something he said he never does. It’s been like this all week, since the story broke. Without having to be told he knew that I was scared shitless and instead of bringing it up, or making me feel like a complete fool over it, he just decided to stick close to me.