Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 41621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 41621 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 208(@200wpm)___ 166(@250wpm)___ 139(@300wpm)
“Rutger…” I reach out, my fingertips finding the patch of skin just over where his beard starts under his cheekbone. Every part of him turns to wired tension. But the anger is masking something deeper. Rejection. Loneliness.
I want to take it all away for him. I want to make him see that the world doesn’t have to be such a hard place.
“Grandpa and Grandma raised me,” he says, and as he does, his face softens and I realize what love he has for them, even if they’re not here anymore.
“Grandpa was a handsome man,” I say, and mean it. From his photo, he was just as strong and wide as Rutger himself. The gentle edge comes from his grandmother. It shines out of her eyes.
I see that same shine when he serves me breakfast. Nothing makes this man happier than making me happy, and he watches every bite I take with the same eagerness as when he’s waiting for me to come.
“How did you get here?” Rutger asks, and I understand he’s not asking about here-here, in his cabin. Both of us know perfectly well that he dragged me in here like a caveman with the spoils of a hunt.
No, it’s a more complicated question. One that I wouldn’t answer coming from anyone else.
But this is Rutger. And he deserves the truth, even if I’m too afraid to give him all of it, because if he knows that I lied about who I am, and that I’m from the city, I think it might break him.
“I mentioned that I had to work for the last few years,” I explain while chasing maple syrup around my plate with the fork. “Well, the last job was washing dishes at a diner. And that’s where I met Eldon Patron. Don.”
Rutger’s brow lowers, shadowing his eyes. “Who is he?”
“He was my boyfriend for a minute. I guess. That’s what I thought at the time. Now, I don’t really know what he was, except mean.” I eat a whole piece of bacon before I can make myself continue. “He singled me out from all the other girls working as waitresses, so I thought he must have been really into me. Who picks the frumpy dishwasher when the girls out front are so cute, right? Don did. He was older, a businessman, had nice clothes, money. At first, he showed up with flowers every day. Then he started taking me out to dinner. He got me some dresses to wear when we went out. It felt good to have attention.”
“But then?” Rutger’s lip curls, nostrils expanding and contracting as his fingernails dig into the edge of the table so hard they leave indents in the wood.
My cheeks warm, and I know I’m getting those pink blotches on my chest I always get when I’m embarrassed or unsure. “If I disagreed with him, he’d tell me I was an idiot. A simpleton, he said. He’d hold his finger to his lips when I talked, shaking his head. My opinions didn’t matter to Don. He just wanted me to be obedient.”
“This is a bad man,” Rutger says. “Not like a Daddy. Not like me. I want you to talk all the time. I want to know everything you think. If you are worried, you give me all of it. If you are happy, you shout it to me so I can be happy with you. This man? I hate him. I hate that he has eyes still because they looked at you. That he has a tongue because it talked mean to you.” His eyes go black, the blue a thread of color around the center. “Did he…kiss you?”
The room turns cold as Rutger’s shoulders drop. His eyes narrow and his life is somehow hanging in the balance between yes and no.
I shake my head, hoping that’s enough for him for now, then continue, feeling that comfort he gives me. Feeling he does want me to tell him everything so it’s his to carry and not mine.
“Finally, my mom and I had a fight and I had nowhere else to go. Don was almost too pleased to take me in. He said it was going to be a special night, and I was at his house, and I went into this other room while he was on the phone in his office. He always closed the door or walked away when he was on the phone. Turns out, his interest in me wasn’t really about me. Only about one certain part of me.” My eyes prick with heat, remembering how humiliated I felt. “Don likes virgins. He deflowers them on white bedsheets, cuts out the blood stain, and hangs them up in this fucked-up trophy room underneath Polaroids of them laying on the bed right after... I counted three hundred and four little scraps of fabric before I got sick and ran out of there.”