Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
You’ll only ever get the kind of love you give. And right now, it’s better that I leave because you both deserve more than what I can give you. I’ll always love you, sweetheart. Always. In my own way.
“In your own way means jack fucking shit!” I hiss under my breath at the mirror. My cheeks get pink with anger, and I can see the spitting rage in my eyes as they darken. My hair drips in slow, methodical streams, and my clothes do more than a slow drip. They’re soaking the room, plastered against my body. My shoes are the worst of it. They’re now two wet, squishy, swampy sponges. “You never loved me enough to come back. You didn’t even love me enough to call or write.”
I never forgave her. I’ve been holding all this anger, watching it grow and build. The resentment often felt like it was choking me. I hated her for hurting my dad. I hated her for abandoning me.
I hated Apollo the same way. He abandoned me too. He made a promise just like she did. He promised he’d protect me and that we’d always be friends. That no matter what, we’d stick it out together. He lied. He lied. He left.
But then he came back.
He thought I needed saving, so he saved me.
He took me away to this silly mushroom castle of a house that he built for me like I was a princess. Yes, I’m married to him, but he promised it could always be fake. He promised to help, and he’ll keep those promises. Both our dads are here, drying out downstairs while he tries to mediate because he wants to keep his word.
He could have just let his dad take the company. He could have let him crush my father. He owns a majority stake in the company, so it really would have been him doing the crushing and owning. But he didn’t. Instead, he asked for me. And now he has a plan that he thinks will work. He doesn’t care about money, and I don’t think it’s because he has so much of it that he doesn’t know what to do with it. I think it’s because even if he didn’t have the money, people would always come first. Family. Friends. Our dads. Me.
I saw this man, this man who had everything, and I was blinded with rage. I’d been that way for a long time. It sucked, holding on to it. All the shitty things that happened to me after Apollo left, I was mad at him for that too. I was mad that I didn’t have my best friend to grow up with. That I didn’t have him to talk to. That he was the one who went to college. That I worked my ass off at my dad’s company, learning everything I could in place of me going to college because we couldn’t afford it. That I stuck around and supported my dad because he needed me, and the company needed me after a few years, too. I blamed my sometimes anger about that on Apollo too. I felt so stifled and smothered. I wanted more than to live in a small city in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to do everything I couldn’t. I wanted more, and I hated myself for wanting that because I felt like a traitor. I felt like my mom.
But maybe I misjudged him. Maybe Apollo isn’t the man I made him out to be.
He pulled my dad out of the pool first, like he knew my dad was the shittier swimmer. He was grinning the whole time, which only encouraged our dads to stop spitting and hissing for a second. He’s downstairs with them now, doing god knows what.
Shower. I need to shower. I need to shower and get into clean clothes and stop moping around.
The bathroom in this room is insane.
It’s also insane getting out of wet boots, jeans, and a clinging T-shirt.
Somehow, I manage.
I throw myself under the hot rain shower head spray. It glows a ton of different colors. The floor is a mosaic made of tiny little tiles and colored stones, and it looks like a big tree with leaves jutting all over the place. They go halfway up the walls. The toilet is bright blue, and the sink is made out of stone. The shower is also tiled totally out of little pebbles that don’t look like anything. They’re just pretty.
I refuse to think about Apollo naked in the hallway last night. Or his…um…stuff. Package. I don’t think about how he looked, climbing out of the pool, soaked and muscled for miles. Powerful. And how he looked twice the size of our dads, twice as powerfully built. Long and lean, soaking wet, and completely at home. The god of water, screw Poseidon.