Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Didn’t matter to me. I’d already been there.
Even the chirping birds flying overhead seemed so loud that at one point when I’d been climbing up the tower I had to cover my ear with one of my hands thinking that I was under attack. It was like sitting in a surround sound theater and having seats next to the speaker during a screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds.
The familiar light scent of saltwater wafted into the air. I used to inhale it like a drug that could get me high, but now it made my stomach roll and lurch to the point where I had to clutch my stomach to prevent the rising bile in my throat from spewing out, all because of the stench determined to invade all my senses.
The world I came back to was a spinning ferris wheel of sounds and light, assaulting me at every turn and I was helpless to make it stop, when all I wanted was to get off the fucking ride I never signed up to be on.
Logan’s Beach used to be my place. My security blanket. But coming out of the dark and into the blinding light I’d been craving for so fucking long wasn’t at all what I thought it would be.
It was a new kind of hell.
I was finally home, and all I wanted was a piece of normality. Well, normal for me. But being there, looking down at the only town that had ever been home to me, I felt anything but normal.
And anything but at home.
It was right then. In that very moment. While inhaling the clean air I once thrived on that now made me want to vomit. While listening to the familiar sounds that used to give me peace, but now echoed through my brain like jack hammers on pavement. It was right then I knew I would never find the kind of normal I used to know. The peace I once had.
Not there.
Never again.
My only hope was to find a new kind of normal, but to me that thought was scarier than any kind of torture I’d faced at the hands of Chop.
Which might explain why I’d sought her out.
Although the truth was I had no idea why I went to see her. Fuck, I didn’t even know if she’d be there. But once the shock of Grace’s death started to set in I remembered that Doe said Dre had been at the house and it kept playing those words over and over again in my head on repeat.
By the time I realized what I was doing I’d already snuck out in the middle of the night like some kid breaking curfew. Remembering that the window over the kitchen sink had a broken lock it wasn’t too hard to shimmy the window open and crawl inside.
The house was dark. Quiet.
Empty.
Yet the second my feet hit the floor I knew she was there.
I FELT her.
All the doors in the hall were shut except for the room at the end the one that used to be the grow room. It was open but just a crack. Just enough to see the back of her head poking out of a sleeping bag along the wall beneath the back window. I wanted to see more of her so I’d opened the door slowly and was about to step into the room when she sighed heavily. That’s when I realized she was awake. Slowly I stepped back out of the room until I was in the safety of the kitchen. I pulled myself up on the counter and crawled out the window I’d came.
I was on the porch about to leave when I saw motion in the corner of my eye. That’s when I turned and saw her for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime.
I don’t know what I expected if and when I ever saw her again. But I certainly didn’t expect to feel like all the wind was stolen from my lungs.
She wore a plain white t-shirt just long enough to make me wonder if she was wearing shorts underneath, the hem brushing the tops of her thighs as she walked. Her shiny black hair was pulled into a high ponytail on top of her head. Against the moonlight it looked so dark it appeared almost blue, like the feathers of a black bird. I’d never seen her wear glasses before but she wore thick dark frames around her dark eyelashes that she pushed up the bridge of her nose as she shuffled into the kitchen.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but wonder again why the fuck I was even there in the first place and stand there like an asshole, gawking at the most beautiful fucking girl I’d ever seen. Even more beautiful than I remembered. More EVERYTHING than I remembered.