Eight months later . . .
“I HAVE TO GET OUT of here,” I declared as if I were being held prisoner in the pits of hell. And in my mind, I really was.
I prided myself on being logical and levelheaded. I was a planner who thought out every detail, sometimes to the point of obsession. But right then, as the words flew from my mouth, it was a completely rash decision made in haste when I caught my brother innocently kissing his wife while holding his child. He had every right to do it, and I had every right to leave so I didn’t have to witness it anymore.
Till and Eliza had gone to great lengths to make me comfortable in their new house. And by anyone’s standards, they had done an amazing job. It was a far cry from the shithole we had grown up in. By all means, I should have been ecstatic. But I was suffocating in that one-point-four-million-dollar mansion. Sure, I had a bedroom that had been built especially for me—complete with an adjoining gym that was a physical therapist’s wet dream and a bathroom that was fully handicap accessible. I had the freedom most people in my situation dreamed about.
I, however, felt like a caged animal.
“Okay,” Till said, surprised. “Where do you want to go?” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied me carefully.
Any place where you aren’t fucking the woman I’m in love with.
“College,” I answered instead. “I’m feeling better, and I’m already a full semester behind. I’m ready to start.”
Eliza smiled tightly, shifting six-month-old baby Blakely to her other hip. “You can live here and go to college. It’s only a fifteen-minute commute.”
Fuck. That.
“They have wheelchair-accessible dorms,” I told her without making eye contact.
Yeah. And a yearlong wait list.
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Flint. I’m all for you starting school, but we just hired that new physical therapist.” Till lifted his eyebrows and tossed me a teasing, one-sided smirk. “I thought you liked Miranda?”
Oh, he knew I liked her, all right. He’d caught me fucking her a few weeks earlier. But what he didn’t know was that she was a hard-core gold digger who had taken one look around that house and all but dropped to her knees the second I’d rolled into the room. She didn’t want me though. She wanted the money she assumed lined my pockets. Those weekly physical therapy sessions were usually only beneficial to my cock. Till had essentially hired me a hooker with a college degree.
However, I was such a miserable bastard that, knowing my brother, he wouldn’t have given a single damn that his money was being spent getting me off. Although I bet he would have cared if he knew that, not two minutes after he’d walked into the room and found Miranda riding my cock, I’d been forced to call her Eliza in order to come. Some things never changed.
Whoever said that time heals all wounds was an ignorant asshole. In my experience, time made everything worse. While I had been making great strides in my recovery, I was still stuck with useless legs and a suffocating obsession for my brother’s wife. Visiting Eliza in the hospital the day Blakely was born had almost killed me. So, after that, I’d checked out from the whole family thing. The day Till had received his cochlear implant, which allowed him to hear again for the first time in over two years, I’d refused to go. I’d told my brother that I was in pain, and he’d quickly dropped the subject. Eliza knew I’d lied, and I knew that it’d broken her heart. Till deserved to have his hearing back, but I hadn’t been able to sit there and watch him have it all.
Every day that had passed, I’d become more and more bitter toward him.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
Yet I wanted to make him pay for every single strand of happiness he’d worked his ass off to get.
Somehow, in my warped mind, I’d learned to hate the only person who’d ever given a damn about me. And it wasn’t all about Eliza, either. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what it was about. I just knew that Till Page had a life I would have killed for, but because of one fucking bullet, it was a life I would never even be allowed to fight for.
Living with them made it that much worse, too. It was exhausting. Every time I exited the sanctuary of my room, I was forced to paint on a fake-ass smile and pretend that I didn’t want to punch Till in his throat each time I so much as ran into him while making a fucking sandwich in the kitchen.
His kitchen.
I needed my own goddamned kitchen. And, while I was at it, my own woman.