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I’d even paid for the upgraded version that allowed me to know when she came home. When she left. How she drove—or how the people that drove her around drove—and set up a crash response in case anything bad ever happened.
I was, quite literally, obsessed with her.
I wasn’t talking to her on the phone, but I knew where she was, how long she spent there, and when she left.
Literally, I could track her movements all around, and it was a level of stalkerish I’d never experienced with anyone else in my life.
“He looks at it once an hour, if not more,” Tyson said as he propped himself up on my extra pillows. “I just saw him on there when he unblocked her so he could see all of her messages.”
I winced.
“Come on, man. Don’t tattle,” I grumbled, pushing him.
He didn’t move an inch, which only made me madder.
I was so fucking weak from the surgeries, and the chemo treatments, it was unreal.
I was a shell of the person I once was.
“You’re hurting her.”
I winced.
“I…” I started, then stopped.
Because there was no response to that. I was hurting her.
I was hurting me, too.
“When your dad and I first met, he tried that same thing on me,” Mom said, causing Dad’s head to duck. “Do you know the lengths I had to go to to prove to him that I was willing to endure anything with him?”
“No,” I grumbled, not liking where she was going with this.
“For nearly a year, he made me prove myself, over and over again, and that I would stay when the going got tough. And the only reason he caved in the end was because I got sick from all the stress, and he couldn’t stand seeing me that way,” she said. “But that year was absolute torture for me. I missed him so much. I loved him. And he kept pushing me away because he thought I wouldn’t be able to handle the life he was going to give me.”
I looked away.
Wasn’t that exactly what I was doing?
“I want you to get married. I want you all to get married,” she continued.
“I want you to be happy. I want to die knowing that I didn’t create this terrible vicious cycle that forces you all to live half-lives to protect others from what you have in your background,” she continued.
And for the next half hour, everyone listened—even Dad and eventually Hoyt who showed up on a break to check on us—as she gave us life lessons.
Some of them were very hard to swallow.
But had she not completely hurt me with her words, scaring me into acting differently, what happened a little bit later with the alert that came over my phone would have.
CHAPTER 19
Team mysterious leg bruise.
-Zip to Nash
ZIP
It was now four weeks post break up.
I’d spent four freakin’ weeks trying to get that man to listen to me.
I knew he read my texts. Some of the texts I’d send would go through saying delivered, while others weren’t.
“So why did you want to go out?” Val asked.
I looked over at my sister, who looked like she was in a bad mood.
“I didn’t say that you had to take me. I was fully capable of taking the bus,” I pointed out. “If you’re tired from work…”
“It’s fine.” She sighed. “I’m just off lately. Felix is moving around a lot more, and it’s making me freak out slightly.”
Felix, the man she was madly in love with, was stabbed at work, right in the middle of the ER, by a gang member. He was recovering, but not nearly fast enough for either of their likings.
The fact that he was moving around a lot more was good news, but I was sure it was a bit nerve wracking for Val, who was paranoid when it came to that man.
“I’m going to do something, and it’s going to either make him talk to me, or it’s going to prove that he doesn’t care,” I said.
Her eyebrows went up, intrigued. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “I just have to send out a text to the family.”
We had a huge group text between our entire family. Significant others included.
Hell, even Nash was included in it, but since he had me blocked, he probably wouldn’t see it until it was too late. Which was what I was planning on.
I sent a text to the group that included Keene, Coffey, Simi, Hades and Hannibal, Slone and Tony, Crimson and Winston, Val and Felix, as well as Folsom and Kobe.
Me: I’m about to do something drastic. I’m okay.
Everyone replied at once, but I closed it down before I read any of the text messages.
“What are you doing?” Val looked at me worriedly.
“Throwing my phone out the window,” I answered as I started rolling it down.
She blinked. “Why would you do that?”
