fantasty kiss, raj say hello [bill gates best books .TXT] 📗

her decision to marry this man. I think the only reason they married was the fact she was pregnant with my older brother Carter.
Carter was always the glue in my father and my relationship. After my sister was diagnosed it became my mission to help and protect her in any way I could, even if I was just three years older than her. She was my baby sister and seeing her suffer was torture for me. For everyone. The sickness receded for a while when she was nine, but not for long.
I’m not sure if it was the stress of my sisters condition or the fact that he had been abusing his body for so long, but my father had his first heart attack at thirty seven. After that, claiming he saw Jesus and he wanted him to put all his money into nursing homes, he seemed like a completely changed man. Well, besides the fact he was still smoking like a chimney and drinking like fish. But he did it. He basically turned his life around, opened a chain of nursing homes after miraculously getting a loan from the bank, and after that we moved up in the world. But then Rosie got sicker and my parents let her do anything she wanted because of that reason. She wanted to go to Paris, okay done. She wanted to open up a foundation for people with incurable illnesses. Done. Then came the request that we didn’t too much care for.
She wanted a boyfriend. She just wanted to be normal like the girls she saw out in public. And this new guy she found seemed to make her happy. He was sweet to her at first, but then, after a few months, he left her. He had sex with her, then left her. She was devastated. All the happiness we had seen in those few months was gone and she went back to being extremely ill. She didn’t want to get out of bed, she would barely speak and it was all because of this one guy.”
He sighed not seeming to want to go on, but eventually he did.
“My brother and I…we found this guy and beat him within an inch of his life.”
I sat back in my seat, in awe and a little bit of shock. Was he serious? Did he actually do this to a person. I mean I understood that he was angry and yes the guy deserved it but he shouldn’t have done that he could’ve-
“He sued us. He wanted money from my father’s business and wanted us to see jail time.”
“Oh god, what happened?”
He looked at my empty plate and the pizza box that only had a few more slices left. Standing, he took both of our dishes and put them in the sink. When he came back for the pizza box he continued.
“My brother took the fall. It was the guys words against ours and since he had multiple broken ribs, a hair line fracture, and a broken arm, there really wasn’t much we could do. But my brother wouldn’t let me take the fall. I was nineteen. They would have trialed me as an adult and I would have gotten five years in prison. He took the sentence and I’m sure he’s still there. I’ve lost touch with him. He won’t talk to me since I-”
He broke off, looking at me for a moment. “I told him something that I had done since then and he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.”
“Well, what was it?” I asked going to the sink to help him dry the dishes.
“It’s…not important what I did. I’m not doing it anymore which is the important part.” He gave me a small smile and I could see that emotion in his eyes again. It was almost like hurt but not quite. “During those four months my sister was seeing that guy my father had three heart attacks. During my brothers trial he had another two. He got frail looking. The doctors said he didn’t have much longer and to be honest I was happy about it. I wanted him to die. Because even though he was paying for my sisters treatments and giving her all the material things she wanted, he was never really there for her. He never really cared for her. She died that Christmas a few days after we took the picture in the parlor room. It was the last Christmas we all had together. She was only seventeen but my father acted as if she were an old woman dying of old age. He didn’t show any emotion when she died. So I showed no emotion when he died about half a year later.”
“That’s horrible.” I took hold of his hand and he closed his eyes.
“It’s really not. I just…it’s fine.” He dried his hands on a towel. “I just don’t really like to talk about it to people. You’re actually the first person I’ve told.”
“Well, I’m glad you told me. Now I know.”
“So…does this affect your decision?” His eyes looked torn, as if he was really hoping it didn’t.
But it did. All I wanted was to know more about him, regardless if it was good or bad. It turns out that it was a little bad but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. With the way he had been threatening Miller I thought he had actually killed someone before. But hurting someone because they hurt his sister? Okay, so that was really bad, but I mean, I couldn’t judge. It was a part of his past he wasn’t too proud of and he admitted that. He was being truthful.
“Yeah, it does, but not in the way you think,” I told him. “I just wanted to know a bit more about the guy I with. That’s all. You could have told me this sooner and my answer would still be the same. Yes, I want to marry you but I just…I just don’t see how it will be possible. We can’t explain to people how we know so much about each other to want to get married. They would know too much. But the answer was always yes, regardless of your past.”
He looked pleased as he brought his face down to mine and gently kissed my forehead.
“But now that you know my secrets,” he said cupping my face. “Would you mind telling me yours?”
I pulled away from him and looked down at my feet. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“Are you cold?” He asked.
I hadn’t noticed that I was shivering and until he said something. I had been pretty cold during his story but I didn’t want to interrupt him. So I shrugged and mumbled a yeah.
He took my hand and led me out of the kitchen and to the bedroom where our bags were.
“Sit, get comfortable. I’ll go turn up the heat. It gets really cold here at night. Especially in the winter.”
While he was gone, I took my shoes off and sat on the bed, fiddling with my fingertips.
When he came back he took in my nervous posture and sighed.
“Rebecca’s told me a lot about you and you’re father,” he said as he sat next to me. “She told me a lot about you but I know some of the things she told me can’t be true. For one you are not the rude bitch she said you were. You are one of the most polite people I have ever met. Even when people are rude to you, you don’t really let it affect you.”
I shrugged. “My mother taught me that no matter what people do don’t let it define who you are.”
He looked at the red comforter we sat on. “She also told me about what happened with your mother. Is it true? How she died?”
I didn’t like talking about my mother that way. I chose to remember her as a vibrant woman not the shell she became. But we needed to be honest with each other for this relationship to work. I couldn’t just tell him the same lie my father and I told everyone else.
“If she told you that she died of cancer yes, that it was a drunk driver that hit her…no. My mother was a very bright woman. She was always smiling, adventurous…and spontaneous. But when she got the brain tumor she became empty. I could see it in her eyes you know.”
“Do you know how she got it?”
“I..I don’t really remember because I was ten at the time. The doctors were using a lot of big words I didn’t understand. All I know is that it could possibly be hereditary.”
“Hereditary?”
I nodded slowly. “I get checked out every few months. What my mother was diagnosed with was Ependymomas. It generally only occurs in children and people around my age but it’s like you said about your sister, my mother had that type of luck.” I tried to smile but I knew it came across as a grimace. “When she first got it she often joked about the tumor choosing her because she was still a child at heart. She didn’t do much joking when it started to affect her. After about a year she started to change, her mind seemed to just…I don’t know how to describe it. She just wasn’t herself anymore. She didn’t smile and when she did it was a bit creepy. When the growth started to appear…I guess she sort of freaked.
About a week later my mother came into my room and told me to get dress. She told me we were going to the store to pick up milk. I thought it was a bit odd because my mother didn’t really go out anymore. It wasn’t recommended for someone in her deteriorating position, you know, with the tumor spreading faster to her spinal cord. I remember noticing the dull look in her eyes before we left but I…I didn’t stop her. I didn’t know. We hadn’t been driving ten minutes when she looked over at me and smiled. And it wasn’t one of her new creepy smiles it was the one I liked from before she got sick. She told me…she told me she loved me, unbuckled her seatbelt, and wrapped our car around a light pole.”
Devin flinched at my words then wrapped his arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Layla.”
I inhaled his scent and it calmed me a bit. I’d only ever told this story to Marina and even then I cried. But being with Devin kept me calm. Feeling his strong arms around me made me push on with the story.
“I remember waking up in the car but I wasn’t hurt. But my mom, she was…she was gone. My father and I don’t tell people she killed herself. We just say it was a drunk driver. No one ever really questions it once they find out it was a drunk driver.”
“Rebecca doesn’t know, does she?” He pulled away from me and stoked my cheek.
I shook my head. “No, my father didn’t want to worry her with the details.”
“But she knows about the tumor.”
It wasn’t a question but I answered anyway. “Yeah, she knows my mother was diagnosed with a tumor. Rebecca is the one that takes me to my appointments every three months so I can get my birth control shots and to get my brain x-rayed.”
“I bet she just loves that.” He was being sarcastic and I knew it.
“No, no she does not. She doesn’t see the point in it. If I haven’t gotten it yet, what are the chances of me getting it