Page 69 of The Way We Are

“The people who lost all that money. Were they angry?” he clarifies, noticing my jumbled expression.

When I turn my eyes to Willis, he shrugs his shoulders, as lost as me.

“Umm... No. They weren’t angry,” I reply once my eyes have returned to Thorn.

His lips purse as he huffs noisily. “Huh. I’d be mad if I lost that much money. That’s a lot of money someone is trying to hide.” He lowers his eyes to the account ledger tucked under my arm. “I’d berealmad.”

“How much money is missing?” I ask, my tone hopeful.

Willis moves closer to Thorn when the thoughtfulness on his face switches to anger faster than I can click my fingers. His eyes flicker repeatedly like he's calculating each column by using nothing but his memory, but it also builds his frustration.

“It’s okay if you don’t know the answer,” Willis assures when Thorn’s fists clench into tight balls, his frustration apparent.

“I know the answer!” Thorn roars, his voice loud enough to be heard three blocks over. “I know it. I just... I just can’t get the words out of my head.”

He clutches his hair at his temples as moisture rushes into his eyes. “I know it...I do! I swear I know it. They just won’t come out!”

He throws his hand across his bedside table, sending a handful of Savannah’s photos sprawling onto the floor. As tears flow down his face, his eyes dart around the room. “Ruth! Ruth! Where’s Ruth?!”

“She’s here. She’s right here.” Willis hands him an oil painting of Savannah.

Thorn doesn’t react in the same manner he did earlier. His anguish remains as strong as the guilt strangling me.

“That’s not Ruth. She isn’t Ruth! Where is my Ruth?” The absolute terror in his eyes cuts through me like a knife. I can see the man he used to be hiding in his brilliant green irises, dying to break out.

“Please help me.Please,” he begs, staring straight at me.

Incapable of ignoring the guilt engulfing me for a second longer, I hightail it out of his room and gallop down the stairs. Gravel crunches under my feet when I charge to my truck, throw open the door and clamber inside. I whizz out of Savannah’s family estate so fast, I’m certain my tires leave imprints on the pavement.

I don’t know where I am going; I just drive until the haze in my eyes becomes too great to ignore. With a roar, I yank my truck off the road.

“Motherfucking cunt!” I scream out in frustration as my fists pound the steering wheel on repeat. “I hate you! I fucking hate you!”

My frustration isn’t directed at one person. It's for the entire universe. What Savannah went through last night, what she’s been dealing with the past few years with her dad, my family situation. Our fight. My dad. Everything.

It’s too much—it's all too much.

By the time I stop my onslaught on my steering wheel, my fists are bloody, and my cheeks are wet. I can’t remember the last time I cried—actually, I don’t recallevercrying—so I’m glad I reserved it for a time I don’t have witnesses.

After inhaling three big breaths and clearing away evidence of my breakdown, I pull my truck back onto the road. I need to keep it together. Not just for me but for Savannah also.

Seeing Thorn like that... fuck, how can I describe it? Horrible. Cruel. Terrifying. Those are just a few words I can use to describe seeing a man I admired cut down like that. How is this fair? Men like my father and Axel walk the planet as if they are gods, but a brilliant man who did nothing but love his daughter is handed a horrible disease that not only weakens him, it also makes him forget. That's just fucking cruel. And it's even more cruel that Savannah has been handling this alone. God, what I wouldn’t give to turn back the clock, to go back to the day our argument began and fix all the mistakes I made—all the mistakeswemade. Maybe then things would be different.

I’m distracted from my thoughts when the early morning sun beams off the white pages of the ledger I threw onto the passenger seat during my escape. It only stops blinding me when I take a right on Coultor Avenue. When the shadows of the large apartment on the roadside filter over its creamy cover, a glimpse at a name gains my attention. It isn’t a name written in the ledger that has my truck swaying dangerously into oncoming traffic. It's the one hidden on the cover.Axel Monroe.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, you moron,” a driver shouts when I abruptly pull into his lane, correcting my truck before I smash into a looming sedan.

I wave my hand out my window, silently apologizing for cutting him off before pulling into the emergency lane. My heart is beating so wildly, I shouldn’t be sitting upright, much less operating a vehicle.

With my heart pounding in my ears, I snatch the ledger off my seat. I have to hold it at a forty-five-degree angle to confirm the name I spotted during my inconspicuous gawk is legit. Axel’s name is etched into the cover of the ledger. It’s not there via ink; it's from someone using the ledger like a table, someone with identical handwriting to Savannah’s.

Ignoring the stream of cars rushing past my truck so fast they rattle my windows, I trail my finger along the digits scribbled below his name. I’m not one hundred percent confident, but I’m fairly sure they are account numbers.

Why would Savannah have Axel’s bank details? Unless she's depositing money into his account, why would she need them?

I sit in silence for several minutes, giving my brain a chance to sort through all information I’ve been handed—not just today, but the past several months.

“She looks at you that way because everything she sees in you, she wishes she saw in him. Until you unearth her true motives for staying with him, lowering yourself to his level won’t do you any favors. Not in her books anyway.”

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