by Elodie Colt
The mocking, irritated tone makes her drop her head in shame and take a step back, but I just take one closer, drilling my eyes into her.
“Sam threw an insulting ‘congratulations’ at me earlier, and I have the feeling you know exactly what she was talking about.”
She swallows before she hands me her next confession, one that feels like a kick in the balls this time. “I showed her the ring I found in your drawer. I told her you were about to propose to me.”
My legs refuse to hold me up any longer, and I find my feet dragging me over to the bed where I collapse with my head in my hands.
“I’m sorry, okay?” Jillian’s shaky voice punctuates the moment of loaded silence. “It was a shitty move. I just—”
The words lodge in her throat when I snap up my head and jump to my feet once more. She winces under my lethal glare.
“How dare you?” My low voice drips venom. “How dare you put my mother’s ring onto your finger?”
All the color drains from her face, eyes widening in trepidation. “Your mother’s? Shit, I… No, I just opened the lid. I didn’t touch it or take it from the box, I swear.”
Her back hits the wall when I stop an inch in front of her face. “Fuck, Jillian. What the hell have you been thinking?”
That’s the point when her forehead creases, eyes narrowing in on me. “That you fell in love with me, that’s what.” She pushes me back with her hands on my chest. “That Sam had no right to take what’s mine again, not after she fucked my boyfriend!”
She’s yelling now, teeth bared, but her temper rolls off my shoulders like a piece of lint. Her fury is nothing compared to mine at the moment.
Slowly, her words trickle through the red haze in my mind. Sam screwed Jillian’s boyfriend? Damn, things are spiraling out of control faster than I can follow.
“What boyfriend?” I ask with a shake of my head.
“Harvey. I saw them.” She points to Sam’s room opposite the window. “He screwed her right there.”
“Harvey?” The name triggers something before the story Sam told me creeps back into my memory. I scoff. “You mean the guy who was in a relationship with Sam until he shoved his dick into the mouth of another at her fucking birthday party?”
“What? No. He was my boyfriend, not hers. We came together after the BBQ, he…” Her voice fades away as she spaces out with an almost imperceptible head shake. Clearly, she’s starting to question if she put her trust in the wrong guy all those years ago.
Sighing, I rake a hand through my hair. “Hey, whatever happened between Sam and you, clear that shit up. The way I see it, that dipshit two-timed you both big time.”
Jillian puckers her lips. “Huh, you’re one to talk.”
“I—”
The approaching rumble of a familiar engine makes me perk my ears. I lunge for the window just as the Chevy rolls to a stop in the neighbor’s driveway. My predatory gaze follows Sam as she scrambles out of the backseat with the other girls in tow, and…
A guy.
A fucking guy touching what’s mine.
He whispers something into her ear, making her giggle and tumble in her heels, his hands wandering down to her hips to steady her. She’s tanked.
And that guy is so fucking dead.
Furious, I stomp back to Jillian and grab her arms. “Listen, I’m sorry I wasn’t truthful to you from the beginning, okay? But I never made any promises. Not to you, not to your mother.”
She gives me a befuddled look. “What does my mother have to do with it?”
The way she cautiously words the question signals that she’s afraid of the answer. Shit, I don’t want to be the messenger here, but she deserves the truth. A truth her mother was never willing to share with her.
“She offered me a shit-load of money in exchange for marrying you,” I say flat out.
Unshed tears glisten in her eyes as the terrible realization hits her that her mother indeed sold her daughter to a man. Lips quivering, she retreats a step, making me drop my hands before she pivots on her heels and stalks off.
I curse when the door shuts behind her but rush back to the window. The light in Sam’s room is on now. I can see everything in detail—her desk, her shelf, her face as she closes her eyes.
And a blond dude sucking her neck so vigorously, you’d think he wants to rip out her throat.
“No fucking way!” I roar, finally driving my fist into the wall. The pain in my knuckles doesn’t even register. If she’s screwing that guy, I’ve lost her forever.
Not going to happen.
I storm out of my room and slither down the stairs, ignoring the puzzled looks of the party guests as I barrel my way through them. With my ass on fire, I jump over the fence and beeline for the back door I know is never locked.
Giggles seep from the bathroom as I speed through the hallway. From the sounds of it, Skyla, Ruby, and Leo are trying to get Kendra out of her clothes as she’s too shit-faced to do it on her own, but my focus is on the door at the far end.
I bulldoze into her room like a Russian tank, nearly unhinging the door. It only takes me a nanosecond to take in the scene, and one more to grab the collar of the guy burying a blonde mane beneath him. Sam yelps as I yank him up and fling him across the room where he hits the nearest wall.
“What the fuck?” he yells. “Who the fuck are you?”
I shoot the goldilocks my most murderous glare. “Get the hell outta here, before I do something I sure as hell won’t regret.”
“Hey, relax, man,” he utters, slightly panicked as he lifts his hands in a gesture of peace. Peace my ass.
“Matthew, what the—”
“Shut it,” I hiss at Sam, not bothering to keep my rage in check, and give the dickhead a hard shove out the door. His insults fall on deaf ears as I lock it behind him. I pin Sam with a glower while she furiously adjusts the straps of her dress.
“Are you fucking insane?” She jumps to her feet, stumbling a little before kicking off her heels. “How dare you! You have no right to be here. Get out of my house, or I swear I’m going to call the cops.”
Her threat doesn’t perturb me nearly as much as the fact that she’s wasted like a Spring Break leftover and close to screwing a stranger just to piss me off.
“You do that.” I cut the distance between us in a few fast strides, cornering her. She doesn’t back down from my frosty stare, challenging me with one of hers. “And in the three minutes it takes them to arrive, you’re going to listen to what I have to say, seeing as you ignored my big-ass pile of messages and tuned me out altogether for whatever fucking reason.”
She bares her teeth before her lips part, no doubt ready to tell me to go fuck myself, but I intervene, clamp a hand over her mouth, and rock her up against the wall.
“Jillian told you a cock and bull story. That ring she showed you is my mother’s. She found it in my drawer and went crazy. I never proposed to her, and I never had sex with her. Did I consider proposing to her? Yes. Dammit, her mother offered to pay for the business I’m unable to save on my own. And yes, Jillian isn’t a bad catch, but she’s not my catch. I told her we were done. The deal with Christina is off.”
Her chest heaves with heavy breaths. I slip my hand from her mouth to give her some air. The girl reeks as if she bathed in a gallon of Gin, and I can do without her interrupting my speech by puking onto my clothes.
She yanks her head to the side as if disgusted by my touch. “And the picture you took without my permission? What’s your excuse for that one, huh?”
My jaw grinds. I should have known that damn picture was going to kick me in the ass sooner or later. With pursed lips, I pull out my phone and navigate to my cloud.
“None,” is my candid answer. “It was inexcusable and wrong in more ways than one. I fucked up big-time. I don’t blame you if you can never forgive me for what I’ve done. And I’m sorry it fell into the wrong hands.”
I open the picture, flip my phone around so she can see what I’
m doing, and click on ‘delete’ without so much as a blink. I keep my gaze on her, gauging her reaction, but she only gives me a slightly cross-eyed look of indifference and a cocked, sassy eyebrow.
“Good. Are we done?”
“Are we done? Not by a long shot, sweetheart,” I growl before I ram my mouth against hers.
A surprised yelp gurgles in her throat, but she accepts my tongue with eagerness when I push it in between her lips. Our kiss blazes with mutual, burning fury. She tastes of sweat and raspberry tonic and a sex drive that turns my cock into a boner so mighty, it could hammer rocks to dust. Her hands claw into my shirt, pulling me closer.
Not even a second later, she does the exact opposite and shoves me away, ripping her mouth from mine.
“I don’t want this.”
Her words sound about as convincing as my father the day he stumbled into the kitchen, claiming with a loud burp that he was dead sober. With a low chuckle, I slap her hands away that try to push me back, snake one arm under her, and hoist her up the wall. My rock-hard erection stabs her thigh.
“You don’t want this? Prove it,” I spit before I reclaim her mouth.
She fights me for domination, for control, but it only urges me on as I yank up her dress and push her thong aside. A raucous moan wrings from her when I drive in a finger.
“Still don’t want this?” I make my point by rubbing her juices all over her mound.
“I hate you.”
“Good. Show me how much.”
I push a second finger into her. She sucks in a sharp breath, her fingernails boring into my neck. Her eyes roll out of focus while her hips rotate against my hand, chasing more friction.
Yanking down one strap of her dress along with her bra, I expose her tit and take a nipple into my mouth. She whimpers with each of my thrusts, which only causes me to go faster. The heels of her feet dig into my hips as she clings to me, bracing herself for the impact. Soon, her walls start to quiver, and a garbled scream wrenches from her throat.
When I feel her limbs going slack, I slow down my movements, waiting for our breaths to level out. I pull out my fingers and let her slide down the wall, but as soon as her feet hit the ground, she keels over. I catch her before she goes down, sweep her up, and carry her over to the bed.
Gently, I brush a hand over her sweaty forehead.
“I’ll get you something to drink.” I straighten, about to head to the bathroom, but she grabs my arm.
“I want you,” she whispers with a glance at my jeans that have taken on the shape of an Egyptian pyramid.
“Tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, when your pretty head is clear enough to absorb the words ‘I love you.’
She mumbles a complaint when I disappear to get her a glass of water, but when I return, she’s already passed out, still wearing that gorgeous blue dress and her thong around her ankles. Lifting her hips, I push it up and put it back into place.
You could stay the night. Sleep on the couch so she knows you’ve been watching over her.
No, I don’t want to push my luck. I told her everything she needed to know.
And she sure as hell won’t remember a thing come tomorrow morning.
I vault back over the fence, casting a last glance at Sam’s dark window as I cross Christina’s yard.
“You sold me! You sold me to a guy who doesn’t even love me!”
I stop in my tracks when Jillian’s agitated voice chimes from inside the house.
“But what would you know about love… You are as emotionally available as a hitman after a brainwash. Remember the day Dad left? After he shut the door behind him, you plastered a smile onto your face and threw a hundred-people dinner party with barely legal strippers. You didn’t even shed a fucking tear. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw you cry in my entire life. Tell me, is it all just an act? Is your heart truly made of stone, or are you just fake from the inside out?”
“I was raised to be fake, for God’s sake!” Christina yells.
I sigh, dragging my feet up the porch and peeking through the glass doors. Jillian looks ready to combust as she corners her mother.
“Tell me, Mom,” she says in a lower, pleading voice. “For once, tell me the fucking truth.”
Fuck. No way can I wait until tomorrow to tell Christina that our deal is off the table. Then again, I can hardly barge in right now and steal Jillian’s thunder. Not now, when she’s finally growing a backbone and putting her mother in her place.
So, I lie low in the shadows, listening to Christina telling her daughter the story of her life. The story of Jillian’s grandmother who was hard to love and even harder to satisfy. Perfection was her second name. Christina and her two sisters became beauty pageant contestants from the age of six. Impeccable manners, full compliance, and faultless appearances were on top of the agenda. Their sisterhood turned into rivalry. They were raised to keep up their roles, to always put on a happy face, to be someone they were not. Feelings were undermined, weaknesses eradicated, traumas suppressed.
“I did everything in my power to keep my position as Mom’s favorite daughter,” Christina says, “until this happened.”
She grabs the hem of her dress and lifts it, peeling it up above her underwear and turning slightly to show a crooked, L-shaped, red scar on her left hip. I suck in a breath. No wonder I’ve never seen her in a bikini, only in swimsuits.
Jillian takes a step forward, bending down to get a closer look. “Oh my God, Mom… What happened?”
“Dog bite.”
And then Christina explains how her mother shunned her after the animal attack, told her she was useless. How she was dirt poor when she moved out. Finding a wealthy husband to take care of the finances was her mother’s lesson, instead of teaching her children how to deal with money, something that worked out in Christina’s favor when she met Jillian’s father.
Christina vowed to herself to never raise Jillian as her parents raised her. To teach her that appearances mattered but to never set any boundaries and give her all the freedom she needed. To teach her daughter independence and self-reliance. Ultimately, she overshot the mark and led Jillian to believe that relationships were a nuisance and love a weakness. Hence why Christina tried to fix what she ruined and took it upon herself to find a lifelong partner for her daughter. No matter the costs.
“You want to know why I can’t get away from this?” Christina waves her hand to the minibar in the corner. “Because I can’t escape my past. Because I lost my true self when I was still a kid. Because I never learned to express my feelings, only to hide them. Because I feel fucking lonely, and I don’t want you to become a loner, too.”
This is their breaking point, and they both burst into tears before they fall into each other’s arms. The sight fills me with a strange sense of peace, winding down my general dislike toward Christina and igniting a flicker of compassion in my heart.
Christina is the first to break away from their hug with a sob, squeezing her daughter’s arms. “Don’t put your career before love just because I raised you to stand on your own feet. Don’t write off men just because your father left you.”
“I don’t, Mom,” Jillian says with a sad smile. “But I want to find the right man, and that’s not Matthew Mallory.”
That’s my cue, so I alert them to my presence and step through the open glass doors. Their eyes flicker over to me in surprise, fresh tears visible on their cheeks.
“Jillian is right,” I say as I walk over to Christina. “I’m not the right man for her. I get that you want to find a nice guy for her, someone who puts family before business, but that’s not enough as long as he doesn’t love her with all his heart. That’s the guy you want to find for your daughter.”
Christina’s face crunches as new tears form in her eyes.
“Now that the cat is out of the bag, I want to tell you that our deal is off. I appreciate your offer, but there’s only one person who can save my business, and that’s me. I will retransfer you the mon
ey you sent me, and we’ll talk about payment for my work here tomorrow.” I nod to her garden.
Unable to utter a word in this emotional moment, she squeezes my hand in thanks.
My gaze travels to a slightly scatterbrained Jillian. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, managing a small but genuine smile. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. You told me the truth, and I appreciate your honesty. I am the one who has to apologize here.”
Grabbing her nape, I press a kiss onto her forehead. “Apology accepted.”
Let’s just hope that Sam will accept my apology, too.
Twenty-Three
Samantha
A rhythmic throb in my head pulls me out of sleep with the tenderness of a jackhammer. I pry my eyes open, trying to get rid of the sour taste in my mouth and figure out why the hell I’m wearing a dress and my bra for bed.
Because you were so wasted, you almost landed in the sack with a random guy.
I push my matted hair from my face. My memories from last night are fuzzy, a blur of snippets from when I shoved my tongue into Austin’s mouth on the dance floor to the part where I dragged him into the car with us. He was hesitant at first, telling me I better get some sleep and call him the next day when I was sober again. But I pushed him, hungry for every opportunity to forget that I fell for Matthew hook, line, and sinker.
“No…” I mutter to myself when it dawns on me how the night turned out in the end.
With Matthew’s fingers inside of me because I was too sloshed to push him away.
Well done, Sam. You did the opposite of what you were supposed to do, which was stay away from him. Far, far away.
Well, at least as far as the property line goes.
How could I have been so stupid? How could I even let him near me after what he’s done? And why the fuck didn’t the others come to my aid and kick him out?
I rub a spot on my temple, feebly trying to put the puzzle pieces of last night together. I remember Matthew deleting the picture on his phone, showering me with a hundred crap-ass apologies. I also remember him babbling something about how Jillian did a number on me in regards to their engagement, that he never proposed to her. God only knows if he told me the truth. She flaunted the ring, for fuck’s sake.
