The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel

by Megan D. Martin

  THIRTEEN

  Faye.

  I watched Sarah bustle around the kitchen. She was humming softly, her red hair swinging back and forth like a puppy dog tail.

  “Are you sure you’ll be alright for the weekend?”

  I nodded absently. In the four days that had passed since Rhett had fucked me against his car, I had felt myself spiraling downward, reality setting in. What happened between Rhett and I wouldn’t happen again. He didn’t have to say those words for me to know it was true. Things were different now. Sarah was happy again and Rhett ignored me. Perhaps that was the only thing that stayed partially the same. Before he had watched me. I could feel his eyes on me whenever I was in the room, but not now. He seemed to only have eyes for Sarah, something that was certainly out of the ordinary.

  “You’re sure?”

  “What? Oh, yes.” I wasn’t okay with it, not really. Her and Rhett were going away for the weekend, getting a hotel in uptown, going to the big aquarium and some other things that made me want rip both their faces off. The trip was impromptu, something Sarah had just told me about the day before. She’d told me in front of Rhett and I expected him to turn her down, brush her aside, or at least deny that the trip was going to happen. But he didn’t. Instead he smiled at Sarah and wrapped his arm around her shoulders like everything was great. Like he couldn’t fucking wait. Like he hadn’t fucked me ruthlessly against the side of his car.

  I cried more in the last four days than I had in years. Was I turning into Sarah all of the sudden? It seemed like it. I didn’t think I could get more pathetic, but I suppose life was really about proving yourself wrong.

  “I’m gonna go hop in the shower. We’re gonna leave in about an hour.” Sarah paused in front of me on her way out of the kitchen. Which led me to question why I was even in there at all. I should be in my room, but I couldn’t bring myself to go in there. To soak in the loneliness. “I’m really glad that everything is over. That things can finally be the way they should be.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came out. What was she talking about? Things with Taylor, or what happened with Rhett? The sour look that pinched her features had mostly lifted, but I could still see it there, just under the surface of her pale skin.

  She hugged me, pulling me into her embrace with both arms and I had to remind myself that this was Sarah. This was the woman who brought me into her home, her life—even when she didn’t have to. The woman who had gone above and beyond for me. And how had I repaid her? I fucked her boyfriend up against his car. I was the terrible person in this situation. Not her.

  But I couldn’t help the anger, the disdain that wormed its way through my system during our hug. How I wanted to wrench myself away from her. I didn’t. But I fucking wanted to.

  “I bet it will be nice to have a few days here by yourself.” She smiled at me and it was genuine. She had two little dimples on the corner of her lips. I couldn’t look at her for long. I couldn’t even form a response. I just nodded. I heard the door to her and Rhett’s room close a few moments later.

  I supposed I was a glutton for punishment, because I sat in the living room for the next hour. Watching them both bustle about taking their bags to the car. Sarah giggling all the while. Rhett didn’t look at me at all. It was as if I was invisible. It made me miss the hate that used to swim in his eyes—the pity. At least that was something. Nothing was worse. It was as if I was a fly on the wall—one that would die before anyone even realized I was there.

  “See you in a few days, okay Faye?” Sarah waved at me from the door a little while later. Rhett was already at the car, waiting for her, I suspected.

  “See ya.” My attempt to sound chipper failed.

  The door closed with a click and I was left alone. The apartment had always seemed small to me. I had never lived anywhere this small. Taylor’s house was huge and my life as a junkie prostitute had been full of wide open spaces. But now that I was alone the apartment could have been as vast as the ocean for how small I felt sitting inside it. It was empty. Full of all the things that Rhett and Sarah had bought together. Their life together. I was the intruder in this world of theirs. I was the problem.

  I hated the tears that came next. I had done well all morning. Holding them in, but now there was nothing to stop them.

  Where will I go from here?

  A terrible ache gripped my chest. All I wanted was Rhett. Did that make me pathetic? Probably. But I couldn’t seem to help it. I yearned for him. The way he acted the other night should have made me hate him. I should hate him for the pity—for the fact that he would never see me as anything but the little girl who fucked his father. But I didn’t. I loved him. I fucking loved him. And the sex—it just confirmed it. Those tormented feelings that had been bottled up inside me for years.

  I pressed my face into my hands, my fingers slipping on my slick skin, when the click of the door opening had me glancing up. It was Rhett who walked back through the door, though unlike before, his eyes fastened to mine and I saw it. There was no missing the sorrow, the yearning in his eyes. I expected him to walk across the apartment and into his bedroom to get whatever he came for. But instead he stopped just inside the door, staring at me.

  It was that look that gave me confidence. It sent my heart into a panic driven frenzy as I jumped up off the recliner.

  “Don’t go.” The words slipped from my lips as quickly as the tears streaming down my cheeks. “Don’t go with her.”

  “I—”

  “You don’t want to go. I know you don’t.” I walked toward him.

  “Faye, this—what happened between us—”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Don’t say it was a mistake. You don’t really believe that.” Part of me wasn’t sure. Part of me didn’t know what the fuck he was thinking. I was good at reading men, but now I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know the signs of love, of compassion. I knew lust. I knew sex. Fucking. But those things didn’t apply here in this space. I stopped just feet away from him. He was wearing jeans today. His hair styled in that sexy way of his. The white v-neck hugged his broad chest. He was perfect. So perfect it hurt.

  Indecision was back in his eyes. He seemed torn, ripped apart.

  “It’s not hard.” The words were thick on my tongue. “You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

  “Faye…”

  “I love you.” There. I said it. I spoke the words I’d wanted to say for a long time. I’d never truly loved someone. Not the way I loved Rhett. My love for Taylor had been exactly as Rhett said—misguided. I’d never loved any other man. Never felt any sort of emotion for anyone else. “I’m in love with you.” The words felt good, like balm on chapped lips, smoothing over all the hurts, the beginning of the healing.

  But the smooth, sweet feeling, it didn’t last long because Rhett looked absolutely gutted by my confession. As if I had taken a knife and ripped him shreds, slashing him from head to toe.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do.” I held by head up, trying my damndest not to crumple in on myself.

  “Faye,” he took one of my hands into his. His touch felt so right, so perfect. We were made for each other. “You don’t love me.”

  “What?” I blinked at him.

  “You’ve been through a lot and that kind of thing… it does things to your head and—”

  “Wait, what?” I pulled my hand out of his. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Your feelings for me are misguided, like they were for my father. I’m the closest connection you have to him, so—”

  “So you think I’m trying to replace him? With you?” I wanted to laugh. I wanted to fucking cackle at the sky at the ridiculousness of this statement. “Where the fuck is this coming from?”

  “It’s just not right. You don’t love me.” His voice cracked on the end.

  “Yes, I do. And you love me, Rhett.” I bit the words off in my mouth. They tasted bad saying them. Forcing them out, making

him see. He had to see it. Had to see that he loved me. I wasn’t the only one in this. I hadn’t imagined everything that happened between us. It wasn’t a figment of my imagination. It was real. I was real. We were real. Here in this moment. It was us and no one else. He had to see that. He had to.

  “I don’t.” He moved past me and I couldn’t see his face, but his words, they blistered my ears.

  “Yes, you do.” I followed him.

  “You’re my sister. I love you as my sister.”

  “You weren’t loving me as a sister the other night.”

  “The other night was a mistake.”

  “Just because you say something over and over doesn’t make it true. It wasn’t a mistake. You fucking know it wasn’t.” Maybe I was grasping at straws. Maybe I wanted these things so badly that I had false hope.

  Rhett picked up his watch off the dresser in his bedroom.

  “Please, Rhett. Don’t go.” I hated the way I sounded. Like a child. A begging child. Who just wanted love.

  He turned around slowly. “I don’t love you, Faye. Not the way you want me to. You don’t love me the way you think you do either. We’re just two unfortunate people in a fucked up situation.” He didn’t look me in the eyes when he spoke. He stared down at his feet. As if he couldn’t bare the sight of me. As if he couldn’t face me and speak the words both.

  “You’re a coward.”

  My words had his head jerking up, meeting my gaze. I wish I could have understood the emotions in his eyes, but I couldn’t. They moved too fast for me to understand. I wanted him to yell at me, but he didn’t. My heart was suspended, there in the air between us. I had put it all on the line. I had given him everything I had. It wasn’t much. It was just my heart. The left over pieces of it after his father had put it through the grinder. It should have been enough. It was supposed to be.

  “I fucked her.”

  “What?” I blinked, confused.

  “The other night. After I fucked you.”

  I shook my head. “What? No—”

  “Yes.” He took a step toward me. “I did. I came home and Sarah wanted it. We hadn’t done it in months.”

  “B-but why?” I hated that my voice shook. That he was ripping my heart to shreds.

  “Because she’s my girlfriend and I can.” The words sounded petty. Like a child.

  “But you love me.”

  “I don’t.” He pushed past me.

  “No. Don’t do this.” But he did do it. He left me there, standing in his bedroom. The one he shared with Sarah. He let my offering, my heart, fall to the floor, the messy heap that it was. And when I heard the front door shut, I was truly alone.

  FOURTEEN

  Rhett.

  The clang of silverware on china ground against my ears as I sat across from Sarah in the overly expensive steak restaurant. It wasn’t just her silverware that seemed to grind against my brain. It was everyone’s. The place was packed. Full of people paying way too much money for a cut of meat they could buy at the store and cook on their own.

  I didn’t want to come here. Sarah did. She planned this little getaway for us. And I let her. I let my guilt wash over me and take control.

  I had sex with Faye. I pushed her up against the grill of my car in a dirty back Dallas alley and fucked her until I came inside her. Faye didn’t realize it, but I took something from her that night that I could never give back. I became something I could never change. I was my father’s son. It didn’t matter that he had been put away for the rest of his life. I would always be his child and fucking Faye only proved that. I was him. I took advantage of a woman who didn’t know any better. She wanted me—she thought she wanted me. But it was misguided, just like her want for him. She wanted me to fill a void. His void, in her life.

  But that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be something else. Someone else. But I couldn’t be. And I didn’t realize it until after. Until after I had her there against me, our bodies connected in the most intimate way. That I would always be Taylor’s son. And he would always be her first love. As fucked up as that was, it would always be there. Hanging over us. I didn’t want to be the man who took my father’s place in her life. I wanted to be so much more. But I couldn’t be. Fate wouldn’t have it.

  And then I came home that night. I walked into my bedroom and saw Sarah. This innocent woman who was faithful and good to me. She was sitting on the edge of the bed her head in her hands. She didn’t want anything from me, nothing that I couldn’t and hadn’t already given her. She was simple. The easy part of my life that I had been letting down for months. So I made love to Sarah in our bed, like I had so many other times. But that time was different. It was different, because the love that ran through me was love I would never be able to give to Faye.

  And that time, when it was over I was the one that cried. After I filled Sarah up with my cum, with all the love and compassion I would never get to give Faye, I bawled my eyes out like a fucking baby. Sarah didn’t say a word. She just held me. Which made it worse. She was a genuine, kind, loving person and I had cheated on her. I had fucked my sister and then fucked Sarah less than an hour later. What kind of person did that make me?

  I am my father’s son.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Huh?” I glanced up at her. She took a sip of her wine. “Oh, yes I’m fine.”

  “You haven’t touched your food, babe.”

  I glanced down at my t-bone steak. It was indeed untouched.

  I watched her take another bite of hers. She wore her hair down tonight, the red strands, brushing against her shoulders. I could remember back when we first met, when I had been entranced by her red hair. The orangy-tinted locks were beautiful, longer back then. She was the sweetest woman I’d ever met, shy and reserved. She said no the first three times I asked her out because she didn’t usually go for guys like me. Guys who cared more about sleeping in and partying. That was my life before law school. But she helped change that. She gave me direction I hadn’t had before. My dad had always been a driven man, but I hated him, even back then. I wanted to be everything he wasn’t.

  Sarah had helped me, given me purpose, motivation. She had been a staple in my life. A continuous presence for the good. Even when I’d lost my best friend in a car accident. I rubbed my chest where his name, Josh, was preserved in ink. She had been there for me like no one else had.

  “Rhett?”

  I coughed into my hand and looked away. “I’m fine.”

  “You look like you’re upset.”

  “I’m good.” But I wasn’t good. Because even though Sarah had been all of these things—this wonderful person in my life…She wasn’t Faye. It didn’t make sense, not on paper. Sarah was everything I could ever hope for. She was everything I could ever possibly want—or need. She had a good job, goals. A lifetime of plans and a past full of happiness. She was uncomplicated and simple.

  But maybe that was problem. Maybe that’s why I didn’t love her.

  I don’t love her?

  “I’m not okay.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not okay,” I repeated.

  She frowned, her brows pinching together. “What’s the matter?”

  “I…” but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what I was feeling. What I was realizing.

  The air seemed to still around us as the silence hung. The clanging of forks and knives seemed to fade away.

  “You love her.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “You love Faye.” She set down her fork and placed her hands in her lap.

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You don’t have to. I’ve known since the moment you brought her into our apartment.”

  “That’s ridiculous, I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t know it then, but I did. I could tell. One look at her and you, and I knew.” She sighed. “You were angry with her. But there was something else there. It’s what I do for a living Rhett. I read people. I listen to people. I’ve learned what to watch for.” Her eyes became glassy as she spoke. “I’ve known all along that what we have wouldn’t be forever.”

  I shook my head, confused. “What? Why?”

  “I led you toward law school. I led you away from your dreams of being a marine biologist. I led you the safe way. I’ve always led you the safe way.” She swallowed and gave me a weak smile. “I thought I was helping you, at first. I thought what we had was good…and it was. But I knew it would be a matter of time before you took risks again. Before you found your way out of the safety I gave you and back to the things you really wanted.”

  “The things I really want,” I repeated dumbly.

  She reached across the table and took my hand into hers. “I should have let you go a long time ago.” She squeezed my fingers. “But I just couldn’t. I wanted to keep you for as long as I could.” She chewed the side of her lip. “I thought I could change things, that I could keep you. I thought I could cover Faye up in cheap clothes. That I could get her sent away. But I just didn’t want to accept that it was real. That she was the one to make you take that leap and see all the things you’ve been missing all along.”

  “Sarah…”

  “Do you remember our first date?” she asked.

  I frowned. “Yes.”

  “You took me to dinner and then to a wine bar.” She smiled. “Do you remember what you told me while we were at the bar?”

  I frowned. I didn’t.

  “You told me that you didn’t believe in love. You’d never seen real love, so you didn’t think it existed.”

  “I said that?” I shook my head. “I sure was a charmer. Why did you ever go out with me again?”

  “Because I wanted to give you that love. The love that you could feel, you could see in everything. I wanted to show you that love, true love was real.” Her lip trembled. “I hope you felt that over these last few years.”

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