Bad For You

by Parker, Weston

  “Of course. My nephew is the same age, and he and my sister are visiting. Take all the time you need. He’ll be fine here.”

  “Thank you,” I choked out, my throat so tight that it was almost painful to speak. “We’ll see you soon.”

  It took me longer than I was proud of to get myself together enough to face Lou. In the space of that one phone call, my life had fallen to pieces, but that didn’t mean he had to know about it just yet. He loved Tristin. I couldn’t yank the rug out from underneath him again when he was only just finding his footing.

  Thankfully, I had a small package of wipes and a compact mirror in my purse. After putting myself back together the best I could, I gathered up Lou and told him I was dropping him off at Shelley’s for a while.

  He looked confused over the change of plans for a minute, but then he shrugged when I told him Shelley’s nephew was vising. “Sure. That sounds like fun. Ms. Hart is nice. I hope he is too.”

  “I’m sure he will be,” I said in as confident a tone as I could muster, my fingers white-knuckling the steering wheel as I fought to hold back the deluge of emotion threatening to break free at any given moment.

  Shelley, being the rock star of a friend that she was, was waiting for us on her porch. She ushered Lou in as fast as she could, hugged me, and told me again that he was welcome to stay as long as I needed him to.

  Once I was back in my car, I picked up my phone with shaking hands and texted Tristin to come over. It took me another few minutes to calm the flow of tears enough again that I could see, and then I drove home for the big confrontation.

  It felt like the floor had dropped out from underneath me and I was plummeting into the depths of hell itself. Was I being cheated on? Lied to?

  Was I the dirty mistress? The not-so-secret lover of the powerful man? Dear Lord, has he really turned me into a cliché on top of everything else?

  I didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to believe that Tristin was such a good actor, such a good liar, that I’d really fallen for nothing but empty lines and bullshit promises. But those pictures spoke a thousand words, and none of them were ones I wanted to hear.

  33

  TRISTIN

  Brittany had recently given me a key to her place. After knocking and receiving no reply, I let myself in with it and immediately knew something was wrong.

  Lou was nowhere to be found. There was no laughter or chatter coming from anywhere in the small interior like there usually was. The television was off, and the atmosphere in here was like someone had died.

  My heart started thundering in my chest, my palms becoming sweaty when I made my way from room to room and found the place empty. It wasn’t until I reached Brittany’s room that I found any sign of life, but she was sitting on her bed with her knees drawn up and arms around them, staring out the window and looking like everything good inside her had died.

  As soon as I saw the emptiness in her swollen, red-rimmed eyes, my lungs threatened to close up. “Where’s Lou? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine. He’s with Shelley,” she said, but there was no inflection in her tone. It was flat, lifeless, and fucking terrifying. “Why did you do it, Tristin?”

  “What?” I frowned so deeply I was pretty sure my face was going to stay this way. “Why did I do what?”

  She reached for something on the bed beside her, and it was only when she tossed it at me that I realized it was her phone. Then she went back to staring out the window while I glanced down at the screen and felt all the blood draining from my body.

  “Why did you lie to me about her?” Brittany asked while I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. This was from the night we went out to dinner. When Faye had—

  It was then that I remembered those flashes of light. They weren’t from the Marstons’ security system. They had to have been camera flashes. The paparazzi had been there, but how had they found us? Even I hadn’t known I’d be driving her home. I definitely hadn’t known she was about to fucking kiss me.

  And that was when I realized what must have happened. “I didn’t lie to you, baby. Faye spoke to me at the party. She said she was taking on a bigger role in her family company and asked me if I could give her some advice sometime. I agreed, because why wouldn’t I?”

  “It seems you gave her a hell of a lot more than advice,” she gritted out.

  I strode over to her, sinking down on the bed and reaching for her hands. She wouldn’t give them to me. Wouldn’t even look at me, for that matter.

  “I didn’t, Brittany. I fucking swear to you that I didn’t kiss her back. She asked me if we could get together to talk about a proposal she had for us to work together on something, but as soon as I got there, I realized it was more of a come-on than a business meeting.”

  “So what? Her proposal was that you kiss her?”

  “No.” I rammed my hands into my hair, gripping the ends as a string of curses a mile long spilled out of me. Some of them weren’t even in English, but in other languages I’d picked up bits and pieces of along the way. “I told her I was in a relationship, set her straight, and then got up to leave. You have to believe me, baby.”

  “I don’t have to believe you, actually. Those aren’t pictures of you two together in a restaurant and you getting up to leave.”

  “Because she asked me for a ride home,” I roared, desperation and agitation rising within me like beasts who were out for blood. “Her dad had their driver, and she didn’t want to take a cab. I thought it was stupid, but I said yes anyway. Nothing fucking happened between us. When we got to her place, she threw herself at me. That’s all that’s happening in that picture. She tried to kiss me, and I shut her down. That’s it.”

  Brittany scoffed. “It doesn’t look like that was it.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but I swear to you that I’m telling the truth.” I silently begged her to just look at me, but she didn’t. She just kept sitting there like a fucking stone, staring at her garden outside like it held the secret to everlasting life. “I know this is going to sound like an excuse, but if you’d just look into my eyes, you’d know that I honestly believe it. I’m sure my mother is behind all this and that Faye’s working with her. I saw her texting someone when we got in the car. It’s the only way the paparazzi could’ve been there and—”

  “If the paparazzi hadn’t been there, would you ever have told me any of this?” she asked, finally twisting around to look at me. It was what I’d wanted, but the pain in her eyes was un-fucking-bearable. “Because you’ve had weeks to tell me, Tristin. Weeks. Why should I believe you now?”

  “I didn’t tell you because when I tried to phone that night, you were already asleep. The next day you called me about Lou, and we’ve been kind of busy with that ever since. The kiss didn’t mean anything to me. I told you, I didn’t even kiss her back. The whole thing meant so little that I haven’t even thought about it again. Especially not with everything else that’s been going on.”

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to put all the pieces together in my head. “My mother must’ve seen that picture of us and decided to do something about us. She’s always been manipulative, and she’s been trying to control me forever. Don’t let her—”

  “I know all about how manipulative she is and all about how much she’s always tried to control you. Why do you think I broke up with you in the first place? She told me to. She said I’d be ruining your life and your future if I didn’t.”

  Brittany kept talking, but I couldn’t hear another word she was saying. Blood rushed to my ears, pounding as the truth of her words sank in. Rage whipped around like a brewing firestorm in my veins. To say I was livid with my mother was an understatement.

  “She did what?” I couldn’t help it. I needed to hear her say it again.

  She let out a sigh, then closed her eyes as she revealed everything to me that she been holding back for so long. When she was done, I stared into her eyes. “And you believed her? It never occurred to you to talk to me about
it? In the last fifteen fucking years, you never thought that I might want to know why the love of my life left me out of nowhere?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” she said miserably. “Don’t you get it? If I’d told you, you’d have said she was wrong, and you’d never have gone into the military. We’d both have spent the rest of our lives wondering if you should have. I didn’t want that for either of us.”

  “What about now? Or at any point between now and then? You could’ve sent me a carrier pigeon, or a smoke signal, or anything to let me know you still wanted me. We could’ve worked something out together, and that’s not to mention that I’ve been back for more than a month.”

  “You’re back because your father had a heart attack!” Her features pinched together as her voice rose an octave or four. “I don’t know if he was in on it or not, but if you saw the look on your face right now, you’d understand why I didn’t want to risk it. If you go off on your mother right now, if you do anything that rips your family apart, it could kill him.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, but… “Do you honestly think I don’t know that? The only reason, and I mean the only fucking reason, I’ve been putting up with my mother and her bullshit, with Faye, with the party, with all of it, is because of my father. I’ve never been as livid with anyone as I am with her right now, but this is my life too, Brittany. You didn’t only wreck your own life when you listened to her and decided not to talk to me about it, you wrecked mine too.”

  A burst of hysterical laughter came out of her. “How did I wreck your life, Mr. CEO of a global company? The prodigal son who returned to save the day after his illustrious career as a superstar pilot. Surely, you’ve seen what the media are saying about you. You’re a hero. I’d hardly call that a wrecked life.”

  I clenched my jaw, grinding my teeth together before I said something I would regret. “They’re saying all those things about me, sure. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been pretty much empty inside for all this time. How many times do I need to say this before you understand it? You’re the only one I want. You always have been, and I’ll do whatever it takes to prove it. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have told me what was going on. We could’ve figured it out together, Brittany.”

  Our gazes locked. For a few long, terrifying minutes, I thought I’d lost her again. That we’d crossed the point of no return for good this time.

  But then, just when the last embers of hope were burning themselves out in my chest, I saw the moment the fight disappeared from her eyes. She let out a heavy breath and slumped back against her pillows.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say here. How am I supposed to trust you when there’s a picture out there of you kissing another woman? And even if you’re telling the truth, which for some fucking reason I still kind of believe you are, what about your mother? She’s going to keep doing these kinds of things.”

  “No, she’s not.” Over my dead body.

  Brittany opened her mouth to reply, but I didn’t let her. I wound my arms around her, pulling her to me and kissing her to stop the words I couldn’t let her say. She couldn’t tell me that it was over. That she was letting my mother win. That she wasn’t willing to fight for us.

  Instead of pushing me away like I’d thought she might, she parted her lips and kissed me back with the same desperation that I felt. Things escalated fast. Our clothes went flying, our mouths slamming back together again as fast as they possibly could after our shirts came off.

  There was no rhyme or reason for how things were happening. My one shoe dropped long before the other, her jeans only halfway down her legs when she decided mine had to come off first.

  We grappled for control, but eventually I let her take over. Lying back on her bed when she pushed against my chest, I lifted my hips as she pulled my pants and underwear down in one movement. Her hot mouth closed over my tip, and I groaned as my hips jerked up.

  It felt so fucking good, but it also didn’t feel right. There was an edge to her desperation that I didn’t like. A bittersweet look in her eyes when she glanced up at me that cracked my heart in half. I needed it to be gone. And I knew just how to chase it away.

  34

  BRITTANY

  Breakup sex was a funny thing. A concept I’d never really understood. The same could be said for angry sex. If people were breaking up or angry with one another, I’d just never really gotten why or how they would end up having sex.

  Angry, heartbroken, and breakup sex all rolled into one was a whole different creature. One that shouldn’t have existed, but it did. As I was learning at this very moment.

  It was crazy, but it was like I couldn’t stop that creature from taking me over. Like it was driving me to have just one last time. To say the goodbye we should’ve said all those years ago and never got to say.

  With Tristin’s rock-hard cock in my mouth, it was possibly the worst time to start crying, but I couldn’t stop the tears from springing to my eyes. My insides were in such a mess of emotions that even I didn’t know how I was really feeling. Angry, heartbroken, hurt, horny, desperate, helpless, and defeated all came to mind, but none of them seemed like a strong enough word by itself to really describe what was going on inside me.

  What I’d been trying to prove when I’d suddenly gone down on him, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I’d wanted to leave him with one final memory of me making him feel good. He moaned and ran his hands through my hair, his hips thrusting and his veiny shaft throbbing between my lips, but then just as suddenly, I was on my back and he was tearing the rest of my clothes off.

  I could cry for having had that one last opportunity to make him feel anything positive about me stolen from me, but when he buried his head between my legs and licked me like I was a Popsicle on a hot summer’s day, I also wanted to cry because I knew it would never feel this good again. Grabbing my pillow out from under my head, I shoved it over my face and let the tears go free right along with the moans.

  It was the most surreal, confusing experience of my entire life, and yet it was also exactly what I needed. To say goodbye. To close this chapter on what might’ve been but never really stood a chance.

  My first orgasm was so beautiful that it, too, made me cry. Tristin kissed the tears away, then kissed my lips when he finally sank into me after only stopping long enough to put a condom on.

  His gaze stayed on mine as he buried himself inside me, and I swore there were times when it looked like he had tears in his eyes too. It was all too much for me, and eventually, I let my lids flutter closed and just focused on committing the feel of him to memory.

  What had started out as nothing more than to satiate the need to say goodbye turned into fast and hard fucking before it slowed down into lovemaking. It lasted forever and not long enough at all.

  When he finally found his own release after driving me over the edge again, I rolled away from him as soon as he was done. If I cuddled, if I let myself stay in his arms for even one more minute, I wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done.

  “Where are you going?” he murmured as he sat up when I crawled out of bed. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes hazy, and his hair a mess.

  Knowing it would be the last time I got to see him like this, I smiled sadly and reached for my clothes. “I’m getting dressed. You should too. I need to go pick Lou up, and you need to leave.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I hid my face behind my hair as I pulled my jeans back on, struggling to fight off the urge to cry some more. “I made a mistake in thinking we could get past the obstacles between us. I don’t fit into your world, and I never will. Frankly, neither will Lou.”

  “What the fuck, Brit?” He raked his hands through his hair and stared at me with utter disbelief in those golden orbs I loved so much. “We just had sex, and now you’re telling me it’s over? I mean, I knew there was something bad going through your head, but I figured we’d moved past it at around orgas
m number three. Just talk to me. Please?”

  “We didn’t move past anything. Don’t you see? We can’t move past it because ‘it’”—I made air quotes with my fingers—“is your entire world. It’s your mother, your father’s life, your family’s company, your grandfather’s legacy. Those aren’t things we can just get over or move past.”

  He threw his arms out to his sides, still not making a move to get out of my damn bed. “That’s bullshit. Bullshit and noise, remember? Would you just stop for one fucking minute and really think about it?”

  “I can’t, Tristin.” My voice broke, and I held all the air in my lungs, squeezing my eyes shut as I jammed my shirt over my head. “I can’t slow down because my world is crumbling around me, but I’m a mom now. At least in reality, if not in name, and I need to go pick up Lou. You need to leave. Go back to Faye and tell your mother I’m done. This isn’t a game, as you correctly pointed out. It’s my life. Lou’s life. He’s already had a shitty run at it. The last thing he needs is to have your mother gunning for him too when she realizes her latest play didn’t work to break us up. If she won’t accept me being part of your life, she’ll never accept a child who comes from where he does. Especially not one with his behavioral history.”

  “That’s what’s happening here? You’re breaking up with me because of my mother?” he spat, clearly upset as he started throwing on his own clothes. “Again? Despite the fact that you know I’ve never let her control me, but now you’re letting her control you? A-fucking-again?”