Bad for You by Weston Parker
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.
