Breaking Even (27 page)

“I’ve wanted more since the day you towed my car to fix it. I wanted more the night you slept on my sofa with me. I’ve definitely wanted more since the day you carried me over to your house and made me have the best night I’ve ever had. So yeah. I want more. Every day I want more.”

“I told you it had to be simple,” he says, running a hand through his hair.

“Simple?” I ask incredulously. “This thing between us hasn’t been simple since we met. You’re the most complicated, contradictory, annoyingly frustrating person I’ve ever met in my life. You show up over here because you miss me, you can’t stay away unless you make yourself, and you talk to me like we’re best friends. That’s a relationship, Rye. You just don’t want me to fall in love, but I—”

“Don’t,” he cautions, a hard edge to his voice that I’ve never heard before.

I’ve never seen him look so angry.

“I knew better. You swore this wouldn’t happen. I told you I didn’t want it, and here you are trying to force me into something I don’t want. Something you knew I didn’t want. I don’t want a relationship, and you don’t know jack shit about being in a relationship any more than I do. So don’t try telling me that’s what we have. Because it’s not. Never was.”

I can’t believe him. Who the hell is this jerk?

He starts walking toward the door, but I jump off the sofa to grab his arm. “I don’t know anything about a relationship? I was married!”

The icy eyes that glare into mine aren’t the warm orbs of brown I love. “Yeah, and your marriage turned out real damn well, didn’t it?”

I drop my hand from his arm just as he shrugs me off, and then he walks out of my door, slamming it behind him and destroying me. I just stare at the door like any minute the man I know is going to come in and apologize for the asshole that just left.

But he doesn’t. And when the first tear falls, I’m not surprised. I finally fell in love, and now I know for a fact I’ve never been in love before Rye Clanton, because this hurts. This hurts so damn much.

Right now I hate him more than I hate John Abott because I wish I never fell in love at all.

Chapter 15

RYE

“Thanks for coming over,” Dad says as I step in.

“It’s too soon for you to be remarried, so I assume you have something of real importance to say.”

I can’t even look at him right now. I can’t look at myself either. Shit. I should have never gotten involved with her.

She’s right. I fucked with her head the entire time. It should have been strictly sex, because I complicated the hell out of things. We both did. It was messy from the beginning.

I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I
can’t
think about this.

“I have a few things to go over with you. Mostly financial stuff. I’ve just reworked my will, and everything is going to you when I die.”

If we’re not talking about his loose love life, then it’s something morbid like this. But this conversation is moot because people like him never die. Unless the wicked kill themselves, the good are the only ones to die, and they die too young.

I’ll live for-fucking-ever.

“I don’t want anything. Leave it to
Marilyn
.”

He sighs as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be getting our marriage annulled soon. Marilyn doesn’t deserve my life’s work. I barely know her.”

Another failed marriage. That’s not exactly newsworthy.

“Then find someone else who does want it. It’s guilt money. And I don’t want it. Ever.”

When a tear falls from his eye, I’m actually surprised.

“You’re going to blame me forever, aren’t you? You’re going to hate me forever for being a simple human. I didn’t know your mother was struggling, son. I didn’t know she was capable of doing that with you in the house. I would have gotten her help.”

Memories flash around my head, and I shut them down. Just like I always do.

“She was struggling because she was married to a self-absorbed workaholic that didn’t give a damn about her because he was too busy being a coldhearted son of a bitch.”

His jaw clenches, and he glares at me. “Don’t you dare blame me for her illness! It was a fucking chemical imbalance. My actions did not cause her issues.”

“No. You’re right. Your actions are just the reasons she slit her wrists.”

I turn to away from him, ignoring him as he follows and calls my name. I don’t have anything else to say to him. He never tried hard enough. Just like I didn’t.

I was just ten, and she didn’t care that I had to be the one to find her—to slip in her blood, to cry over her cold, still body. She didn’t love me enough to live, but she loved him enough to die.

Love is a coldblooded murderer. Love is a blanket of lies and spared truths. It’s a calculated monster that drains you of everything you have until you’re a husk of the person you once were.

“She didn’t kill herself because of me. It wasn’t like I was the only man she loved. She killed herself because of the disease that ate away at her mind. I could have gotten her help if I had known.”

I pause at the door, both of my hands fisted as the words process.
It wasn’t like I was the only man she loved
. “Don’t ever say that again.”

“You know it’s true. You can blame me all you want, but it’s not my fault. It’s not her fault. It’s just something terrible that happened too long ago for it still to be ruling you.”

I don’t have the energy to fight with him right now. My anger is still as absent as it has been lately, and all that is driving me is the pain I thought I had buried long ago. I just want to get the hell out of here and go home—where it’s quiet, peaceful, and smells like the girl I should have pushed away much sooner.

***

RYE

“So he said your mom cheated on him?” Ethan asks.

Wren sits back in his chair while I dump another one of the boxes on my bed, scattering the contents as I stagger and take another sip of the whiskey.

“Essentially,” I say, staggering again while throwing a trophy across the room.

I hate trophies.

They both stare as the pieces fall from the wall, carrying a few chips of sheetrock with it on the way to the floor.

“Did you punch him?” Wren asks cautiously, just as I grab a baseball from another box.

I throw it across the room, and it goes through the sheetrock and disappears into the wall.

I hate baseballs.

“Nope,” I say, reaching for the bottle of whiskey and refilling my glass. Ah, fuck it. I’ll just drink from the bottle.

“Do you believe him?” Ethan asks unsurely as my hand hovers over a picture frame.

The picture inside is of me at Little League. I take a painful breath, and then I pick the picture frame up and throw it across the room, watching it as it shatters against the wall.

I hate pictures.

“I don’t have to believe him.”

For the first time since I was a kid, I think about the dark side of my mother. The things I’ve always felt guilty for remembering. Her memory is supposed to be treasured, not tainted. She’s not here to defend herself, and in the end, I was the one who failed her the most. She deserves me to defend her now.

“What does that mean?” Wren asks, his voice quiet, acting as though he’s worried the next thing will be aimed at his head.

I don’t hate Wren. I don’t feel like shattering his skull.

Yet.

“It means he already knows she was cheating,” Ethan says, and my jaw clenches.

They both take a deep breath, and I grab a book of baseball cards and throw the entire thing against the wall. It doesn’t do any damage. It just drops to the ground with a loud
thud.

I hate baseball cards.

“Are you okay?” Wren asks just as I throw a basketball.

They both duck when it ricochets off the wall and barrels toward their heads. Ethan catches it when it tries to bounce off the other wall, and he puts it beside him.

I hate basketballs.

“I’m fucking great. Can’t you tell?” I mutter dryly, grabbing two golf balls.

I hate golf balls.

***

BRIN

The first sound of something crashing startles me awake, and I sit there and listen, trying to see if I was just dreaming. But the loud banging at the door, proves that something is going on.

My tears are even falling in my sleep, so I’m not surprised that my face is wet. I try to dry my eyes as much as I can on my way to go answer the loud, persistent banging.

I’m shocked when Wren Prize is the one looking at me the second I swing open the door. Maggie comes running out of her room, tying her robe, and Carmen is right behind her, tying a robe as well.

Wren stares for a second, tilting his head as he studies them with far too much interest, and I snap my fingers in front of his face.

“Why are you banging on my door at midnight?” I whisper. Though I don’t know why I’m whispering. There’s no one else to wake up.

“We need a first-aid kit,” he says, sighing regretfully as he looks back to me. “And Rye doesn’t have one.”

“Why do you need it?” Maggie asks as she goes to the cabinet.

He looks at me and tightens his lips for a second, and then he answers reluctantly. “Rye sliced his hand open when he was beating up his car.”

What the hell?

“Why was he beating up his car?” Carmen asks.

“Because it’s been a rough day.”

I take the small box from Maggie, and I barge by Wren on my way over to the dumbass’s house.

“I can handle it, Brin. I’m sure you don’t want to see him. Especially like this.”

I don’t want to see him at all. That’s why I’ve spent all day in my room. Since he walked out of here yesterday, I’ve wanted to stay as far away from him as possible.

“Especially like what?” I ask, ignoring his hand as he tries to help me off the curb.

I’m not ninety. I can step off a damn curb without help.

“He’s drunk off his ass, belligerent as hell, and a little violent right now.”

For a fleeting second, I worry it’s about me, but for some reason, I know it’s not. This is something much, much bigger than me. Especially considering he never really let me in enough to cause this sort of meltdown.
He
walked away, after all.

No. This is behind the barrier—the place Rye won’t let me see.

I thought I had learned all there was to know about him, which was foolish. You don’t learn a lifetime of things in a couple of months. But I didn’t know how little I actually knew about him. Yesterday, I realized I didn’t know him at all.

Ethan is standing in the living room when we barge in, and Rye is on the couch, blood pouring from his hand.

“Shit,” I growl, dropping to my knees beside the couch and examining his much-too-deep wound. “Grab a towel and keys. He needs stitches.”

“We can’t take him to the ER like this. I know a nurse,” Wren says with a grimace and heavy hesitation. “Maybe I can talk her into coming.”

He walks away, and Ethan rushes over to me with a towel. Rye groans and mutters something completely unintelligible, and I start applying pressure, doing all I can to limit the amount of blood he’s losing.

“Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” I ask, looking up at Ethan since Wren is still missing from the room.

Ethan frowns as Rye reaches over and tries to grab at me. He’s so drunk that he only misses and falls back to the couch.

“I’d tell you, but I’d rather not end up looking like his Porsche.”

Poor Porsche. That thing just needs to give up.

“Why is he beating up his Porsche?”

“Because he’s beating up everything right now. Trophies, baseballs, baseball cards... the list goes on and on. Then he went outside, and the next thing I know, he has a crowbar and he’s taking his frustration out on the pretty Porsche. But he sliced his hand on the glass.”

I start to speak, but Wren returns, putting his phone away as he frowns.

“She’s coming, but she won’t be very nice.”

“I don’t care if she’s nice. I care if he stops bleeding,” I grumble, but suddenly a hand is in my hair and pulling at me.

“Brin,” Rye whispers, and a piece of my heart melts.

I hate him,
I remind myself.

He keeps pulling, to the point it’s almost painful, and I’m forced to rise up to go with him, keeping a strong grip on the towel and the wound.

“What?” I ask, hoping he’ll let me go, but he keeps pulling until I’m forced to fall on the sofa with him, my body resting on top of his.

“Someone want to help me?” I hiss. Rye’s lips find my cheek, and I curse as he keeps his uninjured hand tangled in my hair.

“I’m not messing with him while he’s like this. I took a shot to the face last year. He won’t hurt you,” Wren says, taking a step back.

“He’d hurt me if I tried pulling you away,” Ethan retorts, stifling a grin when Rye tries to bring up his wounded hand to hold me still.

I stop fighting him just so that he keeps his arm still. Great. This is not how I envisioned our next encounter. I wanted to be inflicting pain—not healing it.

For twenty minutes, Rye cups my ass with his good hand, kissing my neck the whole time, and I fight a battle of misery while keeping his wounded hand elevated and still.

“You’re back,” he says, trailing his lips down to my chest.

“Shouldn’t he be passed out by now?” I groan, feeling tortured and pissed.

“Rye won’t pass out for a while. He’ll slowly start sobering up. He seems to be finding a rhythm with groping your ass,” Ethan says, amused, and I glare at him.

Finally, someone knocks on the door, and relief washes over me.

“Thanks for doing this,” Wren says as a pretty girl with soft, strawberry blonde hair walks in.

She looks like she’s one of the sparklers almost, but she also looks like me. A mixture of the two—ordinary and extraordinary. If that makes any sense.

Who can make sense after being jarred awake at midnight to deal with the man who broke her heart?

“It’s not a big deal. I’ve done more for worse people,” she says coolly, but she smiles when she sees me.

“Girlfriend?” she asks as she drops down and pulls out a kit of her own, her eyes scanning the ever-wandering hand that is brazenly moving all across my ass.