Dirty Little Secret (Dirty #1) (17 page)

“It’s not that simple, Cutter.”

Her words make me sick to my stomach.  I had to grip the back of a chair to keep from doubling over.

“It really is, Melissa.”

She stared me down with that familiar, stubborn look on her face.  The one she had before she made some bitchy, smart-ass comment, perfectly designed to cut me down and put me in place.  Like she knew with complete certainty that whatever I’d just said was bullshit.

Jesus.  It was hot.  It was what had attracted me to her in the first place, that unwillingness to back down.  I needed to wipe it off her face before I convinced myself I was the right guy for her and that she could possibly be telling the truth.  Before I dove across the room and sunk my tongue into her mouth.

“I’m just glad I was right,” I stated before she could speak.

“How does this situation make you right?” she demanded.

“I wanted to prove you wanted to fuck me. Done. I wanted to prove you were a deceitful bitch. Done. And I wanted to humiliate you. Done.”

Her face went ten shades of red. “Fuck. You.”

“Never.” My voice was cold. “Go back to Danny. Fuck
him.
Marry him. Be his problem. Just stay the hell away from me.”

She spun to go, and I closed my eyes.  I couldn’t stand the thought of watching her leave.

I heard her sharp intake of breath, and the slam of the door.

Jesus. What did I just do?

I needed to go after her.  To explain why I was letting Danny have her.  To tell her how fucking sick I felt about it, but that this was how it should be.  For her sake. 

No.

What I actually needed to do was to stop myself from doing any of that and let Melissa have a good goddamned life, uncluttered by a man like me.

I grabbed my phone and dialed Galini, the ever-helpful probation officer.

“Pleasant surprise, Cutter,” he greeted. “How was the wedding?”

“Perfect. I still hate everyone in my family, and I still want to kick Juice’s ass.”

Galini went silent, and I was pleased as fucking punch that I’d shocked him.  I was tired of bending to his will.

“You there, buddy?” I prodded.

“I’m here, Cutter. Can I ask…Are planning on acting on your feelings?”

I barked out a laugh. “Hell, no. I’m going home early
, and I just want you to lock me back up. Give me an hour, okay, and then turn the monitor back on.”

“You’re sure? You have the whole day to –“

“I’m sure,” I interrupted. “Over and fucking out.”

I hung up the phone and put my head into my hands.  Relief mingled with regret and I had to rein in a strong urge to break something.

MELISSA

“Did you get your stuff?” Danny asked.

His voice was quiet.  Almost humble.  It hid any trace of the man he’d been the night before, and any trace of curiosity about Cutter, or why a man like that had let a girl like me stay with him all night without trying to sleep with me.

Then again,
I admitted to myself.
The solid spank of rejection I gave him yesterday might’ve been enough to make him think I really am a frigid bitch.

“Mel?”

Crap.  Had Danny been talking to me?  I looked at his face, and remembered that he had asked me a question, but couldn’t recall what it was.

“Did you get your stuff?” he repeated.

“Oh. I made a mistake,” I replied. “I thought my purse was in his room, but it must be in yours.”

“Ours.”

“What?”

“It must be in
our
room.”

“Right.”

I followed him into the room blindly, then stood in the middle of it and stared around.  After a minute, Danny shoved my balled-up clothes in my hands.  I gripped them tightly, but didn’t move.

“I meant what I said before,” Danny told me almost hesitantly.

What had he said before?
I struggled to sort through the outpouring of feelings he’d tossed my way when I knocked on his door.

He was sorry.  He would never pressure me again.  He’d only had the drinks to try and loosen up.  He thought it would be easier if we slept together before we got married.
  He’d made a mistake.  He could give us some time.  Give
me
some time.

“We’re not getting married,” I whispered.

“What?”

“I’m not marrying you,” I stated more loudly.

“You don’t mean that,” Danny argued.

I shook my head.  I wasn’t going to waste time trying to convince him. 

“This has been a messed up few weeks,” he added. “But we’ll get through it. Just like always.”

“What have we ever had to get through?” I asked woodenly.

“I don’t…Just…Things,” he replied lamely.

“Name one.”

“Things aren’t
supposed
to be hard, Mel.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Of course not.”

“I think that they are,” I replied. “Otherwise, why would there be all those sayings?”

“What sayings?”

“What doesn’t kill you make you stronger. Every scar tells a story. And a hundred more.”

Danny looked at me like I was crazy.

“I’m getting dressed,” I sighed.

I dropped my robe, not caring if he saw or not. 

Get your fill now,
I thought.
Because it’s the first, last, and only time you’re going to have the opportunity.

I knew he wouldn’t risk making a move on me again.  Not with all the heartfelt promises he’d just made on repeat. 

Then again…

Maybe
I
ought to make a move on
him
. 

A small amount of emotion finally crept through my numbness.  Bitter anger.  And as soon as I acknowledged it, it bloomed.  Heat th
robbed through me.  It was wild and undirected.  But maybe it
could
be directed, if Danny was still willing.

When I looked up, Danny was staring into another corner of the room.

I took a slow, deliberate step in his direction.  He didn’t move until I was close enough to touch him, until I actually put my hand out and reached for him.  Then he flinched away.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I tried to make my voice sexy. “If you don’t know…”

Da
nny swallowed, and a flush crept up from underneath his shirt. “We have to check out in fifteen minutes.”

I put a hand on his bicep and squeezed it before arching an eyebrow suggestively. “We’ll have to hurry, then.”

“Didn’t we just sort out that we don’t have a reason to hurry?”

I forced a breathy giggle. “That’s not what
I
heard.”

He met my eyes carefully, and removed my hand from his arm.

“I really think we should leave,” he said.

I dropped the pretense of seduction. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want this.”

“I thought you couldn’t wait to hop in bed with me.”

“Mel, you kicked me…you-no-where…and ran out of here and spent the night with someone else.”

I brushed aside the fact that Danny, a grown man, couldn’t say the word balls, and grabbed his arm again.  I stood on my tiptoes, pushing the length of my clothing-free body into his, and pulled his bottom lip between mine. But he grabbed my shoulders, forced me away, and held me at arms’ length.

“Mel, I think there’s something wrong with you.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Just like always. But lately…I feel like you don’t mean anything you say at all.”

With his words, a hollow ache wormed through my heart.  Logically, I knew I’d been
deceiving Danny.  And Shelby.  Though for some reason that seemed the like the same thing, and I’d been kind of counting them as one person instead of two.  I’d lied to him (them) about Cutter.  I’d agreed to marry him (them, if you wanted to count the fact that I’d asked Shelby to be my maid of honor) when I had no intention of doing it.

I’m just as fake as Cutter thinks I am.

“Three minutes ago, you were telling me we could work through anything,” I said stiffly, trying desperately to avoid my self-directed anger.

“And three minutes ago, you were telling me you couldn’t marry me,” Danny countered.

“You’re breaking up with me, aren’t you?” I asked as the realization hit me.

“I think we should take some time,” he replied carefully.

For a second, I stared at him, wondering if he could be any more cliché.  Then I remembered.  Cliché was the whole basis of our relationship.  Blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl.  Tall, dark, and handsome man.  Cheerleader.  Ball player.  It’s not you, it’s me.

Angrily,
I dug my bra and underwear from the pile of clothes, slipped them on first, then shimmied into my jeans and pulled on my torn shirt.

“I can still give you a ride home,” Danny offered.

I gave him a cold stare. “I’ll drive myself. You can pick up your car when you’ve figured out how
you’re
getting out of here.”

I grabbed his keys from the table
.

“Mel…”

“What?” I snapped.

“That was him, wasn’t it?”

“Who?”

“The guy out there. Cutter. He was the one with
the truck. The one who you said touched you.”

Shit.

I gave him a look that probably said it all, and took off before he could ask for any further explanation
.

I made it as far as the bushes outside before I bent over and dry-heaved away my self-disgust.

CUTTER

Why the fuck was I expecting this to be easy?

I stared helplessly at the canvas in front of me, willing myself to paint something that wasn’t Melissa-related. 

When I first got home, I put everything I had into the commissioned piece for the university.  I’d done all I could do on it for now, but I wasn
’t done releasing whatever pent-up pain had been created when I sent her back to her fiancé.

Now almost a week had gone by, and I was still an aching mess.

I slashed the brush across the blank white canvas, leaving nothing but an angry black mark in the middle.

I stared at it, full of
self-loathing and a desire to destroy rather than create.  Impulsively, I grabbed the canvas, lifted it over my head, and smashed it across the easel.

Fuck, it felt good.

I stomped on it with my booted foot, and the whole thing snapped under the aggressive maneuver.

It still wasn’t enough.

I lashed out more, tearing through paintings, complete and incomplete, tossing them into a pile in the center of my studio space.  I grabbed my stack of brushes and threw them on top.

It looks like a goddamned funeral pyre,
I thought, and pictured the whole fucking thing going up in flames.

I squeezed out a few tubes of paint, then frantically searched the room for something, anything that would turn fantasy into reality.

I remembered the lighter in my night stand, and took the stairs two at a time.  My hands reached into a drawer and struck reformed arsonist’s gold.  My fingers closed over the lighter greedily.  In seconds, I was back in my studio, holding it over the destruction.

I knew full well what would happen if I used the lighter. 
After all, it had only been three years since I’d burned my best friend’s bedroom to an ashy end.  I remembered it easily now.

Brandy had confessed her infidelity just two weeks earlier
, and I’d let my fury build through the days, cold and calculating.  Revenge consumed me, and I formed what I thought of as the perfect plan.

I waited until I knew they’d be away from home, then broke in.  I piled every piece of clothing
they had onto the bed, and I lit the whole fucking thing up.  I watched it burn outward, hotter and hotter.  I was frozen to the spot, in perfect contrast to the flames, which danced and moved like they were alive.

It was the sirens that pulled me out, and reminded me that I needed to use the extinguisher I’d brought with me.  I’d let it go on much longer than I intended, though, and most of the bedroom was destroyed.

Would I forgive myself if I destroyed my studio in the same way?  Or the apartment where I lived?  Did I give a flying fuck?

Sadly, I did.  I wasn’t the same man
now I was back then.

I flicked the lighter on, then off, then on again.

“You up there?”

The voice, feminine, familiar, and reminiscent of every good childhood memory
I had, halted my obsessive behavior in its tracks.

“Cutter?”

I tossed my shirt on and climbed down the ladder, and stared cautiously at my sister.  Without our dad and Juice flanking her, it was easier to look at her.

“The door was open,” she said, also cautious.

“Usually is,” I muttered.

“That seems…”

“Unsafe?” I filled in. “Well. You know me. I’ve always liked to live on the edge.”

“You’re covered in paint.”

“Makes sense. I was painting.”

“You’re not making this very easy,” she said.

I don’t even know what
this
is,
I thought.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Sorry.”

Fiona stood awkwardly across the room, holding herself like she was waiting for me to make a move.  Actually, it was more like she
couldn’t
move.  She saw my curious look, and shifted, just enough for me to catch a brief glimpse of rich, brown hair at knee level.

“He’s shy,” my sister announced.

“He?”

“My son.”

A tiny head poked out from behind her, and big blue eyes blinked at me slowly before he disappeared again.

“Come out, Lane,” my sister said softly. “Maybe your uncle has some juice.”

“Lane?” I said, surprise evident in my voice.

“Yes,” she replied. “C’mon, little buddy. Say hi and ask Uncle Cutter if he has a drink for you.”

In response to my sister’s gentle coaxing, the little boy peeked out again and stared up at me.

“Juice?” he said hopefully, but he had a bit of a lisp
, and it sounded more like, “Jooth?”

Did he call his father that?
The small, mean voice popped into my head unbidden, and I shoved it aside forcefully.

“I have some root beer,” I offered, meeting Fiona’s eyes.

“Sure,” she agreed.

I grabbed a can from the tiny fridge, cracked it open, and handed it over.  The little boy – my
nephew,
as weird as it seemed – had to use both hands to grab it from me.

Fiona settled him on the futon, plugged a pair of headphones
first into her phone, then into his ears, and he immediately began tapping on the screen.  My sister smiled fondly at him before turning to me.

“I saw you at the hotel,” she announced. “Thanks for trying.”

My throat constricted a little, and I gave her a tight nod.

“You named him after Mom?”

“Yes.”

“You and Juice?” I asked before I could stop myself.

She ignored the bite in my words. “He isn’t Josh’s biological son. A DNA test ruled him out as the father.”

What did she want me to say to that?  I couldn’t th
ink of something appropriate. 
Good,
is what I thought, but it just seemed too mean with the kid sitting right there.

“Oh,
” I said instead.

“It’s okay to ask who his father is.”

Something in her words made me not
want
to ask.

“He’s four and a bit,” Fiona offered. “You can do the math.”

Automatically, my brain worked its way backward. Four years, plus a bit, plus nine months.  She was fifteen when she got pregnant.  My blood went cold, and it was impossible to cover my horror.

“One of the others?” I spat, stepping away
and knocking over my floor lamp.

Fiona glanced sharply at Lane, but he was still wrapped-up in his game.

“Yes,” she said to me. “One of them. I don’t know which one. I don’t care. Josh doesn’t care. And you shouldn’t, either.”

I ran my hand through my hair, and shook my head, biting back everything I wanted to say in favor of what she wanted to hear.  After all, she was
still my little sister.

“Okay. I don’t care.”

Fiona laughed. “You’re still such a terrible liar, Cutter.”

In spite of myself, I cracked a genuine smile. “Thank you.”

“I understand why you
do
care,” she told me. “And it’s my fault.”

Those words cut like a knife.  They were so similar to the ones she used right after the assault.

“I don’t mean like that,” she amended, reading my expression. “I just mean that it was my responsibility to include you in my life, after. And instead, I kicked you out of it. I testified against you in Josh’s case.”

I tried to shrug it off. “I get it. You were angry at me for interfering in your life.”

“And for picking dad over me. And for not catering to my every need. And for being right, all the time. I took it out on myself, hoping it would punish you, too.”

“I’m sorry for not trying harder.”

“You tried damned hard. Until I wouldn’t let you. When I found out I was pregnant with Lane, I got sober, fast,” she explained. “I was already three months along, and I had to face things I didn’t want to face. I’d tried to send my own brother to jail, and I was having a baby who I couldn’t even remember conceiving. By the time I’d run down all my own demons…It was right around the time you burned that building. I blamed myself for that, too.”

“None of what I did was your fault,” I replied.
“I fu – err – messed that up all on my own.”

Fiona shook her head. “I know that, in my head. Josh and my therapist tell me all the time. But I still need you to forgive me.”

“I can forgive you, Fi, if that’s what you need. I just don’t know if I can ever get past what Josh did to you.”

I glanced down at Lane, who’d paused the game and was now looking at me with a root beer mustache lining his top lip.  My heart tugged a little at his sweet expression
, and I ruffled his hair impulsively.  He grinned and went back to his game.  Suddenly, I wanted that kid in my life.  And my sister, too.

“I can try,” I offered.

“That’s all I want,” my sister replied, then examined my face. “Are you all right? I mean, other than the obvious?”

I sighed softly, remembering a time when we would throw a sheet over our mom’s antique kitchen table, and hide underneath it, exchanging secrets like only a brother and sister can.  There was too much of a rift between us now to fall easily back into that pattern.

“Just a girl problem,” I said as lightly as I could manage.

Fiona looked like she was going to ask for more information, but Lane jumped up suddenly and announced,
“I’m done the game.  You said when I was done, we could go for hamburgers with Daddy. Can we go see Daddy now?”

My sister gave me an a
pologetic look and let her son pull her toward the door. “Sure, Lane. Give your uncle a hug.”

He jumped forward
and crushed me in the four-year-old version of a bear hug before he ran back to his mom and buried his face in her legs.  I followed them to the door, where Fiona paused and gave me a hug of her own. 

“There’s still time,” she
told me, and pressed a piece of paper into my hand. “That’s our number. You can call me, if you want.”

I gave her
a tight nod and closed the door behind her.

When she said there was still time,
I knew she was talking about her, and Josh, and me, but my mind went to Melissa automatically, and I wondered if there
was
still time where she was concerned.  I glanced at my watch, then down at my ankle monitor.  I was on the morning shift.  In twelve hours, when I finished work, I would have approximately thirty-five minutes to drive to her house, and to convince her that my sister’s words were true for us, too.