With His Protection (For His Pleasure, Book 15) (5 page)

Bryson wasn’t the type to come in and clean up, and yet the bed appeared made, the room had that stuffy, musty smell.

Anger rose up inside of her with surprising intensity. She stormed out of the spare room and found Bryson in the kitchen, making coffee. Why he was making coffee at this time of night, she didn’t know or care.

He saw her face and grew concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” She laughed. Her cheeks were burning. “Tell me where she slept last night.”

He stared at her. “Tell you—“

“Tell me where Eliza slept, and don’t fucking lie to me.”

He licked his lips. “She slept in my bed and I slept on the floor.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true,” he said. “You want to call and ask her?”

“I don’t want to speak to her. Or you.” She turned and stormed out of the kitchen, but Bryson followed her.

“You’re so determined to make me the villain,” he said.

She spun on him. “Because you are the villain. You let her sleep in your bed?

How could you do that to me?”

“I wanted to explain. You won’t listen to me.”

“Because all you do is lie. All you do is lie.”

“Tell me when I’ve lied to you,” he said.

She turned away, started toward the spare room. “Forget it. Just—just forget it.

It really doesn’t matter anyhow. I don’t know why I let myself care, but I’m going to stop immediately.”

“You need to shut up and listen to me for five minutes,” Bryson said.

She walked into the spare room and went to shut the door but he’d already come inside. He was in her space again, his eyes locking on hers, his body coming closer, his heat radiating outward.

“Nothing you say is going to change my mind.” She stared at him. “Nothing.”

“That’s fine. But I still want to say it.”

“Of course you do. Because all that matters is what you feel, right?”

He smiled sadly. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

She sat down heavily on the bed. She felt beyond tired, suddenly. She was exhausted and crushed beneath the weight of disappointment. “Just go ahead and tell me whatever it is you want to tell me, Bryson. Put me out of my misery.”

He stood there. “You have to promise that what I’m going to say doesn’t leave this room. You can’t tell anyone.”

She looked up at him. “What are we, in middle school? Should we pinky swear?”

“I need your word that you won’t—“

“Fine. I swear I won’t tell.” She waved him off. “Satisfied?”

“I guess I’ll have to be,” he muttered. After a moment, he took a deep breath.

“You asked me about the butterfly tattoo on my back,” he said.

“That was when I actually cared about your past,” she said.

He winced a little. “Well, the thing about that tattoo--it’s a very painful subject for me. And I’ve never told anybody what it means. Nobody.”

For the first time since he’d come to get her that night, Scarlett felt a pang of curiosity. But then the cynical part of her spoke up, wondering if this was all some line of crap that he was spouting to regain her sympathies.

Remember, he’s a writer. Making stuff up is what he does for a living.

“I’m listening,” she said, keeping her voice neutral.

“I got that tattoo because I promised myself I’d never forget the biggest mistake of my life.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not sure what she was apologizing for.

“What the hell. I guess it’s time I talked about it. I guess it’s really time.” His voice sounded choked.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Bryson walked over to the window and looked outside. “It all started when I met Carrie. She and I lived next door to one another when I was just a little kid—we were the same age and somehow it just happened. We became best friends almost instantly. She was like a tomboy—she loved sports and climbing trees and playing video games.”

“I thought this was about your tattoo,” Scarlett said, annoyed that he was now talking about an entirely new girl in his life—as if he didn’t have too many already.

“It is about my tattoo,” he said, an edge creeping into his voice. “Or would you rather I just go away?”

She fell silent. The truth was, she did want to know about his tattoo. As much as she was pushing Bryson away, she honestly hungered to understand him.

“No,” she said quietly. “I want to hear the story.”

He went back to staring out the window. “A few years later, we moved to a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood. Carrie stayed where she was, but we remained good friends. We still went to the same school, we talked on the phone, hung out.

Everyone assumed we were a budding romance, but we never were any of that. We were just great friends. There were times, as we got older, that I saw cracks appearing.”

“Cracks? What sort of cracks?” Scarlett asked, intrigued now.

He sighed. “Carrie would mention that things were bad at home. She didn’t like getting into specifics. I got the sense that her parents fought a lot, and maybe there were worse things than that going on. I just knew that as we got older, Carrie seemed a little less happy each year.”

Scarlett thought about her own childhood, and felt the stirrings of sympathy for this girl she’d never met, even as she felt jealousy that Carrie was so special for Bryson that he’d never forgotten her.

“Did you want to be more than friends with her?” she asked, as he seemed lost in his own world for a little while.

He blinked, coming back to the present, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t think so at the time. As we got into our teenage years, I was becoming more popular, starting to date cheerleaders and that kind of thing. Carrie was struggling to find her way.

We slowly became more and more distant as my sports and school obligations interfered.”

Scarlett nodded. “You mean she didn’t fit into your social circle or your life anymore.”

Bryson flinched a little at her statement. “Maybe not.” He sighed. “It wasn’t intentional, though. I was still a kid, and I was wrapped up in my own life, my own problems.” His face seemed to grow pale and his eyes became distant, wounded. “One day, Carrie asked if we could take a walk together after school. I remember thinking that it was a strange request, because the two of us hadn’t been hanging out much at all. She had a new circle of friends—I thought she even had some older boyfriend. But I agreed to go with her.” His voice grew hoarse and his breath caught in his throat as he spoke.

Scarlett realized that he was on the verge of tears.

She didn’t like seeing him in pain, no matter what he’d done or how upset with him she might be. “You can tell me, Bryson,” she said softly. “It’s okay.”

He nodded, licking his lips and clearing his throat, but unable to make eye contact with her. He stared at the floor. “I can still remember that day like it was just moments ago. Everything is vivid. The smell of the fall air, the scent of freshly cut grass, the school football field where I practiced was greener than any green I’ve known. The two of us walked next to one another, our feet hitting the pavement, watching our shadows on the sidewalk beside us as we talked. Even though I’ve replayed it a thousand times in my mind, it’s still just as vivid now as it’s ever been. ” Bryson shook his head before going on. “Carrie told me she wanted to just walk for a little while, so neither of us said much at first. Finally, she looked over at me and asked me if I knew that she was in love with me.”

Scarlett was transfixed by Bryson’s expression, a look of desperation and fear and regret. Still, she wasn’t sure why. It sounded like a simple case of puppy love, and yet obviously there was more to it than that. “What did you say to her?” Scarlett asked him, as he once again seemed to lose his train of thought.

Bryson grimaced. “I said that I didn’t have a clue, that I always just thought we were friends. And that was true—but in a way, it was also a lie. Some part of me did know that there was more. I noticed the way she looked at me sometimes when things got quiet and we’d stopped giggling and laughing. As we’d gotten older, I noticed that she began wearing more revealing clothes, touching my arm or my leg, almost being flirtatious. Although she’d hidden it well, I also sensed jealousy when I started dating a new girl. She might make a little joke at the girl’s expense, roll her eyes if I mentioned her name. The signs were all there—I’d just decided it was easier to ignore them.”

Scarlett nodded, fully understanding the picture he’d painted. “That sounds very normal—it’s a common occurrence. First love can be painful.”

Bryson shifted his gaze back to the window. “Sometimes it can be more painful than others.” The wind suddenly picked up again, rattling the windows. Bryson continued his story. “When I told her that I hadn’t noticed her feelings for me, Carrie got upset. She said that I’d dropped her—that my friendship had been the best thing in her life and I’d simply taken it away without a second thought. I felt attacked by her, she was so angry and it caught me off guard. So I replied that it wasn’t my fault, and I told her that I was busy with school and sports and that we were getting older and she should stop pinning her happiness on me. Carrie was crying, and she got more and more upset. She told me that she sometimes wanted to die, and that her home life was hell.”

Bryson stopped, considering for a long moment. “In the end, I just wasn’t ready to handle what she was telling me. I was afraid of her in that instant. And I just blew her off. I said I had to go home, and I basically took off on her. And the worst thing is, I remember the relief I felt when I’d finally gotten away.”

Scarlett watched him closely. His shoulders were hunched, his jaw clenched. He was in tremendous emotional distress. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Bryson.”

He turned to face Scarlett, and his expression was cynical. “Of course not. I just did what I’ve always done. I thought about myself. I thought about the fact that I didn’t want to deal with anything messy. I wanted everything to be easy, and Carrie wasn’t easy. So I walked away and never looked back. We stopped speaking to each other. I would pass her in the halls at school or see her in the mall and it was as if we’d never known one another. I pretended not to notice the hurt and rejection in her eyes. But it was there, and deep down I knew I’d caused it.”

“You didn’t cause it. She said herself that her home life was hell. That’s what caused her pain, not some unrequited love she had with you as a kid.”

“The story’s not over yet,” he told her.

“Okay, then. I’m listening.”

Bryson went on. “A few years passed and now we were in high school. Carrie had become something of a beauty, a late bloomer that the guys were just starting to take notice of. At the same time, she seemed to be hanging out more with the type of crowd that I considered losers—the ones who smoked and didn’t play sports and didn’t always go to class. Carrie was someone I didn’t know anymore, and I rarely thought about the friendship we’d had. But one night, that all changed. I’d gone to a huge party, one of those things where some kid’s parents went away and somehow it ends up being a five keg affair and kids from every nearby town are there.”

Scarlett laughed a little, picturing a younger Bryson showing up at a party in his varsity letterman jacket, strutting around with his puffed up ego and his fuck you attitude.

“I remember those parties,” she said. And it was true, she’d been to her fair share of those things in her teenage years, before she’d left home for good.

“I was walking around like I owned the place,” Bryson said. “And it just so happened that Carrie was there, too. And for the first time, I realized that she was absolutely gorgeous. It was as if I’d never really seen her—never truly looked at her before. I was blown away by how badly I wanted her. She ignored me, of course, but I finally found an excuse to say something to her. At first, she was cold and disinterested.

But I was pretty tenacious when it came to getting what I wanted—no matter the cost to anybody else.” At this, his lips curled back in disgust. He breathed out hard, regained his composure and went on. “I started to wear her down, making her laugh, bringing back old memories, melting the ice. Besides, both of us were drinking and she might have even been on something else.”

“Something else? Like what?” Scarlett said.

“I don’t know. I never bothered asking,” was his terse reply. “Anyway, eventually I was able to coax her to my car, and we sat inside and talked and flirted and finally kissed. One thing lead to another, and we ended up having sex.”

Scarlett took a sharp breath, surprised for some reason. “You had sex that fast?”

“Yup,” he said. He wasn’t proud of it, he was just matter-of-fact. “We had sex and then she told me that she’d never stopped thinking about me. She confessed that she’d even come to the party hoping that she might see me there.”

“She was stalking you,” Scarlett said.

“Maybe.” Bryson allowed himself a smile. “Maybe she just loved me.” He swallowed and went on. “For my part, I was confused. I knew that I was incredibly attracted to her, but she didn’t fit into my life. She didn’t fit into how I saw myself or my future. She was different; I couldn’t take her home to my parents, none of my friends would have accepted her…”

“I thought you said guys were starting to notice her,” Scarlett reminded him.

He looked at Scarlett, his eyes locking on hers. “You know high school boys.

And you probably know that there are certain girls who they might talk about, girls that are considered slutty, easy, dirty. Whatever the term of the day.”

Scarlett nodded, thinking that she’d certainly been one of “those girls” herself.

“That’s the way they looked at Carrie,” he said. “She wasn’t the nice girl. She wasn’t an athlete or a prom queen or from a good family. She was the girl that a guy would talk about taking under the stairwell or screwing in their car—“

“Like what you did to her,” Scarlett said, suddenly angry at his simplistic characterization.

“Bingo,” he said, his eyes hardening.

And then Scarlett saw the sick look on his face and realized that he was actually sick about himself, and his old ways of thinking.