Page 118 of Getting it Wrong (Addy's Rollercoaster)

I had to turn sideways in the small space to get to him. I didn’t want to go to him, but I did.

“I got sick. Collin was merely concerned. I don’t feel well.” I put my hand on Martin’s arm. “Can we go?”

I pleaded with him on my behalf and Collin’s. We’d both made our mistakes, but we’d once been something beautiful, and I had enough bad outcomes on my conscience. I wasn’t diseased, only cursed.

“Yes, my dear, of course.” A dark spark illuminated Martin’s gaze. In private, he could take his anger out on me sooner. “If you don’t feel well, we must get you home.”

He pulled me into him, pressing my face to his chest. I was staring at his crimson necktie, but looking up, I saw him glaring at Collin over my head. There might be someone he hated worse than me.

“I suggest you attend to Miranda. She is quite distraught. My father didn’t take the news well. If you were thinking to gain entrance into this family by knocking her up, you thought wrong.”

“Addy, are you in here?”

A familiar voice echoing inside my head, I winced and opened my eyes. I hurt all over, but worse than the physical pain was the humiliation. Martin knew that.

“Addy!” Miranda shouted again, but now it seemed real and louder.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed.

Through swollen eyes, I saw her. Aghast, she held on to the door frame of Martin’s bedroom and stared at me.

Struggling to sit up, I blinked, hoping to wish her away. I wanted Miranda to be a hallucination, didn’t want anyone to see me like this. But she remained frozen like a statue in the doorway.

“Did my brother do this to you?”

She came and dropped down to her knees beside where I’d been curled up on the floor, battered and naked. Chained to the bed, I couldn’t slide beneath it to hide like I wanted to. My cheeks burned with mortification. Another shame to absorb and suffer alone.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. How could I know?” She touched my bruised cheek, and a moan slipped from my cracked and swollen lips. “You look terrible. We need to get you to a hospital.”

Standing, she threw her long ponytail over her shoulder and pulled a phone from the pocket of her jeans. Not designer attire that I could tell, but the dark denim fit her well, molding to her slender frame. She must be early on in her pregnancy and not showing her condition yet either.

“No hospital.” I tried to stand but couldn’t.

She gave me a look. “Of course you’re going to a hospital.”

“No.” I grabbed her leg. Martin wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t like her being here at all. “If your brother wanted me to go to a hospital, he wouldn’t have chained me to his bed.”

He could come back at any minute and find me with her, and that thought terrified me. Naked, cold, hurt, and scared, I began to tremble, and that made everything worse, triggering tears.

“Don’t look at me like that, Miranda. Please don’t tell anyone.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. And maybe I was. Her brother’s craziness was a disease that I’d caught.

“How can you expect me not to tell anyone?”

“You owe me.” Desperate, I lashed out. “You have Collin now.”

Miranda flinched like I’d slapped her.

Honestly, I didn’t want Collin now. I didn’t want anyone, but she didn’t know that.

“It wasn’t something I chose to do. It just happened, and only a couple of times.” She bit down on her lip. “He only came to me for sex, but he always went back to you. He wasn’t even conflicted. It was you he loved.” Her brown eyes filling, she laid her hand over her abdomen. “He still loves you.”

She might be right, but Collin’s love was as warped as Martin’s affection. “Did your brother know you and Collin were having sex while Collin and I were together?”

She nodded. “He said with you out of the picture, Collin would come to love me, but he hasn’t. And now with the RDA deal dead, and he and Andy going nowhere as a duet, Collin is so frustrated and angry, all he wants is to get high with Andy.”

“He didn’t seem high at your parents’ house.”

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