Page 64 of His Pretty Little Duet

"To give the baby?—"

"Fawn." He warns. "The truth. Now."

My admissions play with my tongue, wanting to fill the space between us. Is that what intimacy does? What an orgasm does? Makes you open and honest? The Spanish Inquisition would have gone very differently if they had caught on to this nifty trick. Relenting, I admit, "Okay, but I didn't lie to you... I came here to find my dad because I knew he was in the Mafia. Well, not knew," I correct with a sigh. "My mum said so, but she was crazy... " I get lost in the story, the order to tell him. "I don't remember the night I got pregnant. Just the next morning...Benji, my foster brother, he's dead. The leg of the table—" I swallow thickly. "It was through his stomach. The glass top smashed, shards glittering within the fibres of the cream carpet. Blood like a pool around him. I don't even remember where I was standing or sitting or if I woke up in the bathroom or on the couch. Landon and Jake were hysterical, and it was like I was just plopped into this alternate dimension."

His eyes darken, sweeping down my body to the small bump and back up to my face. "Go on."

"I didn't come here tojustgive my dad the baby. I mean, I was going to offer him the baby, that's true. I needed to ask for help with getting a good family for him, at the very least. I didn't want him to end up in the system?—"

"Like you."

"Yeah... like me." I exhale hard. "My mum never asked for help with me. I wish she did. I refuse to do that to him..." I shake my head. The concept of the Spanish Inquisition brings with it the main reason I'm here, in this house with a man who always carries a gun on his person and has more henchmen than Gru fromDespicable Mehas minions. "There is another reason, too. Something I thought only a man like him... well, likeyou, could help me with. I want the truth about what happened to Benji... and to me."

He listens carefully, his jaw set hard. "What did the police have to say about the dead boy?"

I lift my knees up and hug them, the ache between my legs basically gone, but the sting in my heart while remembering the way they dismissed Benji's death is present and screaming. They treated him like trash. No loss to the world. "He slipped," I state numbly. "They claim he slipped." It hurt for a long time, like a fist squeezing my heart. I imagined a future with Benji in those first few weeks after his death. A sweet reverie of a future where he loved me, where we would have raised this baby together... I take a big breath and continue. "I begged the police to search the room, look into his murder... I mean, death. They didn’t believe me. My brothers said he slipped. My foster mother said he slipped. We were underage. So, it was a fucking accident. "

"But it wasn't. You think something else happened, sweet girl?" He lifts his hand to rub the smooth skin along his strong jaw, a gesture I've often seen him do when deep in contemplation. "But no one cares." His words hurt, however unbelievably true. It is always the truth that hurts most. "And what did you expect from Dustin? To torture the boys. To kill the one who raped you."

That word scores as it enters my ears. "It wasn't rape."

"No?" That pure darkness that lives inside him so contentedly, so in sync, flashes in his eyes. "What would you call it then?"

"I wanted to be with Benji," I admit, reaching for the ends of my hair again, working them around my fingers as his body tightens further with each coil. "Someone hurt him. I feel it. And... It's dumb. It's ridiculous...ButI want my first time back. I want some details. Was it slow? Did he kiss me?"

His lips ghost my ear now. Dangerous heat envelops me as a snarl of words spits from him. "I'm going to need you to stop right there, little deer, or we will have a repeat of last night, andyour pussy is not ready to take me again the way I want to take you after hearing that... So, it's in your best interest to keep the romantic language between you and this fucker to a minimum." He leans back, his eyes blank and unreadable. "Go on."

A current of warning rushes down my spine. I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, the sting from his teeth reminding me of last night. Of his claim over me. "Benji... his room was in the basement. That's where we were. He has a camera set up down there. I think he was filming us. But when I confronted Landon and Jake the next day, they told me he took it out the day before, but I don't believe them. I remember while we were watching the movie, in the corner of the box, there was a red flashing light."

Thinking back on my last day in that house, the day I demanded they show me the recording, I shudder. Blood still stained the carpet, and like dye on a shirt, it seemed to grow over the week, seeping in deeper, expanding in a way it might had his body still been there to feed it.

I clear my throat, all the admissions now like water leaking from a dame, just wanting out. "I couldn't think. I remember my brain stalling, arrowed on that one truth—the recording must be here. I trashed the room," I admit, not proud of my temper—my eccentricbehaviour. Those arseholes are right. I am—can be—eccentric. "So, of course, my foster mother threw me out without a hint of guilt. She'd been waiting for the day I misbehaved, which I'd never done before. The foster board doesn't like uncommitted custodians, even though I was of age at this time, but she didn't like me the moment I grew boobs so..." I laugh without mirth. "I wasn't surprised when she kicked me out for 'violent tendencies.'"

Suddenly, he straightens to his full height. Cutting into my thoughts, he says, "I'll look into this."

Climbing to my feet, I follow him from the bed. "Wait...That's it? Are you going to get the recording?"

He smooths his pitch-black tie down, his face a thing of emotionless beauty. "Yes."

My heart ping-pongs inside my throat. "You believe me, then? That something else happened?"

Clay stares at me through several of my shallow breaths, his eyes studying my face, from my wide, uncertain eyes to my parted mouth. Stepping until his shoes skate along the tips of my toes, forcing me to arch my neck to keep his gaze, he lifts his warm palm to trace my lips with his thumb. "I will always believe you."

And it takes all my willpower to not fling my arms around him. Tears burn around my irises. "And you won't hurt them, though? Will you?"

His hand twitches before dropping from my face. Emotional armour erected around his pristine black suit. He glances down at me through his dark lashes. I want to reach for his jaw and demand his gentleness return, but it's flittered away after my utterance of not wanting them harmed. "I won't hurt the boys... yet."

When he steps towards the door, I bolt after him, rounding his authoritative frame until I am in front of him. Halting him with my palms to his warm abdomen, I realise this is another place I haven't yet touched him. My fingers flex over his shirt where the hardness of muscles beneath act as a formidable wall. "Do you promise?"

He puts his hands on the tops of my arms, gently lifting me up and planting my feet on the carpet away from his path. "I'm not repeating myself."

Fawn

Dear Benji,

We buried you today.

Everyone was crying over your fresh grave. All the girls from school were there. They cried, too. I know you will want to know that. I didn't cry, though. Fuck no. I'm too angry for you. For me, too. They don't really give a shit that no one remembers how you fell. They don't give a shit. But I do.

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