Page 101 of Call You Mine

Willa laughs, sitting down on the couch and pulling Luke down with her. Clarissa walks over to join them, sitting to Luke’s left and setting her hand down against his leg, rubbing him a little too eagerly. The two women stare directly at me as they rub their palms back and forth along his leg like they’re part of somefucked up threesome I’ve just stumbled upon. That explains the dimly lit room, the eerie ambiance, the reason they’re dressed like they're attending some elusive event at four o’clock in the morning.What the fuck did I walk in on?

“I asked you a fucking question, Willa? Why the fuck are you sending Wynter these packages, the messages, the threats? Is it because she didn’t get you what you wanted? Because she didn’t marry some old fucker you wanted?”

Willa lets out another sharp cackle that makes my ears nearly bleed.How can this woman have any part to do with my beautiful angel? “Sit down, Damon. Make yourself comfortable. It’s going to be a long night.”

Pulling up to my house,my head is ringing with so much noise I just want to shut it off completely. My temples are aching, my mind refusing to believe anything Willa and Luke told me, yet my instincts are telling me I’d be a fool to ignore it. It has to be a lie—every story they concocted has to have been made up in order to turn me against her. I know there’s no reason for them to have shared any truth with me, but I’m stuck not knowing what to believe. Wynter refused to tell me anything, so whether it’s the truth, it’s the only truth I know.

Yet everything inside me is begging for me to refuse to believe it.

Pulling out my keys, I unlock the front door and toss them onto the table by the entrance, not caring to pick them up when they miss it completely and fall to the floor with a clatter. My feet are killing me, so I kick off my shoes, tugging on the tie that feels too fucking tight around my neck, leaving it loosely slung around my neck. This suit I’m wearing feels too tight and smellsof that torrid place and the two women who stared at me with a sick hunger in their eyes. All I want is to get out of it and in the shower to wash away the memories of tonight.

The way Clarissa’s hands roamed over me, her fingers tracing along my shoulders before I tore her hands off me. Her touch used to bring me solace, but now all it does is sicken me. More so the thought of ever allowing her to touch me at all. I undress, tearing at my clothes as I ascend the staircase up to my bedroom, but stop dead in my tracks when I hear someone behind me.

“Where the fuck have you been?” my sister shouts as she makes her way up the stairs behind me. Realizing it’s only her, I keep walking, ignoring her, and cursing the fact I never collected her key after she moved out, shortly after I’d bought the home. I’m way too fucking exhausted to deal with her inquisition right now. I’m on no sleep and it’s nearly six am. All I want is to shower, sleep and hopefully never wake up again—or wake up and realize this was a horrible nightmare. “I’m fucking talking to you, asshole.”

I drop the tie to the floor, my shirt next, and move to unbutton my pants, hoping that will make her leave, but she doesn’t. Instead, Ruby rushes behind me, pushing me against the wall once we reach the top. I falter slightly, too tired to steady myself and give my sister the upper hand. Her face is devoid of any makeup, something I rarely ever see, and her dark hair is up in a loose, messy bun. She’s wearing black leggings and a simple white tank top, probably something she threw on after waking up and coming here since it’s six in the morning.

But it’s her green eyes, so fierce and demanding—snake eyes is what I used to call her whenever she was furious with me and looked at me oddly similar to the way she’s glaring at me now—that terrifies me. She’s so serious, but there’s something about the way she’s glaring at me with every ounce of protection stripped off her face and body—the makeup and risky clotheswere always her go to tool to disguise her true self and give the illusion of someone who has their shit together.

“I don’t have time or energy to deal with whatever the fuck you're about to throw at me, Ruby,” I say, but as she reaches for me, her scowl suddenly shifts into a strangely worried expression. She rubs her fingers along my neck, roughly swiping them over my skin like there’s something on it. Her expression turns rabid as she reaches for the shirt I discarded on the floor. Staring at the collar, her green eyes go wide when a semi faded stain of red lipstick comes into view.

Son of a bitch.

I should have seen it coming. The fury in my sister’s eyes should have been a clear warning that what she’s about to do was definitely going to inflict pain on me.

“How fucking could you?” she shrieks, her fists slamming into my chest as she pushes me back against the wall. “I knew you were a fucking asshole, Damon, but what the fuck?” Something in her demeanor shifts, her expression falling from anger to disappointment and my chest painfully constructs as I grab her wrists, but keep them flat against me. Like I deserve to feel the pain she’s inflicting on me. Like it’s not enough to punish me. “Cheating? How could you do that?”

“I…” My words fail me. There’s nothing I could say at this moment to justify what she thinks I’ve done. Nor should I have to. Wynter is the one who’s married. She’s the one who betrayed me. Yet it’s my sister, my blood, who’s here pissed off at me when the woman she loathes is the one at fault.

“You what? Are you going to come at me with some pathetic ass excuse, too? Come one Damon, we both know you’re much smarter than that.” Too? I catch the insinuation that she knows what being cheated on feels like, but she’s right, I’m smart enough to know that’s not something I should bring up atthis moment. Not when the look on my sister's face is fucking terrifying.

“Look, Ruby, I don’t have to explain anything to you. Why the fuck are you even here?”

“Why am I here? Why am I at my brother’s side when I find out, by his ex-girlfriend, by the way, that his current girlfriend or whatever the fuck you two are, is pregnant with his kid, oh and apparently married to another?” Well, she’s well informed and apparently I have Scarlett to thank for that.

“Look, I don’t know what you and Scarlett talked about and I frankly don’t give a fuck. This shit is between Wynter and I, and right now I’m in no fucking mood nor do I have any intention of seeing her again. So do us both a favor and leave me the fuck alone. I appreciate you checking in on me, if you could even call all this nagging at me that, but you and I both know we’ve never needed that shit from anyone.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Go sulk in your bedroom. Keep all that bullshit inside. It's done you so well so far.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means we’re both so fucked beyond comprehension because of the way we were raised. Because the two people who were supposed to love us unconditionally failed us. One disappeared, and the other preferred to ruin herself than have to deal with us. And here you are, finally found someone who is that unconditional for you and you fuck it all up before even allowing yourself to discover the truth.”

“I know the truth.” Ruby’s eyes go wide at my sharp tone. “They told me everything. About her husband, his death. How they blackmailed her and made her believe it was him back from the dead. They tried to lure her out after she ignored them and that’s when they sent her the photo of that guy, Luke. Last night, Carrington came to confront her, claiming that Wynter knew where her brother was. Wynter tried to deny it, feigning she'dhad no contact with Luke but he showed me her missed calls, the messages she sent, the voicemails she left him, begging him to come to her. I tried to ignore it, to make sense of the lies they were telling me, but I can't see it any other way. I heard her voice, begging him to answer her, to come help her.”

“Then it’s time you hear the whole truth from her lips.” Stunned, I turn and find Scarlett standing at the doorway of my bedroom, her blue eyes brimming with tears as she waddles inside and toward where I stand with Ruby.

Within minutes, before I even have the chance to question how the fuck she’s in here, Wynter’s voice echoes in the room. The melancholic tone coming from Scarlett’s phone she’s put on speaker makes my heart ache. My chest constricts in agony as I hear the pain in her voice as she recounts our history. The way she was all alone, even though she was surrounded by so many. The way she found solace in my friendship after our one drunken night of passion. The unlikely bond we created no one was aware of.

I go still when she continues to reveal the true reason she left for New York. The man who showed up at her doorstep demanding she pay for the sins of her father’s and the monsters who tested fate never once thinking about the consequences of their corruption. How this man, Enzo, forced her to be his bride, kept her locked up in his home only to let her out when he needed something from her. When he needed to parade her around and show off the prize he’d won from those who crossed him. He used her as a warning, a sign to his enemies that he was not to be betrayed.

Wynter was utterly alone and felt no one cared if she was gone, but I did. It broke me when she left, but instead of going after her and asking her why she’d just up and left, I resented her for it.

It was at that moment that our relationship changed and I tried my hardest to pull away and not allow myself to lower my guard around her. She had her own life, a life I believed she was enjoying, but all along she was completely and utterly miserable with that monster.

Anger burns within me, an inextinguishable, rampant blaze as I hear her break down and let out every single one of her secrets—the pain she’s held inside her for three years, far beyond that, the pain she kept as a young girl growing up in a world she came to resent. It only gets darker from there as she recounts the night she left me after our argument, the same night I was attacked and left for dead.

It was him, her husband, who had me almost killed because he’d found out where she’d come. I was not angry at her for it, but it made so much sense. Why, even with my uncle Nico’s connections, we could never connect the crime to anyone. We’d chalked it up to a mugging gone wrong, though they took nothing from me. But now it all makes sense.

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