Page 31 of Unforgivable

“You treated her like shit the same as me. You didn't deserve to have her as a sister!” I barked.

Aunt Blair's vicious laughter filtered through the line, the same laugh I always heard in the dark from the other side of a locked door. My stomach turned violently and nausea hit me like a punch to the gut.

“Oh yes, my perfect baby sister. So sweet and beautiful. Could never do anything wrong in anyone's eyes. But she proved us all wrong when she had you,” Blair snarled in my ear. “You were the dirty stain she couldn't escape, a burden she stuck us with. Why Jack insisted we raise you, I will never understand. Familial guilt, I suppose. You were apoison, a nasty child who caused me nothing but grief, the same as her.”

Her vindictive, spiteful words had my knees buckling. Every memory of being told how worthless and useless I was rushed back, a suffocating wave that stole the breath from my lungs.

“Fuck. You,” I choked out, stumbling back into a fence along the sidewalk since my legs were seconds away from giving out.

“You can't hide that money forever. I will get what's owed to me. You may not be under my roof anymore to discipline, but I can find other ways to make your life as miserable as you made mine. Jack might have believed you about my texts, but we both know he won't believe you about much else. I would have thought you learned that lesson by now,” she mocked.

I finally gathered my wits enough to hang up like I should have done right after she started speaking. No matter how long I had been away from her, she still held so much sway over me. She tainted my actions and thoughts even from miles away. No amount of distance would ever be far enough to be free of her.

To the world, she was the loving, doting aunt that took in her poor orphaned nephew. The beautiful, perfect housewife that everyone loved. She joined the PTA at my school, volunteered at their church, and played the sweet caretaker in front of Uncle Jack. When we were alone, she was a nightmare in heels and pearls.

I was just the stupid, volatile kid who got in trouble too many times to be believed. The one who got into fights at school and mouthed off to anyone who tried to help. The one who wrestled with being furious with his mom for dying on him and crying at night for her to come back.

I fought back the hot, angry tears that pushed against my lash line, waiting to break free. I took several steadying breaths and when I got myself under control, I headed back home. Fuck the party. I needed to hide in bed and crawl inside a bottle of whatever booze I could find.

As I turned a corner a couple of blocks from my apartment, movement from my periphery caught my attention. I swung my head up and locked eyes with Rhys as he exited an apartment complex up the street. We both halted in place, staring at each other in surprise.

Rhys' swallowed nervously and made his way toward me. I just stood there dumbly, unable to move or break the magnetic force keeping my eyes glued to his. Any other time, that fact would havepissed me off and had me lashing out. Now, it was like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man.

Inexplicably and irritatingly, Rhys had become someone I liked talking to. When I was with my friends, it was as if I had to turn myself “on” and run on pure fucking willpower to get through simple conversations. I felt plastic and unnatural, forced into the mold of the life-of-the-party Lacrosse star. It was exhausting most days. Their expectations were a lead weight on my shoulders.

Being around Rhys was different. I didn't get sick of his presence like I did everyone else. The more I talked with him, the less noise there was in my head. I was comfortable when he was near. It was like an unfiltered version of myself came out around him. I hated him for it, but…maybe not as much as I once did.

Isn't that just fucking great?

“Hey,” he said softly. “How are you?”

I don't know what it was about that simple, genuine question that had me unwilling to lie to him. I couldn't understand what it was about Rhys fucking Evans that had my carefully constructed barriers falling like the goddamn walls of Jericho.

“Bad. I'm really fucking bad,” I whispered hoarsely. Rhys just nodded, empathy written plainly across his soft features. I couldn't stop the words that spewed out of me, unexpected and desperate.

“Do you want to go grab a drink? I could really use someone to talk to.”

I held my breath, waiting for him to tell me to get bent or go to hell. I wouldn't have blamed him at that moment. Instead, Rhys shot me a tiny smile.

“Yeah. That'd be nice.”

And to my great, baffling relief, I answered his smile with a small one of my own.

9

RHYS

Could you have a stroke at twenty-one years old? That was impossible, right? Maybe I should have checked Web MD just in case. I was pretty dang sure that could be the only plausible explanation for why I had not only approached Callum Hawkins on the street at night, but agreed to get a drink with him. On top of that mess, he was clearly not in a great frame of mind, which didn't exactly bode well for me.

Cal was a conundrum to me. He had the ability to be charming, funny, and interesting in a way that drew me to him like no other, but in the same breath he was cold, calculating, and manipulative. I couldn't get a read on him even though to an outsider it was fairly freaking clear he was crazy. He was a bully who delighted in torturing me with cruel words and crippling shame. The miscreant had already managed to wrangle two outrageously inappropriate orgasms out of me in public, and what did I do?

Did I scream? Did I shove him off? Did I put up any fight at all?

Nope. Why?I'm so glad you asked, imaginary other half of this conversation!

Because he's Callum. Freaking. Hawkins.

Despite all the bad he'd done so far, there was something about him that left me unable to walk away or fight against him…much. I couldn't rationalize it or find any logic behind my thought process, but I just had that unyielding feeling in my gut that “Hawk” was just the mask. I could see it every time I called him Cal, as if that one word had the power to crumble the façade he hid behind. Both times he had stared at me as if coming out of a trance, and in those split seconds I had seen pure emotion, visceral and raw, but somehow hopeful too.

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