Page 51 of Corrupt Me

Oh, so it was okay when he ambushed me at my school, but when the tables were turned and I showed up his, he didn’t have the time for me. “Preston, seriously.” I frowned in disbelief and irritation. “Aren’t you the one who drove to my school begging to talk to me? I’m here now, and you’re fucking busy? What? Watching TV?” I tried to peek over his shoulder inside the room.

“Fine, we can go somewhere,” he conceded with a sigh, the displeasure on his lips increasing and flaring with the same annoyance I felt. “Let me get a shirt.”

I glanced down then, noticing for the first time he wasn’t wearing one. Why hadn’t I noticed when he’d answered the door? Tristan goes shirtless and I can’t take my eyes off him, but Preston… I didn’t even blink at his naked chest. That wasn’t to say Preston didn’t look good shirtless because he did. He wasn’t as broad or muscular as his brother, but Preston had always been fit.

It had to be the rage.

Preston started to close the door and turn.Um, hell no.My palm slapped onto the wood before it shut, and I shoved, pushing my way inside.

“What the hell, Ev?—”

My eyes were drawn to a movement on the rumpled bed wedged against the corner of the room. Preston didn’t have a roommate, but someone else was definitely in his bed.

A crater-sized lump formed in my throat.

I flipped on the light, flooding the room with a bright yellow glow. The girl from the photos stared at me with wide brown eyes nearly the same color as her hair. She clung to the white sheets, holding them over her chest as she stared at me.

Only a flicker of shock registered on her features, but it vanished when she saw me, and I understood then. This girl knew about me. She knew who I was. And that Preston had a girlfriend. Not now. But when they met, and yet, she still slept with him.

It told me all I needed to discern about the kind of person she was.

The keys clutched in my hand dug into my skin. A sarcastic smile tugged at my lips. “Well, this makes things easier, doesn’t it?”

seventeen

Iturned, facing Preston. “I can see howbusyyou are.” The words fired from my mouth like I’d discharged a gun, the room filling with invisible gunpowder that hung in the air. A smoky bitterness touched my tongue.

“Ev, it’s not what it looks like,” Preston quickly defended, his sea-glass-colored eyes shading with guilt despite what he said.

My stomach twisted in betrayal. My chest burned with fury. “It looks a hella lot like you’re sleeping with someone else.” I snorted. “Don’t even try to explain yourself out of this one, Preston. I already knew. You’ve been cheating on me for months. Fuck, probably years, andyou”—I poked him in the bare chest.—”had the audacity to makemefeel guilty!” I stabbed my finger into him again. “Screw you.”

A wave of what I took as relief dropped over his features, the tightness in his shoulders lowering. “Who told you?”

I swallowed a bramble of temper. “That’s what you care about? Who ratted you out?” I shook my head. “For your information,Iuncovered your lies. I’m sure you thought I was too messed up to notice. The truth was, I was too messed up to care.”

Preston reached for a clean shirt from the closet regardless there was one tossed on the floor at my feet. The one he’d probably been wearing before the bimbo in his bed took it off him. “Calm down. There’s no need to make a scene,” he had the nerve to say to me, pulling the wrinkle-free material over his head.

Calm down.

Calm down?

That was the very worst thing he could toss at me. Preston could go to the devil. I never wanted to hear that everything would be okay, calm down, or that time would heal my pain. All those little things people say to try and comfort someone because in my experience, they weren’t true.

Things weren’t okay. I wanted to feel my emotions. How else could I heal? And time…well, I was still waiting to see if the phrase was bullshit. Time hadn’t healed me yet.

I was still broken in so many ways.

Perhaps too broken for someone who demanded perfection—someone like Preston. Was that why I was drawn to Tristan? Because we recognized the defects in each other?

My face hardened. “If there was ever a time to cause a scene, this is it. I came here to tell you it’s over. Don’t call me. Don’t show up at my dorm. Don’t apologize.”

He blinked. The flare of irritation in his eyes lingered, but something else moved into his expression. Fear? “For how long?”

“I don’t know. Until I can look at you and not think about you with her,” I replied roughly, my eyes darting to the other side of the room. I didn’t want to see her ever again, and yet, I couldn’t stop my gaze from straying.

She had a pretty face and was the opposite of me in every way physically. My counterpart. What did that say about Preston? Had he been looking for someone different than me? I didn’tknow why that surprised me, but it did. I’d thought she would be similar to me. Blonde hair. Lighter eyes. Beachy tan.

The girl in the bed flinched, her fingers clutching the bed sheet to her ample chest. She had stayed motionless and silent until this point as if she were afraid to draw attention. “I should go,” she muttered and started to inch to the edge of the bed. Strands of her long chestnut hair fell over her shoulders.

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