Page 5 of Beauty & Corruption

“Don’t touch me!”

“Okay.” I didn’t argue. I was exhausted, but I was used to the ups and downs of life. She wasn’t. She shoved past me as she shook her head silently. When her eyes found mind, pure hatred glared at me. She was fuming. She may never forgive me for this. I might not either, but I refused to be selfish with her.

Before she was on our MC’s radar, her life was easy. Well, easy might not be the right word to describe her past. Normal. Before I cut her off in traffic and then lied my way into her college English course to spy on her, she had a fairly normal life from what Intel we had dug up on her. She didn’t have me pointing guns at her or have to deal with Mordy’s crazy antics before us. Letting her go should be an easy decision if that was the life she would return to, but it wasn’t. The difference between her past and present was the veil of lies had been lifted, and now she saw how ugly the world around her was. Her life had been in jeopardy since she took her first breath, even though she wasn’t aware of the danger. It was only a matter of time before the sins of her father caught up with her.

Her feet stilled, and she slowly turned to face me. Her hand passed in front of my stomach, disappearing beneath the suds as she pulled the stopper out of the sink. “Congratulations,” she said in a defeated voice barely above a whisper, fighting back more tears as she dropped the stopper on my palm.

“Congratulations?” I questioned her, not sure if I heard her correctly.

“Yes. Congratu-fucking-lations. I love you, too, and you’re an asshole.” Her eyes found mine again, and the silence around us at this moment said it all. I’d wrecked everything. I’d wrecked us.

I slowly nodded and then shook my head in disagreement. There were so many emotions dancing in my body right now; there came a time in every person’s life when they needed to face the truth. I had to let her go entirely to save her from all of this. If we had a future, we needed a fresh start.

“This is the end of us, isn’t it?”

“For now, but I hope it isn’t forever, Bird. I know you’re hurting right now. I feel like my heart has been ripped into shreds, but we deserve honesty, and that means being honest not only with each other but with ourselves. You have to know this isn’t what I want, but I can’t give you what you need. Not fully.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re in so much pain and agony after getting your dick wet this morning, aren’t you? Sounds fucking miserable,” she sarcastically spewed through gritted teeth as she stared up at me with a newfound pain glistening behind her eyes.

“It’s not like that, okay? Do I want to tell you any of this? No. I want to go on acting blissfully unaware of the fact you want my brother, but I can’t. It’s not being fair to you.”

“Not fair to me? No. Get fucked, Graham. You’re not putting this on me. I’ll take the blame for what I have done, but destroying our relationship by telling me it’s okay to want you and Mordy; that is on you. This isn’t a good idea. It isn’t something I want.”

“You do, Regina,” I said more hatefully than I intended, letting my jealousy get the best of me. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she used the back of her hand to swipe them off her skin.

“No, Graham…” She sniffed and then straightened her back, putting up a brick wall between us. “You do, and this will come back to bite you in the ass. Trust me.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t, but I’d said it anyway. This woman was infuriating. She was capable of bringing me to my knees with a single smile, but she also brought out the worst in me because despite how I felt about her, sometimes, I just wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her.

“Ha! No, it is the fucking truth. Have you heard of it? I don’t want any of this, Stone. I do not want Mordy. Fuck!” she wailed, new tears cresting on her lower eyelids. “Not a threat. Not the enemy,” she held her hands up, “but this won’t end well. But, hey, I wouldn’t want to offend you by speaking the truth again?—”

“Just forget it, Bird.” I cut her rant short, reaching for her, and she recoiled from my touch. Ouch! That fucking stung. I don’t know what I thought would happen by pointing out the obvious and trying to make our future better, but her losing her ever-loving mind wasn’t on the list of possibilities. “Let’s just go to bed. Can we do that? We can talk about this in the morning.”

“No. I wouldn’t want to be accused of being a lying sack of shit who wants to fuck Mordy!” she said in a raspy voice before clamping her mouth shut. She dashed out of the kitchen, and I followed her.

She stomped down the hallway and into our room, grabbing everything in sight that belonged to her and stuffing it under her arms. I leaned against the doorframe, knowing if I got in her way, she might start swinging. There was no talking to her right now, and I knew it was my fault. Well, kind of. This was on her, too, but she didn’t see it yet. Maybe in the morning… No, when she was pissed, there was no talking reason to her. This was the woman who had risked her own fucking life by swallowing a bag of drugs to try and keep her and her best friend alive, and thatwas only one of the times she did something drastic when she was being irrational.

When things started falling out of her grasp, and she continued to try to stuff more things in their place beneath her arms, I cleared my throat. She shot daggers at me as she bent down and took her pillow off her side of the bed, lifting the case with her teeth.

“Regina, that’s enough. Fuck! I get the point. You’re pissed. We don’t have to sleep in the same room. I’ll sleep on the couch until things cool down, and we can talk about this.”

She pushed past me and noisily trudged to the living room, randomly dropping some of her belongings along the way. She returned as quickly as she left and stopped in front of me with a huff. Maybe she realized how ridiculous she was being with all of this. Thank God! “Want to talk about this?” I asked.

“I’m taking the couch!” She went back into the bedroom, passed the bed, and disappeared into the bathroom. She returned a second later, holding her toothbrush. “I didn’t want to take your toothpaste, so I’llsharewith Mordy. Maybe by the end of the night, I will be riding his cock, and you can join in by going balls deep into my mouth. Maybe then, we can be one big hunky-fucking-dory cum slinging happy family. Would that make you happy?” She paused, and when I didn’t answer, she growled, “Piss all the way off, Graham, and when you think you’re far enough, you can piss off again!”

I opened my mouth to the give her a smartass remark, but nothing came out. I had absolutely nothing. I should chase after her, but there was no reasoning with her at the moment, and there probably wouldn’t be for some time. I hadn’t thought she would react this badly, but I’d also known this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. Despite how this ended, I would stand by my decision. Until she actually knew what she wanted, we didn’t have a future.

Chapter 5

Reggy

My feet paced the hallway that separated Mordy’s room and the room I had been sharing with Stone, pausing in front of each for a second. Stone said I could have the room, but I didn’t want it. I grabbed my things and took them down to the living room. Of course, after about an hour or so, I wanted to talk to him, but it might have made everything worse. Plus, I was so angry at him for suggesting what he had. If he really believed adding Mordy into our already problematic relationship was going to fix things, he was wrong. Shit! He was fucking wrong.

I was in so much pain that, at some point, I think it numbed me. Either that, or I had gotten used to it. I wanted to hate him for having the audacity to tell me he loved me and then break my heart, but this was on me. I could have stopped Mordy, and I hadn’t. I wanted to hate Mordy for doing what he did, but I was an active participant in what happened between us, too. I lied to myself and said you couldn’t loathe something you already hated. It was just that, though. I didn’t actually hate him. I hated myself for not hating him. I should have despised him and didn’t understand why I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Especially now.

Each brother was behind a closed door. Stone gave up after three hours of telling me to go to bed and went to bed without me. I huffed, dropping to the floor, and crossed my feet under my body. My finger traced the grain of the floorboard beside me, and I wished for the power to sink between the grooves. I wasn’t brushing off what happened when I allowed Mordy to rip the shirt off of me, but I also didn’t think it warranted this much of a reaction. However, cheating wasn’t always a physical act; it could be emotional, too. Maybe that was the part that pissed Stone off the most. I wanted to deny all of the things he said, but I couldn’t. I usually didn’t consider myself a liar—at least when it came to other people—except when it came to extreme circumstances. There was an unexplainable connection between Mordy and me, even if I didn’t want one. There was no other explanation as to why I let things go as far as they did between us. I wasn’t a victim in all of this. Mordy hadn’t taken advantage of me. I just wished I could understand why I never truly wanted him to leave me alone. Were these daddy issues? Shit. I had never considered Kiry not being in our lives to be a bad thing. I was the youngest, and the only girl, so not having a male role model in my life was not a factor. I had five brothers, and even though they were overprotective and continuously overstepped every boundary I tried to place between us, I was thankful for them.

I pulled a large breath into my body and pushed off the floor with my hands. Sitting still wasn’t working for me, so I walked up and down the hall, moving to release my energy. If I kept going at this pace, I would lose what little bit of sanity I had left to my name before the sun rose in the sky.

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