Page 31 of Hate Mates

“I’m not going to let you ruin this for me.”

Chill the fuck out, Grant. She already said yes. “Ruin what for you, hm?”

Dad flustered behind me.Go on, old man. Fucking say it,I willed.

“I proposed to Poppy.”

’Bout time. Twenty-plus years of pining over the widow next door had finally paid off.

At my silence, he hedged, “So, I expect you to treat Sutton kindly.” I’d rather eat glass. “Like she’s family.”

My stomach soured. “She’snotmy family.”

I’d wanted her to bemine.

Then she left.

“Fine,” Dad murmured, leaning back in the tired leather armchair. He was making that face. The one he donned when I was younger and still had a conscience. Now it just made him look kind of constipated and uncomfortable. “Then pretend you feel a little guilty about whatyoudid to her face.”

Pretend? I didn’t have to pretend.

No one thought about what I’d done more than I did. It had been my first and last thought for seven miserable years. Sutton consumed me. I heard her sweet laughter almost as often as I heard her breathy moans when I pumped my cock with my fist.

But it was her pained screams and the hiss of burning skin haunting me the most.

“Do you feel bad for designing the branding iron?” The accusation snapped Dad’s head back.

Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought. Rotating my wrist, the melting ice cubes did a lap around the glass. “There’s nothing wrong with Sutton’s face.”

Not a goddamn thing. The puckered, white-and-pink flesh creating a waved Barry-nebuly bar pattern and silhouetted the thick, mottled eye shape branded into her skin wasn’t the deterrent for her beauty they all thought it was.

She was tougher than they gave her credit for.

I knew that better than anyone.

It was why I’d made the mistake of falling in love with her at all.

Dad’s elbows roosted on either side of the armchair, his fingers steepling. “Whatever…” he searched for the words, “bygones”—dear God, he was really trying to sell me on this woe is Sutton shit—“you two have, you need to be the bigger person and put it to bed.” He faltered. “Do I make myself clear?”

I raised the emptied glass up, tipping it in his direction. “Crystal.”

* * *

Sutton was the last one at the dining room table. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d ever sat in here, but my dad was going the whole nine yards to make this thing with Poppy stick.

I openly leered at Sutton, and she scratched at the column of her throat with her middle finger. She’d changed into a wraparound drawstring midi-length dress designed to torture me.

I thought it would look a whole lot better burning in the fireplace.

She didn’t deserve pity. Not with a chub-raising, heart-stopping, killer body like that. Soft curves poised for possession, a round ass meant to be worshipped, and the kind of tits you rutted your cock between.

Sutton had styled her hair to draw focus away from her face—the long ash-brown strands blown out and pulled over to one side—her makeup thickly layered to disguise the crude scar.

Dad lurched to his feet, stumbling over to the seat across from mine, untucking her chair, his eyes hopeful like the gesture, the olive branch, wouldn’t be lost on her.

I was right. He did feel guilty.

For taking the custom order.

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