Page 40 of Our Broken Pieces
As much as I wanted to hear her reasons, a part of me feared they wouldn’t be good enough to keep me from killing her.
Yeah, I told Lorcan I wasn’t going to kill her, but standing in her apartment, facing her, angry and damaged as I was, I wasn’t too sure anymore.
Her big, brown doe eyes were filled with sadness and regret, but I wasn’t going to let that affect me. I didn’t want her regret. I wanted herpain.
“Gage-”
“Tell me!”I roared in her face.
Her eyes started to water and that just pissed me off more. “Mm…my…my parents found out, Gage.”
Of all the things I expected to hear, that wasn’t it. “Bullshit,” I snapped.
“It’s the truth,” she cried. “It’s the truth.”
I stepped away from her because I was holding on by a thread and I wanted to hear it all before I finally killed her. “How?” I asked. “How in the fuck would your parents find out, Mystic.”
She let out a deep, shuttering breath. “The…the day I… uh, left, I was called into Mrs. Berny’s office. I…I thought she was calling me in to discuss graduation since I still hadn’t given her a plan of action yet.” I hated how her voice sounded like the truth, but it wasn’t like I could prove or disprove her story when it was all said and done anyway. No one else was here to back up her claim. “When I got there…” A tear escaped and I hated that it bothered me. “…Mrs. Lemas, Mr. Grant, and my parents were in her office with her.” Mystic’s hand reached up as if she wanted to touch me, but she quickly dropped it back down to her side, but not before wiping the tear away. “Apparently, since we had to dress out for P.E., Mrs. Lemas began to notice my bruises. She took her concerns to Mrs. Berny.”
That didn’t make sense. It was Mystic’s word against a gym teacher’s suspicions. I shook my head. “So what?” I argued. “She saw some bruising. That could have meant anything.”
Mystic nodded in agreement. “You’re right. It could have. Except, instead of calling me in to ask me about it, they had called in Margot and talked to her first.”
I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel any more hate for that girl than I already had when she refused to tell me where Mystic had run off to, but I was wrong. “And?”
Mystic closed her eyes, defeat emanating from every pore. When she opened them, they no longer looked sad and regretful. They looked empty. “She told them everything, Gage,” she said, her voice matter of fact. “She told them we had an…abnormally aggressive relationship.”
I almost snorted. What we’d had was sick, twisted, violent, and soul consuming. It had not been abnormally aggressive.
It had been brutal.
“Margot told them I was beating you,” I surmised, wishing I could find her and wring her fucking neck. I knew Margot had a jealous streak in her back then. One Mystic had refused to see because Margot had been her only friend, but it had been there. I’d seen it every time I had refused to share Mystic with the world around us. Hell, everyone had known what Mystic had meant to me.
What she still fucking did, if I want to be honest with myself.
Mystic nodded. “Yes, she did.”
“And what did you say?”
Her entire body slumped against the door. It was as if she’s waited ten years to get her side of the story out and it was exhausting the fuck out of her. “I told them the truth,” she replied. “I told them that you werenotbeating me. I told them we were a couple and you didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t want. I told them they didn’t understand and that it was none of their business.” She shook her head. “I was already eighteen by then, so they couldn’t do anything about our relationship.”
So, what fucking changed?
I stepped to her and caged her in with my hands planted on the door on either side of her head. “And?”
Her chocolate orbs searched mine, and, in that moment, I wished I could kill her. I wished I could erase her off the face of the earth, because I was fairly certain she was going to take what was left of my sanity with her when we were done with this conversation.
I’d always been weak when it came to Mystic Anderson, and that was proving to be just as true today as it had been ten years ago.
“My father threatened to have you arrested and sent to prison for abuse and statutory rape,” she confessed. “Mr. Grant added that he’d ruin any chance you had to go to college and make a future for yourself.”
I reared back, rage making my body vibrate. “Statutory rape?” I seethed. “What the fuck?”
“Margot told them we’d been having sex since we were fifteen, and my father had done his homework with that little bit of information. He knew you had turned eighteen four months before I had.”
“So,” I bit out, enraged at finding out how our relationship had been attacked from all sides. “They couldn’t have proven that we had sex during those four months.”
Mystic shook her head. “Gage, I…I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted. “I had been blindsided and…there was no way I was going to let you get arrested for abuse or rape.”
