Page 31 of Free to Breathe
The morning light streams so brightly, it’s making Corinna’s old T-shirt appear transparent. It highlights the weight she’s dropped. Where there was once softness, I now see edges. And for some reason, they fire me up more than what I suspect are the secrets she’s been keeping. She turns her back, and through her T-shirt, I can see the faint gray color of her tattoo.
Never forget who you are.
I’ve never forgotten what Corinna meant to me, the feelings her voluptuous body invoked that I had to suppress. She was perfect before. Why is she doing this to herself?
Or is something else causing it?
“How much weight have you’ve dropped?” I ask abruptly. Corinna spins around. The way her cat eyes narrow, I can tell she’s getting ready to pounce.
Then her mask of indifference drops back over her face. Shrugging, she answers, “Does it matter? No one’s really mentioned it until we went to the concert. They attribute it to my working so hard.”
“It’s not though, is it?” Here’s my chance.
Smirking, she shakes her head. “I got tired of curves. Especially the kind life throws at me. I decided to try angles on for a while to see if they were a better fit.”
Frowning, I step forward. “They don’t look as good on you.”
“Says you.”
“That’s right. Says me. Says the man who worshipped every curve you had because it was real. Just like we were.”
Corinna’s stunned silent. One heartbeat. Then in the middle of the next, her glorious hair falls down her back from the knot it was in as she tosses her head back in a laugh so bitter, my heart blisters from it. When she finally gets control again, she reaches up to place a condescending pat on my cheek. “We weren’t real, Colby.” Her eyes are as dark as I’ve ever seen them.
I grip her wrist before she can pull away. “How can you say that?” I rasp. At that point in my life, when I’d finally woken up to the callousness of my family, I’d found Corinna. She was never mine, but she was mine.
Wrenching her wrist away from me, she hisses, “Because if we were real, you would have been there holding my hand when I found out about my brain tumor the next week, the next month, the next year. Instead I found out about it after I was subjected to listening to your sexual proclivities—by the way, next time I’d suggest you take your belt off,” she sneers. “Makes a hell of a lot of noise when you’re balls-deep in someone even over the noise of a house party.”
What did she say? I’m frozen by her words. Which is why her next words completely disarm me enough that Corinna’s able to use all of her strength to shove me in the chest. I stumble back at least a foot. “Maybe if I moo like a cow, that night will come back to you more clearly, friend. After all, I’m just good cook who’s had a rough life, right?”
“What did you say?” There’s no way I ever said anything like that about her to anyone.
No way.
Visibly seething, she continues. “You should reconsider giving a friend who’s afraid of the dark a key to your room for safety, Colby. Better yet, if you do, you should check to see if she’s in there before you bring someone in to screw them.” Pushing past me, she storms around the side of her house to the path between the trees I’ve didn’t notice.
I’ve never noticed a lot of things.
“Corinna.” I slowly follow her. “Are you trying to tell me…”
She cuts me off. “That I was in the room the night you screwed Addison Kaplan? Yes. That I found out exactly how you felt about me? Poor little Corinna.” Her voice drops as she tries to mimic my own. “I put up with her for her baked goods.” Switching back to her own voice, she yells, “I’m nobody’s poor little anything! You promised me you’d never bring the darkness down on me, Colby. You promised me I’d always be safe. And what did you do?” She’s visibly trembling. “You trapped me in a room with no way out in the dark. Then to hear everything you really thought about me? At least the bastards who kidnapped me wanted a onetime payment. Even if that payment was me. If I’d known friendship was so expensive, maybe I would have rethought the cost. ”
“Cori…” The shame that courses through my body is devastating. She heard what was never meant for her to hear. Something I said to appease a heartless bitch long enough to sink my cock in her. For me to forget the woman I wanted, but knew I couldn’t have.
“I told you never to call me that again. You want to know the truth? We’re nothing because you made us that way. There is nothing you could say to me to make me believe you right now.” Moving toward the gate concealed in ivy, she shoves it open. “Now, me and the ghosts of the bovine who used to inhabit this property would like your sanctimonious ass off our land.”
Her voice ricochets in my mind. All of this hurt and pain over the years is because of me. I’d have said or done anything so I didn’t cause pain to the one person I wanted to. Her.
I hurt her anyway. And by what I know about her lifestyle from Jack, it’s caused irreparable damage.
Unable to bear the look on her face, I edge toward the gate when what she said strikes me in the chest like a sledgehammer. I freeze in place, mere feet from her. “What brain tumor?”
She waves her hand in the air. “That’s none of your damn concern. Get gone.”
I move closer. “What do you mean you found out years ago, Corinna? How?”
“Why are you still on my property? Do I need to call someone to have you removed?” She’s shaking with fury.
“Tell me how you found out.”
