Page 66 of Brand
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Cami
“Are you sure you don’t want to go help your sister?” Brand asked me as we were sitting in the shop waiting for the next appointment to come in. “I don’t mind packing up stuff and moving all the big boxes.”
I smiled despite the circumstances.
See why I loved this guy?
He was really amazing and I wondered how I’d gotten so flipping lucky. He was mine. All mine. And I hoped I made him as happy as he made me.
“No,” I said with a sigh as I tucked my hair behind my ear. “I asked her, several times, might I add, but she said she wanted some alone time.”
So when I say that crap had hit the fan, that was kind of an understatement. Our mother was livid when Laurel had told her the news. Maybe livid was putting it nicely. I was glad I hadn’t been there, that was for sure. I almost wanted to feel sorry for my mother, because it seemed like between Laurel and me, we had managed to rock the foundation and dignity of this side of the Benson family. I was sure we’d be on the bottom of the list for Christmas cards this year. But I didn’t really give a flying cow at this point.
Laurel had been cut off much like I had. She flat out refused to go crawling back to Brice and ask for forgiveness and tell him that she’d made a mistake. In her heart, she didn’t believe that she had. And by the way she had talked about it when we went to lunch, I agreed with her wholeheartedly.
In case you were wondering, yes, that meant I was out of a place to live too. But I’d been staying with Brand at the compound and surprisingly, had grown to love it. Don’t get me wrong, there were times it was really frustrating and the walls in that room were thin. I had to learn very quickly to either keep quiet or get over my embarrassment that everyone there knew what was going on in that room. Yep, I chose to go with the latter. There was simply no way to keep my mouth closed with all the things Brand could do to my body. Nofuckingway!
Everything was gone. Her car. Her apartment. Her allowance. Everything.
“You think it’s good for her to be alone right now?” Brand asked and I loved the softness and concern that lingered in his voice.
He was good people. Actually, most of the men in that club were. When word had gotten around about Laurel, several of them stepped up and offered to help move her stuff. Where they were moving it to, well I didn’t know yet. Laurel said that she had it under control, but I wasn’t so sure.
“Yo,” Sketch said, strolling into the shop carrying a cup of coffee and what looked like a folded up newspaper. “Check this out,” he said before I had a chance to question why he had a newspaper…I mean…what? First, who gets newspapers anymore? And second, Sketch just looked so weird carrying one.
With a loud smack, he plopped the paper down in front of Brand and me. As I reached for it, I saw fuzzy pictures of Brice filling half of the page.
Laurel Benson calls off engagement with Brice Dumont due to his cheating ways.
“Oh shit!” The word slipped out of my mouth a little too easily.
There were at least five pictures of him with different women caught in very compromising positions. They were not ones that could be explained away. There was no “she tripped and I caught her, that’s why it looks like we’re hugging” or “I spilled coffee and she was only helping me clean it up.”
Some of them even had proof of the nights that photos had been taken. One had a professional shot in the corner of Laurel and Brice at a charity event, his suit was clearly the same in both pictures.
This was the last thing Laurel needed to deal with right now. With everything that had already happened, I could tell she was holding on by a thread. I worried that this might send her toppling over the edge.
I hoped that she hadn’t seen it, but I knew that was unlikely. Because it was obvious who was behind this. Our mother. And since I knew the woman so well, I would have put money that she had once paid a good price to have these photos buried. Which meant she knew all along what was going on behind Laurel’s back and did nothing about it. Now that it was convenient for her, these photos made it into the light of day. Anything to keep the family name clean, right? This made Laurel’s decision to call off the engagement look like a positive thing for the family, and now I was sure, all the sympathy would come rolling in for the Benson name.
This was beyond ridiculous. I was ready to pull my hair out. Poor Laurel.
“I should…”
“Go, baby. Text me when you get there.” He pulled me in for a tight hug, buried his nose in my hair, then kissed my temple. As I pulled away, he snagged my chin and tilted my head. He kissed me, lingering a beat longer than a second, but it was nothing short of earth-shaking.
“Okay,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll let you know what’s going on.”
Then I was making my way across the shop, out the back, and into my car. The whole ride over to her apartment, I tried to imagine what could have been going through her head. I couldn’t even begin to think how this made her feel. Even if she knew about the cheating, which I honestly had no clue if she did or not, it wasn’t right that it had been aired to the whole city like that.
“Dad’s already been here,” Laurel said as she pulled the door open and moved to the side to let me pass.
Her eyes were red and her hair was thrown up in a way that I’d never seen on her before. A giant, ratty ball of golden blonde sat on top of her head. Her makeup was slightly smudged but not to the point where she looked like a sorority girl on a bender. And then there were the sweats. As in sweatpants and matching off the shoulder sweatshirt. I mean it was trendy and cute, just not anything I ever imagined that Laurel would own, let alone be caught dead in.
“Yeah, I’m a fucking mess. I know. You can say it. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, right?”
I didn’t bother commenting on any of what she’d said. She was clearly drunk. Or well on her way there.
