Page 29 of Believing Bailey (Granton University 2)

Except that wasn’t right.

Dammit, why the hell was I here again?

Ooh, Beckett. Yes. Good Bailey. My rational brain returning just in time, I snapped my fingers and blurted, “Beckett.”

The cowboy’s arm immediately jerked from the doorframe, and he straightened from the jamb to look imposingly taller as his smile fell dead. “Excuse me?”

Wow. That had made him immediately icy. I shrank back, wondering what I’d done that was so wrong. “I… I need to talk to Beck,” I said. “Is he…” The cowboy’s glare grew more ominous, so I swallowed and finished in a small voice, “Here?”

“Why…” He stepped outside onto the veranda with me to tower a good foot taller than me and glared shrewdly as he asked, “would that motherfucking raping son of a bitch be here?”

His voice was so deadly and steely soft that I shuddered.

“I.” I gulped unsteadily before it struck me. “Wait. Didn’t his case get dropped?”

“Dropped?” The cowboy boomed. “Why the fuck would his case get dropped? After what that piece of shit did to my sister, he better die in that jail cell.”

Chapter 10

BAILEY

Thud.

That was the sound my jaw made when it hit the ground from dropping my mouth open so far, or you know, the sound it would’ve made if my mouth literally could’ve done that, which it totally would have, if it could have. But didn’t.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, my eyes the size of golf balls—again, not literally. “You’re Melody’s brother?”

Eww.

Without my permission, my nose wrinkled. No way in hell did I want that skanky piece of trash as a sister-in-law. Talk about worst Thanksgiving dinners ever.

This was just no fair. Life couldn’t be this cruel.

My cowboy, my soulmate. He was right here. He’d called me pretty. How the hell was he related to her?

I knew he couldn’t help it. No one chose blood, buts still, he seemed pretty defensive of her, like he liked her or supported her or believed her story or whatever, which was just totally wrong.

But maybe that was because he didn’t know the truth.

Ooh, that must be it. He just didn’t know what she was really like.

I needed to fix this, to set him straight.

“I’m so sorry,” I started, almost feeling the urge to reach out and grip his arm in comfort. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but he really didn’t rape her. Beckett, I mean. He didn’t force her or pressure her or manipulate her in any way. She was the one to push for it, to instigate it, to, hell, she put the damn condom on him.”

The cowboy tipped his head slightly and squinted a moment before murmuring, “What did you just say?”

I flushed. No way was I going to repeat all that, especially to the girl’s brother. So I simply cleared my throat, and confessed. “I was there. I saw everything. And your sister…” I shrugged. Well, she was a lying, awful whore. Not that’d I’d say that to him verbally, though I’m pretty sure he got the message loud and clear, especially when his face turned purple and his teeth clenched together into a snarl as he growled, “Listen here, you lying little bitch.”

I sucked in an entire lungful with the gasp I produced.

But…what?

How…?

My soulmate…

He’d just called me a—

---