Page 58 of Pleading Innocence

“Not here,” I said to him, before caressing Tiffany’s sweet face. “Wake up, hon.” I kissed her cheek and she roused.

“Let’s get you home, okay?” I grinned, stroking her back, feeling peace settle over me as the warmth of our bodies melted into each other, which helped now that we were cooling off and the AC was blasting the heck out our naked backs. She kissed my neck and wrapped around me tighter.

“I could hold you like this forever, but we’ve gotta go.” I spanked her ass and she groaned, releasing her legs from around my hips as I lowered her to the ground so that we could all get dressed.

It was looking like we were all going to need a taxi because it seemed as if we were all pretty satiated and I felt my own yawn pull through my body, soothing me. Watching her get dressed, I thought about how lucky I was and how happy it made me to get past my own fears and ego.

Tonight was absolute perfection. There was no greater high than this. And there was nothing anyone could do or say that wouldn’t make me feel as if I was walking on cloud nine from this moment out.

Chapter 39

Tiffany

Itwastheweekend,which meant I had the joy of sleeping in and waking up to the bright beam of sunlight being blasted through my window, bathing my bed. I smiled, cuddling my pillow as I turned my face into its warmth. My body was wonderfully sore from last night and I curled my feet up underneath me in pure excitement, reaching for my cell phone off the nightstand.

What I hoped to see were good morning texts from any of my three men and I wanted to send them one of my own, but what I saw when I opened my phone made me squirm.

One hundred missed calls—and I wasn’t even exaggerating. Thinking something horrible had happened to someone, I tapped one of them open before pressing my phone to my ear in panic. My mother’s voice came screaming through the speaker as if she’d finally had a mental breakdown.

“You have DISGRACED this family! Who would’ve thought that Chris would be the least problematic child?! How could you do this? What is wrong with you? I did not raise a slut—a WHORE!” she yelled.

Tears sprung to my eyes. She’d said a lot of things to me, things that could easily hurt my feelings, but this…this one was the worst. My father took the phone from her, cutting her off. “Baby, tell me this is a misunderstanding. Did those guys do something to hurt you? Tell me and I’ll make sure they never see the light of day again. Did they hurt you?”

I tossed the phone on my mattress as if it was a bomb about to go off and jumped up from my bed, standing far away from it, staring at it. Noise swarmed my head, and I shuffled through the chaos, digging up the memory of last night. My hands started to shake. I hadn’t thought about the consequences because I didn’t think it would backfire like this.

My mother had never spoken to me like that before. I could always find reason in all the other times she spoke to us questionably by convincing myself that she only wanted what was best for Chris and me, but she just didn’t know how to go about it. But this sounded like absolute hate. It sounded as if she didn’t even want to be associated with me, and I felt rejected. Abandoned.

And my men! My poor men! Dad’s assumptions were not true, and I had to clear that up, but I was finding it hard to breathe as my chest tightened. The thunder in my chest knocked me forward, pushing me on the bed, and I grabbed my phone when the realization hit me that if my parents knew then Chris surely knew. And if Chris knew, the guys were in trouble.

My fingers moved hurriedly as I scrolled through my contacts, pushing my feelings about my parents aside so that I could see through my tears to distinguish the guys’ numbers from the other blur of numbers in my phone. One by one, I tried calling them and none of them would answer the phone. My head started to feel too big for the room, the ceiling appeared too small. I felt suffocated, and unlike last night, this was the bad kind of suffocation. Panic enveloped me and I wasn’t sure what to do next.

When my phone vibrated in my hand, I almost jumped from my body. I pressed my thumbprint against the screen, unlocking it to find the message as fast as I could. When I saw Mario’s name, I could breathe again.

‘Sorry. Can’t talk right now. Chris said he was having a crisis. He invited me, Jared, and Anthony out for a drink at Lion’s bar. Can’t get last night off my mind though. See you later?’it read.

Oh no. My internal organs collapsed. Chris was with them. I tried to delude myself about the fact that perhaps he had not found out yet and I scrolled through my phone to see if any of the other missed calls were from him. Of course, there were missed calls from him. Several of them too. I didn’t have to listen to any of the voicemail messages for confirmation that he knew. My fingers shook as I hurried to text Mario back. At least if Mario responded just now and he was fine, Chris hadn’t confronted them yet. They still had time.

‘Chris knows! You and the guys need to leave, NOW,’I responded, and waited.

A minute passed. Nothing. Two minutes. Three minutes. I was going out of my mind. I had a terrible feeling about this. Chris being angry and drunk was not a good combination. I couldn’t sit here not knowing what was happening, so I grabbed the first items of clothing I could find—jeans shorts and a tank top. I threw them on with a jacket and some sandals, grabbed my keys, and rushed out the door. Hopefully I got there in time, before Chris hurt them or himself.

Chapter 40

Chris

Mystomachburned.Myback ached. There was a heavy pressure against the back of my throat. Even my own spit in my mouth disgusted me. Three of them. When I’d first heard about it this morning, I’d thrown up in the toilet because I couldn’t get the image of these three grown-ass old fucking men taking advantage of my sister’s body. I thought I knew them, but they were these nasty fuckers this whole time. I’d suspected Anthony but Mario? Jared? And I’d pushed for her to strengthen her relationship with them too. Ughhhh. They probably saw me as the biggest fool to ever live and laughed at me as soon as I turned my back.

When my wife heard me throwing up in the bathroom, she had run in to check on me and find out what was wrong, but I couldn’t even tell her what I’d just found out. The words felt too corrupt for my mouth. I didn’t want to leave her with the images I had stuck in my brain against my free will. That alone made me want to kill them.

I felt stupid and useless.

When I thought about the fact that I’d pushed her relationships with Jared and Mario, it made me wonder if I’d caused this because I’d blindly trusted people I should have been able to trust. They were my best friends, for fuck’s sake! Not anymore though. Now they were dead to me. But first, I wanted to confront them face to face. I wanted to look into their eyes and watch them lie to me. Then I wanted to do something my wife would not approve of.

How long had this been going on? My stomach clenched and I bent over in pain as I tried to keep my mind from going there.

That was it. I grimaced at my phone and typed a message, telling them that I needed to meet with them urgently because I had a crisis. They would show up, and not because they cared about me. They couldn’t if they’d gone behind my back and done this. If they all went after my younger sister like depraved animals. They’d show up because they had a big secret to hide, and they’d do anything to hide it. And since we were all about secrets, I thought it apt to lie to them about the reason I wanted to see them so I could catch them off guard.

I took a cab to the bar because I couldn’t trust myself to drive. Not when I couldn’t stop my body from shaking. There was no way I would even have been able to grab the wheel much less start the car. Storming out of the cab, I almost forgot to pay the driver, headed toward the bar only to hear the cab driver arguing about the fact that I was trying to rip him off. I came close to ripping his head off before reminding myself that he was not the problem. The problems were many and they were sitting inside Lion’s Bar, waiting for me. I paid the driver and tipped him before pushing the entrance door open to the mostly empty bar except for a few morning drinkers like myself.

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