Page 73

I’m sipping on a glass of Scotch when I hear the clink of my door. The catch of the lock follows as she locks it behind her and then the clipping sound of her heels on the floor as she enters.

Then a thud, followed by another one that’s deeper as she kicks off her heels and one hits a wall.

It’s dark in the room, because I can’t be bothered to lean over and switch on a lamp. And in those few seconds, all the shit, all the anger I feel, hurls into my chest at a thunderous speed.

Just this fucking morning we were talking about being in this together. And I don’t know if it’s the shit with Stella, the fact she’s right and Cara does belong in a different world from mine, or the fact she fuckingliedabout having dinner with her parents so she could go hang out at a fucking bar with some guy who looks like the exact kind of guy I’m certain her parents would choose for her. But as Cara walks into the living room and flicks on a light, I don’t even flinch at the brightness.

“Hey,” she says, having the nerve to walk toward me. Clueless. Totally fucking clueless, I know. “What are you doing here sitting in the dark?”

She stops when I don’t answer, but I’m too fucking stunned to speak. And maybe too drunk. I set down my drink just in case.

Her hair is messed, flyaways at her temples and around her ears and she has the rest pulled back off her neck and shoulders. Her cheeks are flushed, her mascara slightly smeared beneath her eyes.

Beautiful, glorious, and completely uninhibited. She looks exactly like she does after I’ve made love to her.

“Braxton? You okay?”

“I called you.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She dips her head and digs into her purse. She pulls out her phone and gives me a guilty look. “It died at some point. I guess I forgot to charge it earlier. I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

She takes a step forward, hesitantly this time, and tilts her head to the side. “Are you mad at me? I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I said I’d come right home after dinner.”

Her voice trails off and I laugh coldly.

“Was worried about you when you didn’t answer my first few calls. Then I got pissed when you didn’t answer my next few. Then, I saw you were in good hands and stopped being worried and just stayed pissed.” While I’m talking, I pull up the photo Stella took and when I’m done, I lean forward, sliding my phone across the coffee table. It lands just on the edge of the table closest to her.

“I don’t understand—” She glances down and her lips part, forming a circle. Her eyes go round and her fingers go to her ears, brushing back some of her flyaways. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Looks like a fun dinner with dear old Mom and Dad,” I sneer. I’m unable to stop it. Hours of being anxious about her dinner, worried how it was going, that I wasn’t there to protect her from her parents, then pissed, not only that she’s all over some preppy little asshole, at a bar no less, but the fact there’s a bubbling glass of what looks like champagne in her hand.

She’s fucking pregnant with my kid. Drinking. That might be the thing that has me pissed most of all since she knows who I came from and how I was brought into this world.

“Wow. Okay, Braxton, there’s an explanation for all of this and if you calm down for a minute I’ll explain.”

“You’re fucking drinking alcohol with my kid in you, Cara. You have your fucking hands all over some other guy after having your handsallover me this morning and yesterday and the day before.”

Hurt splashes across her face but I’m too pissed, both with anger and the Scotch to give a fuck.

“And you think there’s an explanation that will help calm me down? Go ahead, give it.” I wiggle my fingers. I’m being an asshole.

It registers, but there’s too much other shit shouting at me to do any good. Stella’s inside my head, telling me she’ll go back to high-class when she can. My mom is there, on her knees, giving some damn guy a blowjob to pay for more drugs, not giving a shit I haven’t eaten in days. Cara’s there, telling me fucking me is a disaster.

All of it’s slamming around at some high damn decibels, I scratch my fingers across the back of my head and almost miss it when she wipes a tear off her cheek.

“Don’t be a dick, Braxton. This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Looks to me you caved to Mommy and Daddy and got with a man they approve of. They happy with you now for once? They proud of you finally?”

She steps back quickly, almost tripping over the side table behind her and even in my drunken state I think of her falling to her ass. Of getting hurt.

I reach for her and she smacks my hand away, then smacks my bicep.

“Don’t you dare touch me,” she hisses, scrambling to regain her balance and moving back quickly. “Don’t you ever touch me, never again, you asshole. I’m leaving and I’ll call you when I can stand to even think of talking to you again, but this…what I thought we had, Braxton. We’re done.”

“We never had shit,” I snap back at her. “Not if you can turn away from me that quickly.”