Page 74 of Bared Betrayal

“Leave me alone.”

“Maya, please stop.” I manage to grab her wrist, yanking her around. But my grip slips, and she falls. It happens in eery slow-motion, the way her body twists, her legs giving way beneath her, her head hitting the curb. It’s when I see the blood that everything starts happening in a blur.

“Maya!” I scream, crouching beside her. She’s not moving. She’s not…shit. “Maya! Maya, wake up. Thomas!”

“What the hell is going on?” He comes to a complete standstill when he sees Maya. “Oh, shit.”

“Get help. Get help, please,” I beg.

“Oh, shit. Is she dead?”

“Thomas!” I cry. “Get help!”

“I can’t…” He steps back, and I look up at him. “I can’t…”

“Thomas!”

“I’m sorry, Kal. I just…I can’t be here.” He runs in the other direction, his heavy footfalls pounding and fading into the dark.

“Maya, please,” I plead, tears streaming down my face. She’s still not moving, and there’s blood on my hands now, red, crimson coating my fingers. “Oh, God, please.”

“Miss, is everyone okay here?”

Only then do I notice the man getting out of his van.

“No. Please, my sister needs help.”

He crouches beside her, his hands hovering over her head. “Oh, shit, this is bad. She needs to get to a hospital. I’ll take you.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much.”

I watch as he gently picks her up.

“Careful,” I urge as I get into the back of his van first, letting him put her on the back seat, her head resting on my lap. “It’s okay,” I say, wiping bloodied hair from her forehead. “You’ll be fine. We’re getting you to a hospital, okay? Just hold on.”

We never got to the hospital.

“There isno one else to blame,” I say, my cheek pressed against Gabriel’s chest. “I know it. Back then, everyone knew it. You should have seen the way my parents looked at me.” He tightens his arms around me. “My father could barely look at me after Maya killed herself. That’s why he left us—my mom and me. You know what the last thing was he said to me before he left?”

Gabriel kisses the top of my head softly.

“‘I wish it was you instead of her.’” Every bone in my body cracks. It’s like I’m hearing him say it for the very first time, breaking my heart into a million pieces, shattering my entire existence with just a few words.

“Motherfucker,” Gabriel curses, and I lift my head to look at him.

“Everyone I love, I hurt.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? Look at us. Look at what I’m doing to your son. Sleeping with his father? That’s a special kind of fucked-up, Gabriel.”

“This isn’t all just you.” He grabs a throw-blanket draped over the couch and eases it over my shoulders. “I have my part in this, too.”

I tighten the blanket around me. “You’re not the one who went to a sex club searching for some twisted sense of freedom, hoping it could turn me into someone worthy of being a wife.”

“We all have our demons to fight.”

“Stop doing that,” I say, shaking my head. “Stop trying to justify what I did.”