Page 29
Story: Did They Break You
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
CORTLAND
By the end of our session, I’m pretty sure Dr. Ravi hates me even more. Turns out, she does know about me. I know what she sees. I’m a spoiled football player who got away with a felony and ruined a girl’s life in the process.
I guess that sums it up.
Even still, I’ve spent the past year fighting back my own urge to pity myself for everything that went down.
I think we all have, save maybe for Chase.
At first, we banded together. We had the same stories.
The same defense. Consensual. That word was tossed around so many fucking times, it started to kind of blur in my mind.
Like when you write a word over and fucking over and you start to think you’re misspelling it. I started to think maybe… it was.
The truth is slippery inside my head.
Because you really can believe your own lies.
But then the truth started to eat at us. At me.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was all… gray.
But we stuck with it.
We were— are— a pack. And more than that, she was fucking us all over. It wasn’t just Brinklin. Storm. Chase.
She was going after me, too.
I walk out of Dr. Ravi’s office feeling worse than I did when I walked in, which is saying something considering my mom came by the house to “discuss” how I hung up on her last night before I got here.
That ended with her hand against my face.
Should’ve ended with my fingers wrapped around her throat, but I can’t do it. Putting my hands on my fucking mom, it’s just… I can’t.
I check my phone as I walk out, thinking about what I told Remi. I want to see her. I have a game in two days, and fucking her would get my head on straight, but I know, the way she dug her claws into me, that’s unlikely to happen.
A message from Maya comes up on my phone and all thoughts of sleeping with Remi leave my head.
Maya
I know you saw her. Do you WANT to go to prison???
Fuck.
My stomach flips, but at the same time, I hear Dr. Ravi’s door creak open at my back and she says, “Cortland?”
I tear my eyes away from my phone screen to glance over my shoulder as I arch a brow, my heart beating uncomfortably fast in my chest.
“Did someone hit you?” She touches a manicured nail to her cheek, standing in the doorway right behind me. “Here?” Her voice is gentle, and I hate that.
Her fucking pity.
Just like Remi’s.
As if they both don’t believe I deserve it. What the fuck is wrong with women? They hate you one minute, want to coddle you the next? Just like my goddamn mom.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I answer Dr. Ravi, my tone even. I turn away from her and walk down the hall, not bothering to turn back when she calls my name again.
“Why would you want to be anywhere near her after what she did to you?” Maya demands, her arms over her chest as she paces in front of me, anger carved into every inch of her oval face.
Her dark hair is a mess and she looks like she needs to sleep.
I figured out one of her cheerleading friends saw me walking to the graveyard and followed me, saw I was talking to Remi.
She had a dick appointment, so she conveniently forgot to tell Maya until today.
Amazing.
“Calm down, Maya,” I say, leaning back against my pillows, my laptop on my lap. I’m messaging Tristan, only half-listening to my ranting girlfriend.
I think about Remi’s words, about getting a boyfriend.
I clench my jaw, blanking out as I stare at my screen, imagining what it would be like, knowing she was fucking someone else… Fuck.
But my dick grows hard, knowing she hasn’t. At least, that’s what she said.
I reach under my laptop and adjust myself through my sweats, then force myself to focus on Tristan’s messages.
Tristan is the Best
Mom isn’t good for us. Session was good today. Therapist said he’d talk to Dad. I think maybe I should keep staying with him, don’t you?
My heart sinks, staring at my brother’s text message on my screen. He’s right. Of course he’s right. He should never go back to Mom. But she makes the most money in the family, and she’s the woman. Those two things will not work well in Dad’s favor for getting custody.
Then again, Tristan is thirteen. Maybe he’d be able to decide for himself. Either way, it’s why I’m here. To help.
He begged Dad not to bring the cops or social services into the fight he had with Mom after we figured out she did hit him, and I can’t blame him.
Thinking of the questions the detectives asked me, the shit my lawyers told me that Remi was asked, it makes me feel hot all over, uncomfortable. Thinking back to that time at all makes me feel sick.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I can’t recall.”
That’s what I said to nearly every question. Except a few key ones.
“Did she say no? Did she fight back? Did she tell you to stop?”
No. Not one fucking time.
And neither did Tristan.
I don’t want him to go through that.
You’re right, bud. I’ll talk to Dad, too. Don’t worry, you don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to.
I know that isn’t true, and I know Dad is barely hanging on with finances over the little place he’s got. He took some time off work to stay home with Tristan, but he’s going back soon and that doesn’t make me feel much better.
I have a trust fund that Mom’s hanging onto and a little money in savings my grandpa passed on to me.
I know the way things are between Mom and me now, I’ve got about as much a chance of getting her money as I do of getting Remi to let me knock her up and take her to West Virginia for the rest of my natural life.
I close my eyes a second, flexing my jaw. What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Are you even listening to me?” Maya demands.
No. I snap my eyes up, close my laptop and reach over to set it on my dresser. Maya stops her pacing, her hands fisted at her sides. She’s in tight jeans, a halter crop top in EU colors.
Her eyes look bleary, and I know she’s really upset about what she heard about Remi. If she only knew the truth.
I bite my lip, sitting up straighter, my legs stretched out on the bed. “Maya, we were just talking,” I say, not wanting her to have an excuse to go after Remi. “I was running, and she was?—”
“You should know she’s always in graveyards, talking to her dead fucking mom or something.”
I stare at Maya, my hands on my thighs. She crosses her arms again, looking down at her heels.
“She’s a bitch, Cort, and she already fucked you over. She almost sent you to prison. You need to stay away from her.”
I don’t say anything, just keep staring at the girl I never really liked in the first place. She was a shield, and that’s about it.
Storm told me I needed to cut her off after I fucked her the first time, but I’ve always liked steady sex. It’s just easier.
With Remi, I was content to wait.
I didn’t know what would happen when we went off to college, but before that night, if she had asked me, I would’ve told her we would try to make it work. I was halfway in love with her quiet ass back in high school, and Maya knew it before I did.
Maya comes closer to the bed and gets on, sinking her palms down on either side of my hips, crawling up my lap, her eyes locked on mine.
I inhale her strong perfume, something floral, and watch her bite her lip, her halter low-cut, showing off her full breasts.
“Let me take care you of, baby,” she whispers. “You don’t need to deal with her shit.” She sinks back to her heels, reaching for the waistband of my sweats.
I let her, my dick growing hard at the sight of her tits, but I keep thinking about what I said to Remi. About her getting a boyfriend and how I’d kill the fucker.
I think about her eyes in the gym, when I told her I was dating Maya.
She was... hurt.
Just as Maya goes to stick her hands down my pants, I catch her wrist in my fingers, jerking her closer.
Her breath leaves her in a rush, and she thinks I want to play with her, the way her other palm comes to my chest and she laughs against my neck.
But I grip her tighter, and she stills.
My mouth is at her ear when I speak. “You don’t own me, Maya,” I tell her, my voice low. “You don’t tell me who I can and can’t see. What I can and can’t do.”
I hear her suck in a breath, no doubt ready to speak again, but I don’t want to hear what she was to say.
“I think you should go home now.”
She scoffs and tries to pull her wrist from my grip, but I don’t let go.
“And if you think about texting my mother about this, think again, and grow the fuck up.”
I release her and she pulls back like I burned her, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
But I think about her dropping Remi in that gym, the cry that left Remi’s mouth, and Maya just flipped her hair over her shoulder, turned away while the other spotters helped Remi limp over to the bleachers in the gym.
“I’ve got shit to do,” I tell her, crossing my arms over my chest, nodding toward the door.
“Cort,” she whispers, her bottom lip quivering. She glances at my pants, her hands coming to my thighs again as she leans in toward me, making that anger under my skin grow brighter. “Please just let me make you feel good.”
“Stop touching me, Maya.”
She doesn’t. Instead, she keeps running her hands up me, palming my dick over my sweats. “Baby, please?—”
I move before I even think it through as I flip her on her back so I’m on top of her.
Her eyes widen, but she’s not surprised. She knows how I like to fuck.
But that’s not what I want.
That’s not ? —
Her hand closes around my dick in my pants, running up and down the length of me, my palms on either side of her head.
“Cort,” she whispers, “she’s got you all fucked up.”
Yeah. She does.
Maya’s blue eyes are wide, her grip sure. “Let me help you.”
I close my eyes tight as Maya strokes me.
No.
But she’s insistent, her hand slipping under the waistband of my sweats. Her fingers curl around my cock, and it feels good.
I keep my eyes closed.
Don’t let her do it.
I repeat it over and over in my fucked-up brain, but I think about the porn I like to watch. The shit I like to do. How Maya would let me choke her fucking black and blue if I wanted, and never complain, so long as I stayed with her.
I was always sweet with Remi. But she fucked me up all the same.
When Maya whispers, “Lie on your back,” I still have my eyes closed, but I do as she says. I feel her tugging at my sweats and I grip her hair tight, then hear her whimper.
But it’s Remi in my head.
And if she did something like this with someone else…
Before Maya can get my pants down, my door creaks.
My eyes flash open and Storm walks in without saying a word.
Then he stops dead.
Looks from Maya, staring up at him like a deer caught in the headlights, to me, his face expressionless.
Then he sighs. “You’re fucking stupid,” he mutters before he walks out, closing the door behind him.
Yeah.
I am.
Table of Contents
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- Page 29 (Reading here)
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