Page 81 of Winter's End

“I’m Winter.” I tried to smile wider, showing all of my teeth. Non-threatening, pleasant. “You may not remember me, but I’m?—”

“Yeah, I remember you.” Devon’s lips curled into a disgusted sneer. “You’re the whore Travis is throwing his life away for.”

I stepped back like I had been backhanded across the face.

What the hell?

“Excuse me?” I gritted out once my brain caught up to the shock of his words. “I’m Travis’ girlfriend, yes. But to call me a whore is just?—”

“But you are, aren’t you?” His matter-of-fact tone interrupted me, and he stepped farther away as if I were a contagious disease. “A modern Jezebel. Sleeping around and killing my brother’s mind with your poison pussy.”

If my eyebrows got any higher, they would disappear into my skull. The mouth on this man—some saint he was.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a man of God now?” I shot back, done with his unwarranted attack on my character.

This man didn’t know me, yet he was going to judge me? Didn’t he love his own brother enough to try?

“What happened to ‘Love thy neighbor?’ ‘Love thy brother?’ ‘Casting the first stone to judge’ and all that?”

I was paraphrasing. I wasn’t religious and my knowledge of the Bible wasn’t great, but the God I’d been told about was one of love and acceptance, not this scathing vitriol.

“Don’t pretend you know anything about the Bible,” Devon spat, his eyes now full of hate. “You’re a stain on my brother’s soul, and he’d be better off without you.”

“I’m a stain!? Are you kidding me!?” I almost dropped my basket. “Do you know how much trouble Travis has gotten in because of your choices? How much his love foryouhas almost gotten him killed? Fuck you, buddy. If you truly loved him, you’d stop taking advantage of him.”

I stormed past the ungrateful idiot, done with the bitter exchange. I didn’t even know if I could tell Travis. It would break his heart, and my man had had his heart broken by Devon enough to last ten lifetimes.

I was almost out of earshot when I caught his vicious parting words.

“I’m glad I reported you, you nasty slut.”

My limbs shook with raging energy. It took every ounce of self-control to not drop every grocery and scratch the pompous, pious man’s eyes out.

Fuck him. Fuckhim.

Everyone had a story, and most of them had an element of tragedy. That’s what life was. It wasn’t kind or evil; it was ambivalent to the plight of us mere mortals. But every one of us had the power of choice—the power to make the best of our shitty situations. Our tragedy could define us or just be another element to our tale.

Devon had let it define him. He’d chosen to let itdestroyhim. And I’d be damned if he took Travis down in the process any more than he already had.

I abandoned my basket at the checkout, grateful I didn’t have a melting tub of ice cream in there, and seethed all the way to Basil.

I wouldn’t come between Travis and his brother, but we had agreed to a relationship without lies.

I forced a breath through my nose before picking up my phone.

I dialed my Hottie Bartender with a heavy heart. This was not the call I wanted to be making today.

The line rang a few times before his husky voice answered.

“Hey beautiful, what are you up to?”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and rested my foreheadon Basil’s steeringwheel. “Hey baby, I’m sorryto drop this on you, but there is something you should know…”

CHAPTER 22

DREW

“Cowabunga!”