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“No, you don’t.”
My eyes snap back up to his, shocked by his answer. “I don’t?”
“No, Isa…” he glares back at me. It’s a stare that says don’t fucking question my sincerity of my answer. I let him carry on because of this. “I used it as a nesting ground to force you to marry me so I could destroy your life. To make me feel better, but truth is, Justin had it coming. He was a convicted sex offender. My parents? They paid it all away constantly. He was eventually going to pay for his wrongs. I’m only sorry it had to be you that had to live with it, ‘cuz I sure as fuck know I almost killed him—more than once.”
“I’m sorry,” is all I can muster to say.
“Sorry for what?” He pushes off the wall and I feel as though a huge weight had been taken away with him.
“You lost your brother.”
Bryant shrugs casually. “As I said, he had it coming.”
Not wanting to let this one thing go, I ask, “Why did you marry me, Bryant.”
He chuckles, tugging his clothes back on. “I’ll tell you one day.”
“When?”
“When I don’t hate you anymore, and when I trust you.” Then he points to his jacket. “You might need to leave that on… since your dress is ruined.”
Shit.
“Bryant!” I half laugh and half annoyed snap at him, shaking my head. “Your parents are going to see us in this state.”
He shrugs. “Jess has some clothes here you can wear if it bothers you that much. We’ll eat dinner and leave.”
We ate dinner, and I slipped into some of Jess’s clothes, even though she’s a whole dress size smaller than me. Dinner talk was easy, carefree. Around all the laughs about Bryant’s childhood photos, and the sangria, it was a breeze and I felt as though I had known, particularly his mother, longer than what I actually had.
12
Bryant
Isa hugs my mom and dad goodbye before we get into my car. Seeing her little body against my dad’s almost makes me laugh because he’s built like a caveman and she’s so tiny. I could snap her with a simple flick of my wrist. I want to snap her. I want to snap her bad. Truth is, I can’t let go of this feeling of wanting to hurt her. She reminds of that day every time I see her. It’s not really that day though, I couldn’t give a fuck about Justin, and that’s the God honest truth. The fucker had it coming, and if Isa didn’t do it, I would have eventually. The little fuck was always spoilt and always had Mom and Dad bailing him out of every single shit mess he had created. Since he has been gone, my mother hasn’t touched a drink and my father has been around the house more often. It’s as if his “disappearance” is unspoken, but it was healthy for our family. He put a lot of bullshit on all of our plates. Jessica was the one I knew would be okay with it the most. Well, as okay as you can be. Justin spent most of his time and life tormenting her whenever I wasn’t around. He’d lock her in the attic for days on end while Dad was out on business and Mom was too drunk to register. She was his very own doll that he would use as he pleased. When the first round of sexual abuse case came around, we had to sit down and ask Jessica if there was anything that we needed to know. Just to be sure, and because with Justin, you’d never know.
“Are you crazy? No. He would hit me and get great pleasure on inflicting pain on me but no, he never sexually touched me.” Which was a fucking good thing, because I would have ended him that day—no questions asked, if he had. Other than that, we don’t talk about it. It never did make much sense to me though because he didn’t actually need to rape women. He was good-looking, he could’ve probably had anyone he wanted, but he needed to force himself onto them. It was what got him off. He said he had gotten better as years went on, but he hadn’t.
“Damn.” Isa breaks through my thoughts, tidying her hair as I drive out onto the busy road. “I feel like a whore.”
“Whore’s get paid. You rode my dick for free.” I see her head snap toward me out of the corner of my eye, so I smirk.
Gotta admit, seeing her in my jacket earlier with her hair all up in a messy ponytail almost had me punching in my man card and dropping to her knees. Fuck. Even thinking something like that has me worried as shit. This wasn’t part of the plan. I wasn’t supposed to get attached to her—and I’m not attached to her— but I do find myself slowly warming up to her annoying tendencies and finding them, at times, the times when I don’t want to strangle her, a little cute.
