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Pissed was good.
Pissed was safe.
“We have a business arrangement,” I continued.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shouted. “We just got done having sex and getting as close as we’ve ever been, and you start with the business arrangement talk. Fuck you, Beau. Fuck you for being such a dick.”
Good. Don’t like me. I didn’t want people to like me in business. Black and white, cold, and to the point. Respect me, not like me. Business was business.
I spun on my heels to confront her and instantly regretted it. Her fury only made her sexier. “Don’t get angry,” I demanded. “I made it very clear from the start what was expected. You and I are starting to make this… messy. I’m just bringing it up so we can clean up our actions.”
“Messy?” She said the word calmly which only made me see the rage in her eyes all more clearly.
“Yes, messy. I’m simply pointing it out.”
She flung her legs off the side of the bed and marched toward the bathroom… again. “Well, we don’t want that. No one wants messy.”
The last sound in the room was the slamming of the door.
9
Abilene
Messy. Messy.
I’d show him fucking messy.
I glared at Beau, passed out on the bed beside me, sleeping peacefully, because, of course, he was. Apparently, that was just the kind of man he was. He could have amazing, earth-shattering sex with me that felt, that felt so—
I swallowed hard and pressed my palms against my eyes.
Goddammit, I was the stupid one here.
A man promising things and saying sweet shit while he wanted to get inside you was the oldest trick in the book.
You’re mine.
And then I stupidly went and admitted how much I’d wanted to hear him say it.
Stupid!
I threw my covers off and climbed out of bed. Beau didn’t so much as stir.
And the second my feet hit the floor, my stomach swooped, and not in the good way. Oh shit, not again. My head dropped back. Seriously? I did not need this shit right now.
I hadn’t eaten much at dinner and an empty stomach was not a good idea. I’d pay for it if I didn’t try to eat something now. But it wasn’t exactly like I could explain my dietary needs to anyone here. Ha.
I glared at Beau, who continued snoring on like all was right in his world. I guess it was. He was sailing through his Trial. Getting his nuts off on the regular with a hot chick who was all but begging to be his sex toy—God, I felt so stupid for tonight!
Screw the stupid archaic rules of this place that said the women couldn’t leave the room without a male escort. Such misogynistic bullshit.
And maybe it was more stupidity and recklessness, but at the moment I really could not give a shit. I pulled on a robe, marched toward the door, opened it, and slipped into the darkened hall beyond.
My heart started to race immediately. It was ridiculous that walking around a dark house felt so illicit. It was like I was a teenager breaking curfew. Yeah, yeah, I knew there were consequences, but right at this particular moment, all their rules and little rituals felt absolutely ridiculous. Just a bunch of rich fucks with too much time on their hands playing dress up.
The rest of us lived in the real world. The one where you got hungry in the middle of the night and wanted to go down to the kitchen for a goddamn snack.
Still, I tried to stay in the shadows as I crept through the darkened mansion. Here and there sconce lights provided enough light to see where I was going, and I remembered where the kitchen was. Oh, I’d definitely clocked that on my walk with Beau.
I kept my ears open, but the place was silent. Eerily so, if I was honest. I did not believe in ghosts. Not the kind that haunted houses, anyway. No, I was more familiar with ghosts that haunted your memories—those kinds were very real. Tina haunted me regularly, and she was still very much alive out there somewhere in the world, I imagined. But I wasn’t afraid of any angry Civil War ghoulies rising up. In my experience, the living did plenty more damage than the dead.
God, Beau turning on me tonight like he’d just flipped a switch…
I’d been there before.
Tina was like that. She swore we were sisters. Sisters from different misters. Sisters for life, that was what she told me.
I met her when I was fourteen, dumped off at yet another foster family. I knew as soon as my social worker parked in front of the rundown double-wide with kid’s toys and junk bikes littering the dirt lawn that this was just one more nightmare stop.
I started crying and begged the social worker lady not to leave me there. She said the Morrisons were perfectly nice people and that they were fostering three other girls just a couple years older than me. Didn’t I want friends? Wasn’t I tired of sharing a big room and a toilet with all the girls at the group home? Wasn’t I being bullied there? She’d pulled strings to get me this placement, and if I wasn’t going to show her gratitude, she’d turn the car right back around and give it to another more deserving girl.
