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My body froze when I heard a car pulling up in front of the house. I wished I had the app for his cameras on my phone, but he likely had alerts on and would be notified of comings and goings.
It could be Betsy, a delivery driver, or hell, anyone else, but the boulder in my gut told me it wasn’t. I got to my feet, slipped on my shoes, and went to the door, just as Becca was walking up.
“You and Riv?” she asked, tears welling in her eyes, one already trickling down her face.
My gaze darted toward Betsy’s place. “Come inside, Bec. Let’s do this in here.”
“You and fucking Riven!” she shouted, the dam breaking, the tears flowing down her face.
“I’m sorry.” My heart felt like it was cracking apart, Becca’s pain and devastation having more power over me than Rex’s fists ever could. This was going to break her, and I’d known it. I’d known it, and I’d done it anyway.
“Fuck you, Parrish. Why him? Why the only person I’ve ever loved? The only one outside of you to treat me like I at least matter a little bit!”
How sad was that? Becca had grown up with parents who didn’t give a shit about her, with men who used her to fuck her, knowing if they pretended to care even the slightest, she would cling to that because she had never known any different. Riven hadn’t used her, but he hadn’t loved her or always treated her the best. Not that she had either. She’d cheated on him with Rex and gotten pregnant with Lainey, but that had been from desperation too—to feel loved, to feel wanted, to feel like she mattered. In some ways, Becca was the biggest tragedy of us all, but it seemed to go that way for women.
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you knew it would!” she shouted again.
“Yes,” I admitted because there was no reason to lie. She deserved better than that. She deserved better than all this. “In the beginning, I didn’t know you still had feelings for him, and by the time I did…” It wasn’t until after Riven and I had slept together for the first time that she’d told me explicitly that she still loved him. I’d made the choice to continue it anyway, and that was on me.
Becca’s eyes met mine, a cloudy blue sky that might never see the sun again. “Why can’t anyone love me?”
She collapsed, and I managed to reach her just in time to catch her. My body ached with the movement, screamed at me to let her go, but still I carried her inside the house, closing the door behind us. I set her too-small frame on the bed and knelt in front of her.
“You deserve better than how I treated you…better than Riv back in the day, and you sure as shit deserve better than Rex. You are worthy of love, Becca. You just gotta believe it and demand it. You have two little girls who see you as the queen of their world. They don’t love anyone the way they do their mama. I’m so fucking sorry I hurt you. You’re my best friend in the world, and I should have done better by you. This isn’t because you’re not good enough, okay?” I tried to wipe her tears, but she jerked away.
“Do you love him?” she snapped.
I hated this, but she deserved the truth. Maybe if I had told her from the beginning, we could have avoided all this. “Yes.”
“Does he love you?” A second boulder landed in my gut, my hesitation the only answer she needed. “You can’t see the girls anymore.” She shoved her way around me and stood.
My heart dropped like an anchor with her words. “Please don’t do this, Bec. I love them. I’m their uncle. Don’t take them away from me.”
“It’s not me. It’s Rex. He’s the one who said it. You beat the shit out of him, Parrish. The girls saw it too.” When I flinched, she lowered her voice and said, “I tried to make him leave, tried to kick him out so they didn’t see him that way, but you know how Rex is. He wanted to punish you, and he wanted to punish me for caring about you. He let them see, and he told them you did it. I would never hurt my girls that way.”
“I beat the shit out of him? Do you see my face and body right now? This is because of him. Rex started this. I was defending myself,” I seethed. How could she let him do this? Let him take the girls away from me? Let him take me away from the girls? “Please don’t do this, Bec.”
Her tears had dried up, but now they started flowing again. “I don’t have a choice. He’ll make things harder on us if I don’t do what he says, and…I just can’t right now, Parrish. I’m so tired of hurting. When does it ever stop?”
