The Imperfections: A Forbidden Romance

by Sam Mariano

  I throw back the whiskey.

  “We had Alyssa come over to stay with the kids. Bri wanted to get a hotel for the night.”

  Jesus, he’s fucking shameless, making his mistress stay home with his sons so he can take his wife to a hotel and fuck her in the ass—which his teenage mistress gave him a taste for to begin with.

  “Bri and I went out to dinner, spent some time together before we went back to the hotel. Then we… went to bed,” he offers. “And it was…” He stops again, then tells me, “I don’t know how to say this without saying it.”

  “Just say it. Christ.”

  “It was okay, but it wasn’t as good as it was with Alyssa. With Alyssa, it was an otherworldly fucking experience. She’s so tight, Brant, I swear she squeezes parts of my soul out of me with her holes.”

  Goddammit, Theo. My stomach knots up with arousal, picturing what this girl’s pussy must be like.

  “Anyway, so that night while Bri was asleep, I checked my phone and saw a message from Alyssa. I thought it might be about the boys, so I opened it, but it wasn’t. She was just telling me happy anniversary and she hoped we had a nice night.”

  My lips curve up dryly. “Sure she did.”

  “No, she really did,” he insists. “It wasn’t some petty, catty text. I know it sounds like it could be, but you just have to know her. She’s not like that. She really did mean it. She might’ve been sad, but she still meant it when she said she hoped we were having fun. She’s so fucking thoughtful.”

  “Are you in love with her?” I ask point-blank since this is not the first time I’ve had the thought.

  His eyes widen in alarm. “What? No! Of course not.”

  I narrow my eyes, unconvinced. Maybe he doesn’t hear the way he talks about her, but I sure do. “Finish the story.”

  Theo clears his throat and fidgets with his hands on the table then swallows and gets back to it. “So, I sent her a text back, and then she texted me, kind of playfully telling me she hoped Bri got me a good gift. I told her…” He second-guesses telling me, but when he meets my gaze, he forces himself to. “I told her she did, but it wasn’t as good as the one she gave me. I got turned on talking to her and I… I asked her to send me a video.”

  “A video?”

  “I told her…I told her to get herself off and record it for me.”

  Fuck. I shift as my bulge grows bigger in my pants, then I nod. “All right.”

  “Anyway, she did, and I jerked off to it. Afterward, she asked me if I’d meet her the next day and I said yes.” He pauses, looking down at the table. “I told Bri I had to go to the office and I went out and met Alyssa. She said she wanted to talk, but I just thought it was an excuse to see each other. I fucked her in the back seat of her car, and after I came inside her, I held her and I said something about buying some condoms to keep on hand if we were gonna keep fucking.” He takes an uneasy breath, not looking at me. “She said… she said we didn’t need to use condoms for a while, and I thought she meant because she was on birth control, but… it turns out she was never on birth control.”

  I wait, watching the little fucker lick his lips nervously. I know where this is going, but I want to hear him say it.

  “She’s pregnant,” he tells me, looking more miserable than he has up to now. “Of course I almost had a fucking heart attack. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to piss her off because she had all this ammunition. She could wipe out my whole fucking life if she told. I tried to feel her out, tried to play it supportive and ask what she wanted to do, hoping to God she’d say she wanted an abortion and I could give her some money to take care of it.”

  “She didn’t,” I surmise.

  He shakes his head miserably. “She won’t. We got into a fight about it. I tried to be nice at first, but when she kept refusing and saying she wanted to have the baby, I just… I got so fucking scared, and I told her she couldn’t keep it because it would ruin both our lives. She swore she wouldn’t tell Bri, but that wasn’t good enough. What if she changed her mind? I told her I’d give her the money and take her to the appointment myself, but she just got pissed at me for trying to force her into something she didn’t want to do. I never saw her so stern in all the time I knew her. Wouldn’t you know the time she comes up against me and holds her fucking ground is over the worst mistake of my life? So, I didn’t handle it well,” he tells me, like this isn’t even all of it.

  “There’s more?” I demand, cocking an eyebrow.

  “I felt this helpless rage that she wouldn’t let me off the hook. She was always so goddamn accommodating—what happened to that?”

  “Sounds like she’s a mama bear,” I offer. “You think of the pregnancy as a mistake. She already thinks of it as her baby.”

  He rolls his eyes. “It’s fucking annoying. Anyway, we both get all fired up and before I know it…”

  “Let me guess, you fucked her again,” I deadpan.

  He nods. “But this time, it’s different. This time I’m not enchanted like I normally am, just thinking about the pleasure she’s giving me. This time she’s being a pain in my ass and she could really ruin my life. I didn’t make a conscious decision to do it, but I wrapped my hands around her throat and started choking her while I fucked her. She didn’t like it, even at first when she thought maybe I was just being kinky. She started panicking and tried to pull my hands off her throat and yelled at me to stop, but I didn’t. I kept fucking her even though she didn’t want me to anymore, and she was so fucking afraid. Then I started thinking, What the fuck am I doing? This is illegal, she’s going to have my ass arrested.”

  Aw, shit. Giving up my relaxed position, I lean forward and stare at him across the table. “Are you telling me you killed this girl?”

  A little paler, he shakes his head. “No. No, I… I swear to God, I almost did, but I couldn’t go through with it. Her big eyes were looking up at me so fearful, so betrayed. After I came, I just sort of let her go and ran. The whole fucking way home all I could think about was the cops showing up at my door and Bri answering, so fucking confused.” He hangs his head in shame. “What would she tell the boys? I fucked up so bad, Brant.”

  He sure did.

  Fuck.

  I expected a cheating story, figured I might have to pay his side dish a visit and persuade her to fuck off, but I wasn’t counting on any of this. A fucking teenage girl, knocked up, and on top of that, sounds like he sort of raped her and tried to kill her. It’s nothing short of a miracle this girl didn’t run screaming to the police station.

  “You said she’s 17?”

  “She was when it all started. She’s 18 now,” he tells me.

  “Alyssa what?”

  “Alyssa Walton.”

  “She live with her parents?”

  He nods. “Her mom. She starts college in the fall, so she was going to live at home the first year to get herself used to everything.”

  “Was,” I echo, running my thumb across the rim of my whiskey glass. Looking up at him, I ask, “What is it you’d like me to do for you, Theo?”

  At first, he just stares at me, wanting me to fill in the blank for him, wanting me to say what I already know he’s asking so he doesn’t have to ask me to murder the nice little girl who made the dumb mistake of getting mixed up with him.

  “She’s not cooperating,” he says a little desperately, trying to justify his ugly request. “Now she hates me, and it’s only a matter of time before she decides to stop covering my ass. She’ll go to Bri, if not to the cops, and what then? She’ll ruin Bri’s life, Brant.”

  “Don’t,” I say, shaking my head mildly. “Don’t try to convince me it’s what’s best for my sister. I told you, be a fucking man, own what you did, and own what you’re asking me to do for you. Don’t put it on Bri.”

  Another long, silent minute passes, then he licks his lips, gathers his courage, and tells me, “I need you to deal with Alyssa. I need you to…make her disappear before she blows up my whole life.
”

  I look across the table at this miserable fucker. “Do you love my sister?”

  “Yes,” he says vehemently, looking like he wants to hop across the table and tattoo the word on my left bicep so I’ll see it every day and believe him. “I do. I made a selfish fucking mistake, Brant, that’s all. I know I fucked up big time, I know this is bad, but I do love your sister. I don’t even know why I did it. I didn’t mean to, man, it just happened somehow.”

  “It happened because you let it happen,” I tell him, not letting him off the hook that easily. “It happened because you’re a selfish dick who decided to stick his cock into the pretty teenager who came around every now and again. If I fix this for you, can you guarantee me nothing like this ever happens again?”

  “Yes,” he swears, nodding. “Yes, I promise.”

  “Nothing,” I say again, pointing at him across the table and narrowing my eyes. “You’ll be as faithful as a fucking Labrador until your dying day, and if you’re not, you’re done.”

  “I swear to God,” he tells me, like that means anything coming from him. Bet this fucker doesn’t believe in jack shit, but still he says it. “You have my word, Brant.”

  Ha, his word—only thing that means less.

  He’s a sorry sack of shit and I don’t want to help him. I’m tempted to kick him out and deny him my assistance on this sensitive matter, but then I think about my sister crying into her pillow over this little asshole. If she finds out, she’ll be heartbroken, plain and simple. Even if she leaves him, she’ll be devastated for so long, by the time she moves on it might be too late to have that little princess she has her heart set on.

  And here’s this asshole, knocking up someone else.

  I shake my head at him and hunch forward, grabbing the whiskey. He watches me pour some into the glass, then throw it back, and put the glass back down with a clink that makes him swallow again.

  “I’m gonna tell you something, Theo: you better not make me regret covering your ass.”

  Relief transforms his features and his whole being lightens. “I won’t. Brant, thank you.”

  “I’m not doing it for you,” I tell him, despite having told him he wasn’t allowed to say this is for Bri. “I’m doing it for my sister.”

  He nods, eager to agree with anything I say now, even if it’s contradictory. “Of course.”

  “You’re gonna put another baby in her if I let you go home tonight,” I warn him. “A little girl,” I add, like he can control that.

  “I’ll do my best,” he promises.

  “You’re gonna treat my sister like a fucking queen, and you take this betrayal to your grave. You put it out of your head and pretend it never happened. She’s not going to suffer for your stupid-ass decisions.”

  “No,” he agrees, shaking his head.

  “Once trust is broken, there’s no getting it back. You can try gluing it back together, but it won’t work the same. You keep your goddamn mouth shut and do better going forward.”

  He accepts my berating and practically thanks me for it. I’m sick of this asshole, so I get the girl’s relevant details and then I send his sorry ass home.

  Once he’s gone, I start debating how best to attack this. Time is of the essence. He told me he choked her the day after his anniversary, and that was a few days ago. If the girl hasn’t gone to the police yet, she probably won’t, but just because no cops have shown up yet doesn’t mean she hasn’t.

  I need to find out if she reported him first. As long as she didn’t, I can make her disappear.

  If she already did, he’s in a world of shit, and even I can’t bail him out of that mess.

  With a heavy sigh, I haul my ass out of the booth, put the whiskey back behind the bar, and head out.

  2

  Brant

  I’m surprised by how easy it is to get into her house.

  For some reason, when my suburbanite brother-in-law started telling me about her, I assumed she’d be a pampered middle-class princess.

  The house he gave me the address for is nothing like that. A rundown shack, it has a brown flaky exterior; a rusted, once-white pick-up in the driveway; and a screen door that looks like it’s been through a few tornados, but is still hanging on.

  I let myself in without worrying about alarms. This ain’t the kind of house that has alarms. There’s not so much as a guard dog asleep on the floor when I step inside.

  The living room is dark and smells musty, like the kind of place no one’s really taken care of in a long while. Shag carpet that should’ve been replaced a couple decades ago covers the floors.

  I’m surprised and a little alarmed to see baby toys tossed all over the place. There’s a little round saucer type of thing for a baby to jump in, an old baby swing in the corner, and a well-used high chair pushed up against the wall behind a folding card table that appears to be used as a dining table. On top, a coloring book lies open with a few broken crayons scattered around it.

  Why are there already baby things in this house?

  I guess maybe someone else lives here with her and her parents. That, or she has a significantly younger sibling. Theo said she was a virgin when he fucked her six months ago, so there’s no chance she already had a kid.

  I scowl as I move through the living room and down the hall. He showed me a picture of her on his phone, but I won’t know which room is hers until I open the door, and if I open the wrong one, I’m shit out of luck.

  I make my way down the hall, looking at each closed door, checking underneath to see if any light comes from inside. I’m just about convinced I’ll have to come back after I’ve had a chance to scope out which room is hers during daylight hours, and then I come to a stop at the end of the hall.

  Straight ahead of me, hanging off the scuffed white bedroom door is a little pink sign that helpfully announces Alyssa’s Room in girly script.

  Damn, she is accommodating.

  My grip on the gun at my side tightens as I take a step forward, my muscles tensing in anticipation. I turn her doorknob slowly and ease the door open, silently cursing when it creaks.

  Her bedroom smells nicer than the rest of the house, remnants of a faintly sweet scent hanging in the air. Looks a little nicer, too. There’s not much she can do about the state of the ugly wood paneling on the walls, but every surface she’s able to leave her mark on is decorated and neat. The hardwood floors are visible, and there’s no mess of clothes or piles of magazines or anything I’d expect to find in a teenager’s room.

  Sheer curtains hang on her windows, completely and utterly pointless. If I wanted to, I could stand outside and look right in at her. Moonlight streams in, enough that I can see her on the bed with her back to me.

  She’s got a sheet pulled up over her even though it’s hot as hell in this house. It’s summer, and they don’t seem to have air conditioning. We didn’t have air growing up, either, but as soon as I was able to get my own place, air conditioning was one thing I made sure it had. Nothing worse than being miserably hot when you’re trying to fall asleep.

  I close the door behind me and move closer to the bed. She still hasn’t rolled over, so she must be asleep.

  At least I think so until she says, “I’m sleeping.”

  I frown, wondering who she thinks I am.

  “I promise we’ll talk about your date tomorrow,” she adds, apparently feeling bad for shooing away whoever she thinks I must be. Only problem is, she rolls over to look at the person she thinks she’s speaking to, and her eyes widen in horror when she sees me instead.

  I move quickly so she doesn’t have time to process the fact that there’s a strange man in her room and react accordingly. I lunge forward, jumping on top of her and clamping a hand over her mouth so her shriek is muffled.

  “No!” she screams, but the sound is muted against my palm. Her body thrashes desperately beneath me as she tries to shout and get me off her, but I already have my knees planted on the bed on either side of her, and she’s not
strong enough to shift a full-grown man intent on pinning her down.

  Her hands go flying, smacking my arm, my side, whatever she can reach. She tries to shove me off of her bed onto the floor, but I don’t budge. I’m plenty bigger than her and a hell of a lot stronger. I’m not going anywhere unless I want to, no matter how much she fights me.

  Even though it doesn’t really hurt, I grab the hand that’s doing the most smacking—left; I wonder if she’s a leftie—and pin it against the mattress. Her already wide eyes inch open a little more and she thrusts her hips upward, trying again to buck me off.

  Despite the uselessness of her physical resistance, she’s making enough noise to make me worry someone will hear her and come to see what’s wrong. That needs to be handled quickly, before this gets uglier than it needs to.

  “Stop screaming,” I snap, my voice low and dangerous as she struggles to fight me off. To give her incentive, I release the hand I was pinning down and retrieve my gun off the bed, bringing it up and pressing the cool metal against her temple.

  Her eyes are wide as she stares up at me, confused as to what’s happening and why. Her whole body is alive with panic, her natural instincts telling her she’s in danger and she needs to fight like hell or run for her life.

  Since I’m significantly stronger than she is, she must be realizing fighting isn’t gonna get her out of this one. Her instincts will be looking for an alternative to keep her alive, so I figure I should shine some light on the scenario I prefer and give her a little nudge in the right direction. Knowing what I know about her, I think it’ll probably be easier to silence her with fear than violence, anyway.

  “Quit squirming,” I tell her, keeping my voice low and calm so she knows this isn’t a battle; I’m in charge, not her. “You’re never gonna unseat me. You’re just gonna annoy the hell out of me and waste all your energy.”

  Her gaze searches my face, but she must still be too afraid to see reason because then her expression crumples and she bucks, trying to thrust me off her with her pelvis again. “Go away,” she cries out against my palm.