Brutally Beautiful

by Christine Zolendz

  “Will you be okay here alone?” Bree whispered.

  “Yes, of course, go have fun,” I laughed.

  Dylan’s shoulders relaxed and he nodded his head like a dork.

  Bree clapped her hands as if she won the lottery and skipped into our bedroom yelling about packing a bag of things she’d need. Oh Lord, he’s in for a wild ride. “Dylan, prepare to be boarded…and don’t forget to fasten your seatbelt,” I giggled.

  Raising his eyebrows, the man looked downright giddy. God, they belonged together.

  “So, Lainey, I forgot to ask, how was my brother tonight?”

  “Fine,” I said, because that was the only four-letter f-word I wasn’t thinking of.

  “Fine is never a word that comes to mind when I think of Kade,” he said, raking his hands through his hair. Then he ran one hand over his face and sighed, “I wish I knew how to help him, but he’s chosen such a solitary life. I think he loves his misery.” I said nothing, and he looked at me and shrugged, continuing. “But, something brought him out tonight, yeah? I wonder what it was. I’ve never seen him two nights in a row.”

  “Has he been evaluated? Seen by a medical professional? Is he manic?” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Hell, when am I going to learn to keep my mouth shut?

  Dylan scoffed and offered me a sad smile. “No, love. Believe me, my brother is doing a public service being the recluse he is. He’s got demons to work through, but nothing medical.”

  Bree came running out of the bedroom with an overstuffed messenger bag slung off one of her shoulders. The expression plastered on her face was almost euphoric, like she’d already started having sex without him. I couldn’t even think past that thought. I just smiled at her, shook my head, and looked down at my sneakers.

  I desperately needed a new pair.

  Bree hugged me tightly, and kissed my cheek. I knew this was big for her, so I gave her a firm squeeze in return, slapped her on the ass, and told her to have fun. She bounced to the door like a twelve year old and waved goodbye to me.

  Dylan was right behind her, smiling. He reached out and softly touched my elbow, “Thanks again for taking over the bar tonight. And for putting up with Kade, I’m sure fine wasn’t the word you wanted to say.”

  I shrugged, and held the door open for him.

  “He’s damaged. And he’s just grown very attached to all his demons.” He jogged down the front wooden steps, and they moaned and creaked with complaints. I wrapped my arms around my chest to shield myself from the cold air that blew through the door and watched them walk to Dylan’s car.

  When they drove off, I closed the door, locked it, and climbed right into my bed without even changing my clothes. I was beyond exhausted, but sleep didn’t come easily, tossing, turning, and wondering if Kade Grayson’s demons were as violent and terrifying as mine.

  Sleep played a nasty game of laser tag with me all night. Each time I thought I was about to fall under, I’d be zapped awake from a noise, or a nightmare, or the strange whistling sounds of the wind and the rain drizzling against the tin roof of the trailer. I ended up playing on my phone most of the night, searching through any news stories concerning me from the city, wondering what was happening back home and how I was going to plan the rest of my life as somebody completely opposite of who I really was.

  My alarm startled me at ten the next morning, causing me to fling my phone across the room and fall right out of bed, almost strangling myself with my covers. I wasn’t used to sleeping on such a narrow mattress. Still half-asleep, I showered, dressed, and started my walk to the bar for an afternoon shift, already dreading my long day and a date with Francis. But, this was my ordinary life now.

  Taking off my coat and smoothing down my shirt, I made my way into the bar. It was noon, and a handful of people were seated at tables eating lunch and talking. I walked behind the bar, threw my coat and purse in the small locker just underneath, and met Dylan in the back.

  “Hey, you,” Dylan called, popping his head out of one of the freezers.

  I held my hand up to him. “Stop. I can’t hold a realistic conversation with anyone right now. Not until I inhale a whole pot of coffee.” I ran to the coffeemaker and fumbled with a huge Styrofoam to-go cup until Dylan came to my side to help me hold it steady. I felt the slight tremors in my hands from my exhaustion as I held up the steaming coffee to my lips and sipped, moaning delightfully. “We are definitely going to need an IV drip in here. I’m sure we could hook that up straight to the back of the coffee machine and pump it right into my veins.”

  “Rough night? I thought we left you alone,” Dylan chuckled next to me.

  “Yeah, well. I slept in a tin can and it was raining. That’s like being front row at a rock concert to me. Where’s Bree, anyway? You didn’t chop her up into little pieces and bury her in the yard, did you?” I looked up to see Dylan frowning at something behind me. Deep creases settled in the middle of his brows and his eyes widened.

  “Burying bodies in the backyard again, Dylan? I thought that was my job,” a deep voice rasped behind me, lightly sprinkled with an accent matching Dylan’s. Shit.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned around, narrowing my eyes at Kade, standing in front of us, for the third time in three days.

  Dylan echoed my thoughts, “Third time in three days.”

  The three of us stood there silent. Dylan gaped, open mouthed at Kade. And Kade? Well, Kade seemed to find something intensely interesting in my eyes. His gaze roamed my face as if looking upon a piece of fine art…gazing at each little piece of me…my eyes, my nose, my neck, and landing intensely on my lips.

  Raising my cup up to cover my mouth, I drank my coffee and casually ignored him. There were hundreds of emotions zipping through my head, warring with one another; hate, curiosity, shock, embarrassment, need and…God, I wanted to kick myself for it…lust. You could feel the energy surrounding us shift and tighten as his eyes met back up with mine, daring me, fiercely challenging me to look away, or cower, or whatever game he was playing.

  I sure as shit wasn’t going to play any game by his rules.

  “I forgot my jacket here last night,” he mumbled, still gawking at me.

  “It’s on Dylan’s desk in the back,” I said coolly, turning my back on him and walking away indifferent to his plight. And yes, I did swing my hips and walk straighter when I did. With my chin held high.

  Walking out into the bar, I spoke with a few tables full of people asking if they needed anything. A few orders later, I was leaning behind the bar with my ankles crossed and back against the counter.

  “Offer still stands,” Kade’s voice murmured in a low gravelly tone. A masculine hand leaned next to me on the bar, which my eyes followed up, along his thick arms and across his chest to meet his eyes. He raised a dark eyebrow at me and smirked.

  “Are you that desperate, Mr. Grayson? Tell me, what do you get from trying to belittle me?” I asked, with the best poker face I could muster.

  “Most girls would jump at the chance to make that kind of money, for such a little thing.” He licked his lips purposely and seemed to move closer to me than what was socially acceptable in my book. And, dear God, his lips? Seriously, why did he have to have such great lips? “Most girls don’t even ask for the money.” His eyes flickered down my neck, giving me a whole once over before returning to my stare.

  “See, there’s your problem,” I began to explain, stepping away. “You’re talking about girls. I’m a grown woman. Big difference.”

  “Hey, there you are,” Dylan came behind the counter of the bar stepping between us. “Lainey, you’re exhausted, so go home so you can have a good night. Bree will be in later. And Kade? Can you drive Lainey home?”

  “No,” I replied calmly, before Kade could answer. “Thanks for the day off, but I could walk myself home. I definitely like the company more.”

  Without another glance or word to either of them, I grabbed my belongings from the locker and walked out of the bar. Relief flood
ed my belly, thinking I was getting away from that idiot.

  “Lainey, wait! Wait,” his voice called after me, closing the door behind him. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “No thank you, Mr. Grayson.”

  The expression on his face was hard to read, but I didn’t care to figure it out. Kade Grayson wasn’t much to figure out, he was just a complete dick.

  “Why? What’s your problem?” he asked, like this would be a surprise to him.

  “What’s my problem? You’re acting like a bitch, and if I wanted a bitch, I would have adopted a dog.” I walked away from him as he mumbled something about writer’s block and stupid green eyes.

  Fucking sociopath.

  All the way back to the trailer, I walked through the woods, not wanting to be anywhere near the road, just in case Kade Grayson lost his last marble and decided to do a drive by on the way home.

  By the time I reach my empty trailer, my hands were cut up from catching on bushes. I was emotionally drained and so confused my head was spinning. The man looked at me one way, yet wanted to humiliate me and degrade me into hating him with his words. I thought I already had the market on meeting the most screwed up men before I came here.

  Throwing myself on my bed, I closed my eyes and tried to unwind from being emotionally sideswiped by the freight train that was Kade. Immediately, I was asleep, and I awoke hours later when someone was pounding on my trailer door.

  I stumbled out of the bedroom and made my way to the front door, and was completely embarrassed when I saw Francis standing on the top step holding a beautiful bouquet of white roses.

  Shit. I’m already messing up this date.

  But it’s okay. I’ll gloss over our date for you, only highlighting the GOOD parts. He showed up wearing a shirt that read, I recycled this shirt from yesterday! I’ll let you savor that tidbit of information for a minute. Yeah.

  He was easy. Careful. Nice. Safe. He held doors open for me. Paid for dinner. Talked about himself constantly and his field of whatever the hell he was interested in while I played word with friends on my phone. I won, by the way, with the word bracketed (triple word score) for 54 points. Woot! And no, I don’t feel guilty for it, because throughout the entire time he was with me, he continuously instagrammed, facebook-statused, and twittered everything that he thought was status worthy. I swear, during dessert his tweet was, ‘There IS no organic soymilk in the ENTIRE RESTAURANT! How do they expect me to drink my tea? WHOLE night is RUINED!’

  He was nice, don’t get me wrong, but I really couldn’t have a relationship. I didn’t want to. I told Fran exactly how I felt and was as honest as I could have been with him. Getting to know one another and becoming friends was fine, but more than that, I didn’t want to deal with, especially with someone who was so Fran. I mean, come on, Fran had a five-year plan and at the end, I was his goal. No one should ever have a goal of another person. You can't be someone else. Your goals should be to strive for better things in yourself, not depending on other people. Besides all that, I couldn't do another relationship; I couldn’t trust anyone, not after what happened to me this last year. The only person I put my trust in was Bree, and I was just staying here for her, because I hadn’t seen her this happy since the day my brother asked her to marry him.

  Chapter 4

  It was getting closer to Dylan’s 30th birthday.

  I sent him an eCard. What? That’s good enough.

  He called and screamed at me.

  He’s having a party. Of course. A small dinner party and he asked me to come. And, to come with a date. A date? Grand. Now the woman I have casual sex with will think we could date now.

  Best part: Dylan’s girlfriend is hosting it for him, along with her roommate. In her trailer. Trailer. Trail...Errrr. Great, tonight’s dining experience: Ramen fucking noodles. I called Morgan, my casual friend, and she agreed; her husband won’t be in town, so she can make it.

  Clutching a bottle of $500 wine, I climbed out of my Land Rover Range Rover and walked through the yard crunching over the cold hard dirt and gravel that led to the doublewide, cringing with every step. I took inventory of the small wooden steps that led up to the front screened door to the dilapidated mess my brother’s girlfriend calls a home and find a few muddied pair of converse sneakers, an industrial size gallon of bleach, and a box of generic latex medical gloves. A half burned out car from the 1950s was in the yard and a white picket fence that surrounded a dead tree. A small wooden crucifix was staked in the ground around its roots. White-fucking-trash. It was like a scene from one of my books. My skin crawled thinking about stepping a foot inside the trailer. I strategized on focusing solely on Morgan and the suction of her mouth on my cock after this dinner debacle. I really didn’t understand how I was going to make it through the night.

  I knocked on the screen door, which was ripped to fucking shreds, like an animal had tried to claw its way inside, or out, and the images of the massacre in my head left me a bit breathless. It very well could be the beginning of a new book…the opening scene already writing itself in my subconscious.

  Behind the screen, the scratched-to-shit wooden door opened before I could compose my thoughts back to reality. Lainey was standing in the doorway, framed from the light within the tin trashcan impersonating a house. I hadn’t seen her since I chased her out of the bar two weeks ago, when Dylan asked me to give her a ride home. She looked out of place. She looked awkward and suspicious. Stunning me with her raw beauty, she looked like a fucking dark angel. And sexy as fucking sin. Shit.

  I had no clue she was going to be here.

  She tucked a wavy lock of hair behind her ear and offered me a tight smile. “Mr. Grayson.” Her greeting was curt and short. I hated it. I loved it. I’m fucking insane.

  She stepped to the side to allow me to walk in. The smell of her soap or shampoo or whatever the hell it was that filled my nose left me hungry. No, not hungry. Fucking hell, ravenous. I blinked my eyes rapidly, focused on the inside of the tin box, and swallowed a small gasp. I had never seen the inside of a trailer before, other than the idiotic movies I watched, but I would have never assumed one could look so…homey. The walls were a warm chocolate color and everything from the clean comfortable looking couches to the small yet elegantly decorated table and chairs were in earth tones and warm soft colors. It made me want to lay down and surround myself with its calmness, take some away with me. Steal it for myself. Morgan was already there, sitting at a small counter that separated the kitchen area with the living room area, a blood-red goblet of wine held tightly in her hand and she smiled at me like I was the second coming of Christ on a platter, just for her. She was dressed up like it was her fucking high school prom, make-up caked on her face and dark brown eyes weighed down heavily with mascara. Flecks of red dotted the whites of her eyes, as if her capillaries were bursting from strangulation, making me think of someone wrapping their hands tightly around her neck and squeezing tight.

  Then my eyes locked on Lainey as she stepped in front of me to the counter, and a tall lanky man moved up behind her, hesitantly placing a hand on her ass to ask her if she needed any help. If I hadn’t been staring at her form, the curve of her hips and flatness of her belly, I would have missed the minute flinch that happened just as his hand made contact with her body. She was uncomfortable under his fingers, and for some ungodly reason that made me feel ecstatic. I scanned up the slope of her body to the swell of her chest, the smooth ivory of her neck and then to the wide smile she offered him with her lips. I wanted to fucking crush his heart. A strange stab of jealousy coursed through me, and I could distinctly visualize in my head the blood splatters and the trajectory of the spray of brain matter after I slammed him with my $500 bottle of wine on the side of his head. I placed the stupid pathetic bottle down on the counter in front of them a little too hard, just really itching for the chance to swing it at him.

  “Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked me softly, tossing her hair over her shoulder, slicing the bl
oodstained scenes from my mind with the smell of motherfucking cinnamon apples.

  “Yes. Thank you,” I found myself saying. Her eyes found mine. Her lashes looked incredibly long against her ivory cheeks, and a small darkening of shadows graced her skin, as if she’d been having trouble sleeping. Those green irises were like gentle pools of brilliant meadows of sage and green-envy coneflowers swaying in a warm breeze.

  HOLY fuck. What the hell sort of poetry was that dribbling out of my twisted brain?

  Her brows knitted together as she stood in front of me, handing me a full glass of the blood-red wine. I tried to imagine it splattering across her face, trying to think of the words that I could twist onto a clean crisp white paper, words that would slice the life from those eyes, but I could think of none. None.

  This bitch was giving me writer’s block.

  The man who pawed her ass held out his hand to me and smiled. “So, you’re Dylan’s infamous brother? Glad to finally meet you, I’m Fran,” he said, shaking my hand weakly.

  The only thoughts in my mind were at that very moment were first, that hand was just touching Lainey’s ass, second, what the fuck kind of name was Fran? And third, his fucking hand was just touching Lainey’s ass. I squeezed his hand more than I should have. He grimaced.

  “Fran?” I asked, curious to the femininity of the name and why a parent would hate their child so heinously that they would name him that.

  “Short for Francis,” Lainey uttered, a little above a whisper.

  “Ah,” I chuckled darkly, “that makes it so much better.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. Fuck, it was as if I was in high school again. No, high school was bloodier. Francis smiled then, a full mouth of white shiny teeth and I wanted to knock each and every last bright ivory enamel-coated structure out, maybe the whole damn jaw too. That would be a great scene; my fingers began curling into tight hard fists.