by Julie Kenner
But then Mitch wasn’t the most reasonable of men.
And pretty much every woman he’d ever cared about had cheated on him.
She turned suddenly and was pleased to see the big strong Cajun stop and look the slightest bit off-kilter. “What did you tell Mitch that had him in a jealous rage?”
To his credit, the Cajun boy didn’t flinch. Still, it seemed like he was the honest type. “I told him you were having lunch with another man and you seemed cozy. You hugged him. You seemed close. You aren’t openly affectionate with other men. I’ve been watching you for weeks and the only men you’ve touched past a handshake are Mitch and your brother. In my defense, I was unaware Mitch had any family at all. Had I known you were spending time with his brother, I likely wouldn’t have mentioned the physical affection. That being said, it doesn’t seem like Mitch appreciated you spending time with his brother.”
“Well, that doesn’t matter now, does it?” She settled her purse over her shoulder and started out the back door.
Guidry escorted her to his massive truck and helped her up. “I’ll bring you back after we deal with the police. I’ll follow you back to Bradford’s place and let you pick up your things. You’re being more reasonable about this than I thought you would.”
She was barely hanging on. She wanted to wail and cry and feel incredibly sorry for herself because she was going to be alone.
She would be alone without Mitch. Or would she? Why should she live the rest of her life alone because Mitchell Bradford was an asshat? She didn’t have to be alone. She’d wasted the last year of her life on him and she was going to have a child by him, but that didn’t mean she had to be alone.
“I’m always reasonable,” she said in a quiet voice. She folded her hands on her lap.
“You’re not being very reasonable right now.” He turned out of the parking lot and toward the freeway.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged as he maneuvered through the streets. “I’m surprised you gave up so quickly.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. She hadn’t given up. He’d told her she wasn’t good enough to be his submissive. And he’d never lied to her about wanting to get married. If she wasn’t his wife or his sub, she wasn’t anything to him. He’d proven that utterly. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He made himself plain.”
“Did he?”
“Are you always this chatty with your clients?” How the hell had she gotten here? She was moving toward the police department to talk about the break-in at her apartment. Mitch had let her go pretty easily.
But didn’t he do that with everything? He let people go all the time. Things were harder for him. If she was an old concert T-shirt, he would hoard the hell out of her.
Objects were the only things Mitch could count on, so he tried to keep them. He simply didn’t think he could count on her. His head had immediately gone to cheating. She didn’t deserve that.
But wasn’t it kind of inevitable?
“We don’t have to talk.”
“He was horribly rude to me.”
“Yes. Men in pain are usually horrible. That boy’s got a thorn in his paw and it’s not coming out by itself.” He was quiet for a moment as he sped up to get on the freeway. “You two seemed pretty happy.”
“It was an illusion.” He’d always been waiting for her to screw up so he could get her out of his life. He’d been waiting to do it from the moment he’d heard she was pregnant. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it?
“If you say so. I’m saying as an outside party, you seemed pretty happy, and since you two have a baby on the way, maybe it’s a little hasty to throw in the towel. Or the collar, as it seems. Men will say a lot of things they don’t mean when they’re hurting, and finding out the woman they love is seeing another man behind his back would hurt a lot. I’ve looked into Bradford some and he’s the kind of man who hasn’t had a lot of support in his life.”
He’d had no support. None. She’d been surrounded by family. Yes, they’d been children, but she’d learned to lean on them, to trust and love her brother and sisters.
Mitch had learned that everyone left.
He wasn’t completely ignorant when it came to love. But she’d learned long ago that there was a difference between being ignorant and being dumb. Ignorance was merely an absence of education.
Mitch was a smart man. Could he be taught? Did he even want to be?
She was well aware that tears flowed down her cheeks, but she wasn’t capable of stopping them. Remy Guidry wanted to be her bodyguard? Well, he had to deal with her emotional state, too. And if he wanted to listen, then maybe she should talk. She’d kept quiet about so many things because she didn’t want her family to worry, didn’t want Mitch to look bad in front of them. Guidry seemed to know everything, so she could lay it all out there. And it didn’t matter because it was over.
Yes, she was seeking counseling from her ridiculously attractive bodyguard. “I’m worried there’s nothing for me to do. I can’t go back and erase the things that happened to him. I can’t right the past for him.”
“No, you can’t, but you can make him believe in the future.”
She’d been trying. How could she make him believe in a future when he was so tied up in the past? He kept things forever. Stupid things like old T-shirts and stacks of comic books he never read or looked through any more. “How do I do that?”
“Oh, that’s simple, chère. You be you. Don’t have to be any more than that. I’m going to ask you a question and it’s going to seem silly, but I want you to think about it. Let’s say you got this dog and he keeps coming around your house. He’s growling and barking every time you come outside. Now, most people would be scared. Most people would know that tangling with a nasty piece of dog is gonna get them bit. But there’s a few people in this world who look at that dog and see something else. There’s a few people who see deeper. Even though they’ve never been a mangy dog themselves, they seem to understand what it would feel like. So I’m going to ask you, how would you handle that dog?”
She cried pretty freely in that moment because the minute he’d given her the scenario, she’d known what she would do. “I would feed him. I would put out a dish and then wait. I wouldn’t push him the first couple of times. I would put the dish out and then walk away. After he got used to that, I would stand in the door until he learned it was all right for me to watch him.”
“You sound like you’ve done this before.”
She nodded. “We had this dog when I was a kid. He was the bane of the trailer park. He was quick though. Believe me, some of the residents tried to shoot him because they said he was too far gone. He’d been abused and they told me once a dog got mean, he couldn’t come back.”
One side of his mouth tugged up and he smiled at her. “You didn’t think so, though, did you?”
“I don’t know why, but he spent a lot of time outside our trailer. I guess there was a warm place or something. He would scare the crap out of us when we would go to school. I was afraid Will was going to do something to him. Not because my brother’s mean or anything. He just took his responsibilities very seriously. So I saved some of my dinner one night and I brought it out to the dog. I did it the night after and so on. He stopped growling at us. He wouldn’t come in the house, but he didn’t bark at us anymore. And then one day I opened the door to go to school and he was waiting for me. We had that dog until he died of old age.”
“Mitch is growling and barking at you because it’s the only thing he knows to do. I promise you that man is telling himself it’s all for the best because you would have kicked him in the end. No one will think less of you for moving on to an easier man, chère. But he’ll be alone because I think you’re his one shot at finding something good. You walk away and he won’t ever try again. That’s something for you to think about.”
She watched the streets go by and wondered if she would think about anything else.
Chapter
Ten
“Wow. You are really bad at that.”
Mitch stared at the spot where he’d last seen Laurel and only vaguely thought about punching his brother in his movie star, good-looking face. But that would require him to turn around, and he might never be able to do that again. He might spend the rest of his life watching this spot and praying for her to show up again.
Guidry nodded his way as though letting Mitch know he would handle things from now on and then he, too, disappeared into the building where Laurel worked.
She was gone.
Suck it up. You knew it would happen eventually. It’s better that it happen now before you got too deep.
He was already too deep. God, she was gone and he felt something open deep inside him. A wound that was never fucking going to heal.
“Aren’t you going after her?”
Flynn. Laurel was gone, but Flynn was still here. His younger brother. The one dear old dad wanted. It was so fucking good to have a place to throw his hate. He turned and was slightly pleased that Flynn took a step back. He would bet Flynn had never had to defend himself because no one was around to help him. Flynn would have been given the best of everything while Mitch hadn’t even gotten fucking scraps. “I would rather deal with you, Adler. You want to explain why you’re here fucking around with my submissive?”
Flynn’s eyes narrowed. “Submissive?”
Oh this was going to be fun. He was sure Flynn was perfectly vanilla and would be so horrified at big brother’s perversions. “Yes. You were flirting with my sub, Adler. When I talked about punishing her I meant pulling her skirt up and smacking her ass because it makes her hot. I’ve tied her up six ways to Sunday and I didn’t leave her untouched, if you know what I mean. You couldn’t handle her even if I allowed it, which I won’t. Go back to California, you little prick.”
Flynn’s face went red, but he took a step forward, his fists clenched at his sides. “Yeah, I guess it doesn’t surprise me to find out you’re an abusive piece of shit.”
Like he hadn’t heard that before. He turned and started walking to his SUV. He had work to do. He would find a way to get her back. Oh, he’d do it in a nasty way, but she was going to be back in his home, in his bed before she could play around with someone else.
“Mitch.” Flynn was suddenly beside him, jogging to keep up. “Mitch, I said that in anger. I’m sorry. I’m not a complete idiot. I watch TV and stuff. I know some people have relationships like that. Hell, I even knew you went to clubs. It was just surprising to hear you say it like that. Which I’m sure was why you did it. You seem to want me to think the worst of you.”
Mitch turned. Flynn didn’t seem to understand him at all. “I don’t care what you think. That’s why I avoid you. I don’t care about you or Dad or anyone at all, so get the fuck out of my state. Why do you think I left California? It damn sure wasn’t to get closer to you. Go back to your cushy life and leave me alone.”
Flynn had cost him everything. If the jackass had stayed away, Laurel would have been sitting at her desk and he would be the one taking her to the police station. He would be the one holding her hand and promising her everything would be fine. He would be the one she turned to.
He crossed the street and stalked toward his car, all the while thinking about how he was going to keep her. He was stupid. He knew he’d been a major asshole, but she was in the wrong, too. She knew he didn’t talk about his past unless he specifically brought it up, and she’d sat right down with one of the biggest pieces of his past and had lunch. She’d known damn well he wouldn’t have approved and she’d done it anyway.
Likely because she thought she could help in some way. Because Flynn had given her some kind of sad story and Laurel had bought it hook, line, and sinker.
He was about to get into his car when something struck the windshield. A rock. He turned and Flynn had another one in his hand.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Flynn threw that one, too. He let that sucker fly and it cracked against the windshield. “Me? What the fuck is wrong with you? You think my life is so cushy? Dad is dying, you asshole. He’s dying and the only thing he wants is to spend a few minutes with you. I have no idea why since it’s obvious to me you aren’t worth talking to, but does he listen to me? Fuck no. I’ve spent the last five years of my life taking care of him, but he wants you. And I won’t even go into what’s happening with Chase. I’m going to lose him. Do you even care? You’ve got a little brother and he’s going to die because I can’t convince him life doesn’t suck. Because for him…for him it does. So I’m going to be alone and miserable very soon, and I’ll still be happier than you are because at least I’ll have tried.”
He wanted to pick up one of those rocks, shove it right back at Flynn, get in his car and leave. This wasn’t his problem. Laurel was his problem. Laurel was all that mattered now.
He’d screwed up with her so badly she would likely never come back, so it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that Laurel would want him to have some small piece of empathy for the brother who hadn’t asked to be born either. It didn’t matter that Laurel would think more of him if he would put aside his pride for two seconds and talk to the man he hated for no good reason except the circumstances of his birth.
Flynn hadn’t asked for any of this. He hadn’t had a choice in parent or birth order, but he was making a choice by seeking out Mitch.
And Mitch had to make a choice, too, and it didn’t matter what Laurel would want because Laurel was gone.
So he was going to smash his brother’s face in and that would make him feel better.
For a second the sun caught Flynn, illuminating his features, and Mitch realized he’d seen that face in the mirror. He’d seen the starkness, the emptiness. He’d seen the hopelessness reflected there before he put on his mask for the day.
Damn it.
“How bad is he?”
Flynn’s head came up. “Dad has stage four pancreatic cancer. He doesn’t have long. I don’t know what to do. He asked me to reach out. He wants to talk to you before he dies.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Please. You don’t have to talk. Please just listen. What do I have to do? If you want me to beg, I will.”
“Why would I want you to beg?”
Flynn shrugged. “Maybe you would like seeing me on my knees. Maybe it would make you feel better.”
To see the chosen child beg and squirm and plead? “No, it won’t make me feel better, Flynn. Let me think about it. Can I have a day or two?”
“Yeah.” Flynn suddenly looked younger than he had before, his eyes wide. “Of course. Take the time you need, but know he doesn’t have a lot of it.”
“What did you mean about…” He’d been about to pretend he didn’t know his youngest brother’s name. He did it out of habit. He did it to show the world he didn’t give a damn. “Chase? How old is he anyway?”
Flynn stepped forward, his shoulders sagging a bit. “He’ll be seventeen soon. If he makes it.”
Don’t ask. Don’t. Stay the fuck out of it. He didn’t want to go into this. He liked his life the way it was. Except he didn’t. He only liked it because Laurel had been with him, and now she was gone. “Why do you say that?”
“He got mixed up in drugs. He says his overdose was an accident, but I found out he’s being bullied by this kid at school. I tried to get Dad to pull him out and let him go to the public school, but they have a problem with violence there. I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s only one kid?”
“It’s a group, but you know how these gangs work. One asshole runs the crowd and the crowd runs the school. They outed him. Publically. One of them found out Chase likes boys and catfished him.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s where you make up a false presence on the Internet. He claimed to be another gay kid and they started an online relationship. Once Chase was sure the kid loved
him, the group posted every embarrassing moment online.”
“Huh. Go after the parents. Go after them hard. Threaten to take them for every dollar they have and I bet the little shit will fall in line.”
“They don’t want to talk about it. They said it was all kid stuff and Chase should be stronger.”
“Did you threaten to sue them and take it all public so their darling baby boy can’t show his face at college? I don’t know where you’ve been but most places don’t take kindly to bullying anymore. The tide turned a while back. No one takes the side of the mean kid, and threatening to haul them all into court might give Chase some peace. He needs to stand up for himself. A lawsuit could give him that.”
“Our lawyers don’t do those types of suits. I don’t know if I could even convince Chase to consider it. He thinks it’s all going to go away. Or he tells me that and then I find him barely breathing. I take him to the hospital and find out he’s been buying pills at school.”
“Nice. We can sue the school, too.” He kind of wanted to. He was sure the school had brushed off the fishing thing as nothing. To them it would be something to work out between the kids. They would likely say that working it out among themselves would prepare them for adulthood, but adults who acted like assholes got fired or shot. There were consequences for adults. “I can talk to him. I can be persuasive when I want to be. It sucks to be a kid.”
If anyone did something like that to his kid, they might not get the courtesy of a lawsuit.
“It sucks to be human sometimes.”
Maybe Flynn didn’t have it so great. “I’m sorry about punching you.”
Flynn touched his jaw gingerly. “For a lawyer, you know how to throw a hook.”
“I’ve found beating the shit out of my friends makes me feel better. In the ring, of course, and with rules. A couple of the guys I hang out with work out this way. You should try it sometime. Don’t tell your girlfriend though. They get weird about it.” It made perfect sense to him. You put on gloves and took out your aggressions and everyone was bruised and happy, but he’d learned to never mention it.