Rory taps her fingers on the table, visibly willing me to eat faster. She’s not even trying to hide the fact she wants me out of here. Rory reaches for her wine again—that’s two glasses, now—and rolls her eyes when I eat even slower.
“Your lips are the sexiest things I’ve ever kissed.”
She coughs, just barely preventing the wine from spraying out of her mouth like in some terrible comedy flick.
“Of course, your other lips are probably even more enjoyable,” I muse with a significant glance toward under the table, where she’s seated, as if I can stare through the wood.
“Jackson!”
I wink at her lazily. “What? It’s true.”
“We’re not—we’re not going—”
“To talk about how I want to fuck you? Lick you? Taste every inch of you? Sorry, peach, but after ten years of blue balls, I just can’t sugarcoat it any longer.”
Rory takes another sip, her face aflame. “Any blue balls you might be suffering are a result of your own doing.”
And here we go. “Oh really? Tell me, precisely, how your leaving my dorm room two seconds before we were about to have sex is somehow my fault?”
“You know exactly what you did!”
I throw my utensils down with a loud clatter. “No, Rory, I really don’t. Illuminate me as to what I did that was so horrible, so incomprehensibly awful, that I deserved you completely removing yourself from my life without so much as an explanation.”
Rory opens her mouth to respond, but suddenly the front door bangs open and Mike fucking Lipton strolls through like he has any right whatsoever to do so.
“Can I help you?” I say, like I have an actual claim to this place.
Mike ignores me, the cretin, and smiles at Rory, leaning his wrist on the low wooden beam that cuts through the house as some sort of decoration.
“We towed the tractor and trailer back to the barn.”
“Okay,” Rory says, voice barely above a whisper as she glances between us.
“It’s pretty smashed. We’re going to need to discuss alternatives.”
“We can do that on Monday.”
“This’ll also affect our yield for the year. I’m guessing, two, three percent.”
“I figured.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“No, I’ll see you on Monday.”
Mike nods, then with a deliberate look toward me, says, “I’ll be in the barn if you need me before Monday, then.”
And then the fucker traipses right back out the door. I turn on her. “What the fuck was that?”
She takes another sip of her wine, avoiding my gaze. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t be coy. What’s Lipton doing here at this time of the night?”
Rory drinks again, until she’s drained the glass. Then she glares at me in defiance. “That would be because he lives here.”
“Come again? You’ll have to repeat that, because I could have sworn you just said that Mike Lipton lives here.”
She just stares at me.
“What the hell is Lipton doing here!”
Rory cranes her head toward the ceiling as if she’s calculating nuclear physics in her head. “He’s been here for, oh, about five years now? Six? It might be six, actually.”
“You told me there was nothing between you two!”
She smirks at me. “There wasn’t. Then.”
I launch out of my chair, running my hands through my hair as I pace back and forth. “I fucking can’t believe this. You fucking lied to me.”
“Now you know what it feels like.”
I whirl on her. “Excuse me?” I say, voice deadly quiet.
She lifts her chin toward me. “You heard me.”
“I’ve never lied to you in my entire goddamn life!”
Rory launches out of her own chair, and now we’re snarling at each other over the table. “I know about the photos, you asshole!”
I actually do a double take. “What? What photos? What the fuck are you talking about?”
She points a finger at me with a stabbing motion. “I saw them. Sheryl texted them to me when I was in the bathroom! Don’t you dare try to lie to me again.”
I just stare at her, because I haven’t a goddamn clue what the hell she’s talking about. Pictures? What pictures could have upset her so much she left me? Left us?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What pictures?”
Her lips lift in an impressive sneer, her chin jutting toward me in aggression. “Don’t you even attempt to deny you have no knowledge of fucking that girl in college while they took photos.”
What the actual fuck? What is she even talking about? At my obvious confusion, a flicker of doubt streaks across Rory’s face, before she shakes her head, physically denying my confusion. “Jackson, I saw them. I saw them right before we had sex in your dorm room. I thank God every day Sheryl sent them to me before I made that huge mistake.”
I’m still back on the fact that there are apparently photos of me having sex with someone. A sick sort of dread settles low in my gut. Heat flashes through me, but I know it’s not the wine. “Who was the girl? What did she look like?”
Rory’s face twists in disgust. “Are you kidding me? You don’t even remember her? That’s disgusting.”
“I’m sure I remember her; I just don’t remember the fucking photos!”
“Okay, sure, you don’t remember the beautiful blonde with the huge tits and the bright red lips wrapped around your cock.”
And it finally clicks. A laugh bubbles out of me despite my knowing it’s the height of stupidity to do so. “That’s what this is about? That was freshman year! Three fucking years before you and I even remotely thought about getting together. That was the semester I pledged Beta Psi, and they gave me an hour to fuck a Kappa girl or I failed the pledging. They never told me they were going to take photos!”
“That’s a lie.”
“No, it’s not!”
“You lied to me then, and you’re lying to me now! Someone in the sorority told Sheryl it had just happened at a party the weekend before. You told me there was no one else. You told me you wanted to be with me, had wanted to be with me for years. And literally, just as I decided to believe you, decided to be with you, I got photographic evidence of you fucking someone else. Do you really expect me to believe a single word you said then or now?”
“That happened three years before we were together! You weren’t even in fucking college at that point! I don’t know where your great friend Sheryl—who you haven’t spoken with since college—got her information, but it’s fucking wrong. This entire nightmare, a literal decade of you hating me, is because you refused to even fucking ask me about the photos. Did it even occur to you that I might like to know they exist?”
Rory actually claps her hands over her ears, like my words are causing permanent auditory damage. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. You’re doing it again, saying words that sound so sweet but are complete poison.”
I stare at her, because for the first time in my life, I can’t recognize a single thing about Rory Larson. “So, essentially, you’re choosing to believe some random sorority bitch over me, the man you’ve known since you were a child. Glad to know you think so little of me.
“Look, fucking that girl was a mistake. Believe me, I regret it, since it caused so much bullshit between us. But I didn’t do it alone. The Kappa girls are well aware of this pledge activity. She was all over me as much as I was her. We were freshmen. Everything we did was stupid. For all I know, her friends took the photos.”
“Oh sure, it was her fault.”
“I don’t know whose fault it was, but you better believe I’m going to find out now!”
“So what, I’m supposed to believe you either screwed a girl for a fraternity bet or fucked someone behind my back when we were together? You’re not exactly helping yourself, here.”
“It was college. Did you really think I lived
like a monk before you got there? We weren’t even close your freshman year. I’d been in college for two years before you even started at Georgia. Only after we ran into each other at your party—at the Kappa house, I might add—your sophomore year did we even think about hooking up.”
“That wasn’t my party, it was Sheryl’s. She’s the one who pledged, not me. I just got dragged along. And that doesn’t excuse what you did.”
“Newsflash, pledging in the South is a fucking nightmare!”
“Those images were practically pornographic!”
“I didn’t know they were taking them, for fuck’s sake! I didn’t know they existed until three minutes ago!”
“I had people telling me you were sleeping with someone behind my back, and somehow, I’m supposed to believe some grand conspiracy with photos from years before we met up again? Do you hear how that sounds? How could I even remotely believe that?”
“I don’t know, maybe because until five minutes ago, I thought you were a truthful person and assumed you believed the same of me? But now I know for the last ten years you’ve been fucking around with Lipton, so hey, I guess the scales are even.”
“Oh, fuck off, he’s been here for six years, not a decade, and we haven’t screwed in four.”
And just like that, I’m done. Speechless. Until this moment, I could deny it, could refuse to believe that fucker’s had Rory when the farthest I’ve ever gotten is my lust-crazed imagination. But now I know.
“You fucked him for two years to, what, get back at me for screwing some random chick once in college in order to pledge a frat? After you’d told me all through sophomore year that, despite the rumors, you and Lipton were never a thing? And I’m the liar?”
“Mike and I were never a thing when I was in college. He was into my cousin, and we look similar in the dark. But after all your lies? Yeah, I got on board the Mike train real fast. This might be a hard concept for you to grasp, but Mike is pretty simple. What you see is what you get. His whore-ish ways are well-documented. He doesn’t pretend to be a nice guy and then whore around on the side, like you. And you know what? Sometimes, a woman just wants to fuck. Screw a man without having to worry about whether or not pictures end up spread all over God’s creation.”
“Lipton’s known for recording his fuckfests!”
“Not in my house, he’s not!”
“You’d better hope so,” I say, voice deadly quiet. The instant I say it, pain and doubt flashes across her face before it’s quickly hidden, as if this is something she frequently fears. I feel a momentary pang of regret, but I’m too far gone by all these terrible revelations to apologize. All I can think about is how many times a couple can fuck in two years. The number’s so high it makes my heart hurt.
How the fuck have I been so wrong? How have I misread this situation so fucking badly? Here I thought we had just miscommunicated in college. The reality is there’s been ten years of animosity brewing for one thing I did with another consenting adult years before Rory and I were officially a thing.
I’ve been mooning over her in front of the whole town for years, pining for a woman who’s never, ever, ever going to be with me. Who can’t even stand the sight of me.
What a fucking fool I’ve been. What a goddamn, mortifying nightmare.
This ends now. I’m not going to waste any more of my life trying to get with a woman who is incapable of believing me to be anything but a monster. No sex is that good.
I head for the door. Rory follows along behind me.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m finished.”
“No, you’re not, we—”
I’ve made it to the door, but instead of leaving, I turn and fix Rory with the full force of my fury. “We’re fucking finished. I have nothing more to say to you. If you really think I’d fuck an unsuspecting girl, plaster photos of it all over the school, and lie to you about my intentions, then I can’t convince you of anything. I’m not going to spend a single more second with someone who thinks I’m such a fucking monster.”
I throw open the door and hurl myself down the steps.
“But the farm—”
“Any offer you receive on behalf of my client will come through my office. Don’t contact me again.”
Chapter Ten
I call up my old college buddy the moment I arrive at the office Monday morning. After spending two days in a black rage, furious with Rory, this real estate nightmare, and even myself, I’m more than ready to figure out what the hell really happened in college.
“Cory, how’s it going?” I ask when my old fraternity brother finally answers.
“Fine, fine, it’s been a while. You still working in that sorry excuse for a real estate office?”
I roll my eyes. Cory also works in real estate, but up in Savannah, where he thinks he’s this big swinging dick. Sure, Savannah’s larger than Ovid, but here I’m the king of the land—pun intended. I do all the business I want, and have zero horrible bosses to obey.
Make that, I thought it was pretty fucking fantastic until Friday night, when I realized I’d have to continue doing business with a woman who’d probably rather cut off my testicles than see me again.
“Yeah, you dick, I’m still here, and I wouldn’t trade it for your shitty-ass office if you paid me.”
“One of these days I’m going to convince you to work for me, you know,” he says, chuckling.
“You couldn’t get me to work for you if you were the last person on this earth who wanted to buy or sell a house.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m a complete asshole to work for; we’ve gone over this.”
“And that’s just not going to change,” I add, chuckling myself.
“All right, then, smart ass. Why are you calling?”
I sober. “Yeah, about that. I ran into an old college … friend on Friday and they told me about some pictures of me and a certain leggy blonde that are floating around.”
His drawn-out silence is all I need. “Are you fucking kidding me? You knew?”
“No, no, I didn’t know. Or rather, I didn’t know it was going to happen before it did. I found out about it after the fact.”
“Seriously, you fucking expect me to believe that? You were my big brother. You were supposed to have my back.”
“And I did!”
“Bullshit. If you’d really had my back, you wouldn’t have put me in that situation.”
“Jackson, man, it’s tradition! I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think, what? I’d care? Give a shit if pictures of me screwing a girl circulated around the school?”
Cory sighs heavily. “No, obviously I thought it would piss you off. But once I saw the photos, I threatened the living shit out of the other brothers so that they wouldn’t share them. I did everything I could to make sure this wouldn’t pop up again sometime in your future. I did have your back.”
“So why am I just hearing about this now, then? Why did you never tell me they existed in the first place?” I snap.
“Because I didn’t want them hanging over your head! I knew it was unlikely they’d ever pop up again, and hell, two years had already passed by the time I discovered them. I was about to graduate; you were going to take my place the year after. I just didn’t want to ruin anything.”
“You didn’t want to ruin anything for the frat.”
“Of course, but I didn’t want you to get hurt, either.”
“And what about the girl?
“What about her?”
“Is she aware of the photos? I don’t remember her name, but I would imagine she wouldn’t be exactly thrilled to discover their existence.”
“That I can’t tell you.” And there’s just something in the way he says it that I just know there’s more to the story.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing … It’s just that I always wondered if it was planned on their part.”
“‘Their part?’ Whose part is tha
t?”
“The Kappa girls. They were always just a little too eager to participate in the find-a-girl-to-screw-quickly game.”
“You mean they’re the ones who took the photos?” I say, shocked. “Why would they do that?”
“I didn’t say they took the photos.”
“Then who the hell did?”
“I don’t know, man.”
“It had to have been someone in the house at the time. Do you remember which brothers were there?”
“Hell, man, it was over a decade ago. Do you really expect me to remember?”
I heave a sigh of frustration. No, I don’t expect him to remember, not really, but I need somewhere to start. “Look, I’m going to figure out who did this, and when I do, I’m going to beat the fucking shit out of him, and make sure those photos never see the light of day again. And if I find out that you’re hiding something from me, I’ll beat the shit out of you as well.”
“Hey, fuck you, man. I did my best to help you out.”
“Doing your best would have meant preventing it from happening in the first place. Do me a favor and contact some of the guys to see if they know anything.”
“Sure thing, Jackson. You know I’ve got your back.”
I sigh. “I know, man. I’m just really fucking pissed about this.”
Cory pauses for a moment, then says, “Why’s this resurfacing now?”
“No particular reason. Someone just knew about it when I was unaware. And I wish she didn’t.”
“Don’t tell me this is the same chick you were hung up on your senior year?”
“The same one.”
“Hell, man. That’s rough.”
“Yeah, she fucking hates me because of these photos. Thinks I’m some sort of asshole who records the women he screws. Some sorority girl told her friend that I was screwing around behind her back, when in reality all this happened years before we were together.”
“Shit, you want me to talk to her? I could tell her you didn’t know about them.”
“Thanks, but something tells me the last thing she wants right now is any interaction with members of my fraternity.”
Monster (King Brothers #1) Page 6