“All right, well, let me know if you need anything else. I’ll call some people.”
“Thanks, I’ll talk to you later,” I say, then hang up.
I rub my temples, trying to push this whole stupid saga out of my mind so I can focus on work, but it’s hard. Particularly hard when my biggest project has Rory on the other side of the trade. Seemingly every aspect of my life has become entangled with hers these last few weeks. I’d love nothing more than to forget the whole thing, but Axel needs me to sew this deal up for him.
I spend a few hours making calls to potential leads and following up with some agents the next county over who might have a few clients selling soon. None of it does anything to distract me. So naturally, when Axel appears around lunchtime, his customary pissed-off expression on his face, I’m hardly surprised by the fact that this day is about to go from bad to worse.
“Are you planning to close the deal this century, or am I going to have to get personally involved?”
“Happy Monday to you, too, big bro. How was the weekend?”
“Let’s skip the niceties; you know I’m fucking swamped with the harvest right now. Thanks for the help, by the way.”
“I’m busy getting you another farm, dick. I’m all tied up at the moment.”
“If you’re such a goddamn wonderful agent, then why haven’t we closed the deal yet? I know you gave her the offer.”
“She thinks it’s too low.”
“Then increase it.”
My eyebrows raise in shock. “Really?”
“I know you already lowballed her. Increase it so we can get this done. I’m going to need to begin planting the saplings in the next couple of weeks if they’re going to take root before the first frost.”
“Yeah, but I’m not going to make you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars extra just so that you can have the farm a week or two sooner.”
“Bullshit. You’re dragging this out because you want to fuck Rory, and this is the best way to get her to like you again. Increase the offer, she’ll be happy, you can finally fuck her, and I can finally get my farm. Everyone wins.”
“Yeah, well, that was last week.”
Axel stares at me, zero expression on his face. It’s his way of making another person so uncomfortable that they finally spill their guts. Being only a year younger than my oldest brother, I’ve learned to ignore it. Mostly.
When I fail to cave under his expression, he stabs one stern finger at me and says, “Finish this. Or else.”
“Did you really just ‘or else’ me?”
“You bet your ass, I did. Your stupidity is costing me a farm. I won’t have you fuck up this year’s harvest and the next because your cock needs a good workout. Fix it, and fix it fast.”
And on that ominous note, he storms out of my office.
Chapter Eleven
I’m just about to leave for the day when my phone rings. Fuck that, it can wait. I continue packing my briefcase and let it go to voicemail. However, when the phone finally falls silent, it immediately rings again. Whoever is on the other end of the line isn’t going to wait until tomorrow.
Sighing, I throw my briefcase on the desk and grab for the phone.
“Jackson King.”
“Jackson.” The mere sound of her voice has me sinking into my desk chair.
“Rory. Why are you calling?”
“We need to talk.”
“As I said on Friday, I have nothing to say to you. Any further questions can be sent to my secretary.”
“I know your brother is trying to buy my farm.”
Aaaaand, fuck. This shitty day just got worse. I thought I’d escaped the drama. Can anything ever happen the easy way?
Rory correctly interprets my silence as an admission of guilt. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”
No. “Maybe.”
“You—never mind. We both know you were never going to tell me, but did you really believe I’d never find out? What, you thought word wouldn’t get around that Axel King, the devil himself, now owns the old Larson farm?”
Obviously, that possibility immediately popped into my mind. But as the deal would already be done by that point, it didn’t really concern me. “To be honest, I haven’t thought that far down the road.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. We need to talk, so get your ass over here.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“Rory, I think you made yourself perfectly clear on Friday. I don’t need to be told again how much you despise me for something that didn’t even happen ten years ago. Send it via my secretary, okay? I have to go.”
“If you don’t come over here, I’m not going to accept the cushy offer Axel just gave me an hour ago, and you’ll be forced to deal with me for another few weeks.” And then she hangs up.
Fucking hell. I launch myself out of my chair and head for the exit, giving my poor secretary a terse nod on my way out. Fuck all this shit. I’m so excited to drag this out even longer just so we can hurl terrible things at each other that will make my heart hurt.
She’s waiting for me when I step out of my truck, her arms folded almost defensively against her chest. There’s an unexpected calmness to her demeanor. My steps slow warily; Rory’s never calm.
I fold my own arms across my chest. “You want to talk? Okay, fine. Let’s talk.”
She rolls her eyes. “Come inside, first.”
No way. I’m not going back in there, where my carefully locked-up emotions might start thinking things aren’t so bad, after all.
They are bad. They’ve always been bad, apparently.
“I’m fine here, thanks.
“Jackson, come inside. Please.”
And it’s the pleading look in her eyes that gets me. I groan, reluctantly walking up the steps as she stares at me. I’m going to hate the next half an hour.
After I close the front door behind me, Rory asks if I want something to drink. My eyes narrow. What’s with the sudden niceness?
Instead of answering, I just glare at her glorious eyes. It’s a strange role reversal. I always do the asking, pleading, but now she’s the one asking and I’m shutting her down.
“Okay, if you don’t want a drink then we can talk in the dining room.”
We situate ourselves across from each other. Rory looks me straight in the eye and says, “I didn’t ask you here to talk about Axel’s offer. Well, we need to discuss that, too, but I wanted you to come here so I could discuss the pictures with you in person.”
I surge to my feet. “If you think I’m going to discuss those pictures with you again, you’re out of your damn mind. I have nothing else to say about them.”
Rory throws a hand out in a placating gesture, then says, “That’s not—I mean, I know what you said. I asked you here because I wanted to tell you in person that I know you were telling the truth and that I’m so sorry I said those horrible things to you.”
“W-what?”
Rory sighs and slumps slightly in her seat, like she’s struggling to harness the courage to say the following words.
“After you left on Friday, I called Sheryl.”
I slowly sink back down into my chair. I slide my forearms onto the table so I can lean forward enough to show she has my entire attention. “What did she say?”
“She said it was a setup.”
“What?”
“Yeah, Sheryl told me all about it. You know how all of you had to find a Kappa?”
I nod, a sense of foreboding coming over me.
“Well, apparently the Kappa girls had a little tradition of their own. Each pledge had to find a guy to sleep with over the semester and then document the experience. At the end of pledging, they would, um, share notes and rank which guys’ performances did or did not satisfy. The results were then used to create a list of suitable-or-not dating material for the rest of college.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I wish not. Sheryl thought it was hilarious at the time. I
guess they all did. They keep the photos in these creepy fuck books in the downstairs office of the sorority house. But as bad as that all is, it’s actually worse.”
“Really. How could it be worse than that?” I say slowly. I actually have to stare at the table to remain calm. I can’t look at her. Can’t look at anything but the grain in this wooden table, if I’m not going to absolutely fucking lose it.
“Jackson.” Rory says nothing else, waiting for me to look at her. When I finally do, the devastation on her face is not merely for me, but for her, too.
For us.
“What? Just tell me.”
“One of the Kappa girls in your year, um, liked you. A lot. When you brushed her off your junior year, she wanted revenge and, well, she got it. The next year, when she saw the two of us at that party, she knew you liked me and wanted … wanted …”
“Wanted to come between us.”
“Yeah. So after it was clear we were going to get together, she showed Sheryl the photos of you your freshman year and said it was from a party the week before. Sheryl was outraged and showed me the photos that night when we—when I was in the bathroom.
“I called Sheryl this weekend to see if there was more to the story. Turns out, at the end of the semester, when pledging was over, Sheryl and the other pledge mates were allowed to see the fuck books from previous years, and she saw yours from three years previously. She realized that she’d been lied to by her own sorority sister, and that by showing them to me, she assured we would never be together.”
“And she didn’t think to share that info in, oh, the last ten fucking years?”
Rory’s face crumples as she shakes her head. “Those weeks after … I was so angry. I hated you. Hated all guys. She thought it would be better if I just moved on.”
“Instead of telling you the truth. That’s really fucked up.”
Rory trails off because she doesn’t really need to say anything else. What those girls did to me, to us, is so horrible it needs no further discussion.
“Who was it?”
“What?”
“Which bitch is the one who showed the photos to Sheryl?” I snap. She better be living in another country, somewhere I can’t find her, for the pain she caused Rory. Caused me.
“I’m really sorry, Jackson. Sheryl wouldn’t tell me. She says she can’t remember who it was.”
“Right,” I scoff.
“Wouldn’t you do the same for your brothers?”
I think of my conversation with Cory this very day, about how he always had my back. If I knew he’d done something stupid, wouldn’t I protect him if I could? Probably.
Dammit. We’ll probably never know who fucked with us in college. Perhaps it’s better to leave it all in the past, pretend there aren’t photos lying around of me fucking someone.
Then another thought occurs to me. “So did I pass?”
She stares at me in confusion for a long moment. “Pass what?”
“Did I pass the fucking test? Surely I was ranked, right? Did I fuck well enough to warrant future dates from those girls? It must have been written in the book.”
Rory stutters, face turning bright red, and that’s answer enough for me. “That’s—I mean—you don’t—”
I grin at her wickedly. “Why, Miss Larson, I do believe you’re blushing.”
“No, I’m not!”
I lean back with a satisfied smirk. “You sure are. Glad to know you think I fuck well.”
“It was the sorority’s fuck book, not mine!”
I laugh despite the shittiness of the situation. “Oh, peach, the very fact that you’re blushing implies you’re quite in agreement with whatever was in that book.” I lean closer across the table. “And I do, by the way.”
Her eyes narrow. “Do what?”
“Fuck well. I fuck like a god, in fact.”
“I didn’t bring you here to discuss that. What you do or don’t do, can or can’t do with regard to sex is none of my business.”
She might have convinced herself of that, but I’m not blind. I’ve had more than enough experience with women to know when one of them is attracted to me. Something about those photos arouses her.
I’m still angry about the accusations she leveled at me on Friday, but at least now I know she was acting in good faith. She really did believe I’d slept around on her—had a whole bunch of people working to convince her of that fact. All those years. All those years we could have been together. Wasted, because of stupid Greek life initiations, shitty girls, and a woman unwilling to tell the truth even after a decade.
And it’s not even over, yet. “You can say you’re not attracted to me until you’re blue in the face, Rory, but you and I both know that’s not true. For either of us.”
Rory’s face twists in regret. “Look, I apologize for the terrible things I said to you on Friday. I’ve been holding onto what I thought happened in college for so long that it didn’t even occur to me that there might be another explanation for those photos. I guess, maybe, I was looking for an easy way out at the time, because—” she cuts off, refusing to finish a sentence I know I need to hear.
“What did you want an easy way out from?” I push, voice hoarse.
Panic flashes across her face for a brief moment before she shakes her head. “Nothing. Nothing you need to be worried about now.”
I’m pretty sure I do need to worry, if what I think Rory means to say is that, at the time, she was freaked out by how much she felt for me. My heart clenches painfully, but whether it’s in hope for what could be or anguish for what’s been lost, I can’t tell.
And so I try one more time, just once more to see if I can move the needle in the direction I’ve wanted it to move for most of my life. “You just let me know if you ever want to find out for yourself if my godlike fucking ability is accurate.”
Rory rolls her eyes so hard I wonder if she might get whiplash. “Believe me, there’s absolutely no danger of that happening. You can count on it.”
I wink at her, just because it’ll annoy her. I watch in delight as her face turns red. Then I sober, remembering what I myself said three days ago. “I’m sorry as well, for Friday. I suppose it’s none of my business who you fucked in the years since college, even if he is a huge dickbag.”
Rory rolls her eyes again, although this time more in mock annoyance than real irritation. “So glad to receive your apology and permission for a relationship that’s been over for years.”
I lean forward, staring at her intently, so she knows precisely where we stand. “Oh, don’t worry. I never gave you permission. I would never give permission for someone like Lipton to breathe near you, let alone touch you. All I apologize for is what I said on Friday. You can make your own choices—and I can still reserve the right to get pissed off about them.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Jackson.”
I give her another long appraisal, then wink. “I tell myself many things when it comes to you, Rory. Would you care to hear some of them?”
“Not in ten million years,” Rory says, perhaps a little too emphatically.
Figures. Despite my joking, something else still bothers me. “Who took the photos?”
“I’m not sure. This was before everyone had smart phones or Snapchat. Sheryl kind of implied there was an accomplice.”
I grimace; I’m not a man to share my women. The idea of someone watching me fuck anyone, even a girl I cared little about, pisses me right off. “There weren’t other girls around when I took her to the house. It couldn’t have been one of her sisters.”
Rory stares at me for a long time. “Then it could only have been one person.”
“Who?”
“One of your fraternity brothers.”
Chapter Twelve
We sit in silence for a long time, her words lingering heavily between us. She’s right, though; it must have been one of my fraternity brothers. Was it one of my pledge mates? An older brother? Even Cory?
My mind r
ebels from that last one. Even though he can be a real dick, Cory has had my back over the years. The idea that he might be responsible for putting me in such a vulnerable, potentially life-ruining situation makes me furious. The fucking photos already ruined Rory and me. I refuse to let them ruin anything else in my life.
“What are you going to do about it?” Rory finally asks quietly.
I shrug, feigning calm. “I’ve already talked to an old buddy about it. He’s calling around. Nothing has happened all these years. Maybe it’s pointless to dig up old drama.”
“You should get closure from it.”
My eyes lock with hers. “That’s not the only thing I should get closure for.”
Her gaze skitters away. She fiddles with one of the place settings on the table. No surprise there. We both know it’ll take some sort of cataclysmic event for her to start admitting her feelings even to herself, let alone sharing them with me.
I rise to my feet. “Thanks for telling me. I can’t exactly say I’m thrilled about this new information, but I’m glad I know. I’m going to head out now.”
“We need to talk about Axel’s offer.”
My ass sinks right back into the chair.
“Want to know what Axel offered me?”
I shrug; I already have a pretty good idea what’s coming. “Sure.”
“An even two million.”
“It’s not worth that much.”
“You deliberately lowballed me.”
I run a hand through my hair. “Yeah, I did. It’s my job.”
“I could understand going a little low on the offer, but this was a quarter under asking price.”
“Look, Rory. I get that you want that price. But I ran the numbers, and calculated the acreage, and looked at all the equipment—a good chunk of which is now destroyed—and I just don’t see where you’re getting that number.”
Rory stares, her face devoid of expression. Some instinctive part of me warns to tread carefully. “Axel said you lowballed it so I would talk to you in person.”
That bastard. Axel gives zero fucks if he blows up someone else’s life if it means he gets what he wants. He doesn’t care one flying fuck that this is yet one more thing Rory will hold against me.
Monster (King Brothers #1) Page 7