by Lily Ryan
My brother lies on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Tyler looks at me for a long minute before he nods, giving me the okay to enter.
“Do you hate me?” I ask sitting on the edge of the bed.
“No. I don’t hate you.” He pushes himself up to a sitting position. “I hate Cole. I’ll kill that bastard if he so much as looks at you.”
I sniffle. “Please, don’t. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to come between you. If I could undo everything . . .” Overcome with tears, I can’t finish the sentence.
“Aww, Sammie.” Tyler pulls me into his arms. I bury my face in his chest and cry. It feels good to let it out to someone. “I’m sorry this happened. The person I’m most angry with is myself for fucking up. If I was here, this never would’ve happened.”
“It would’ve happened, Ty.” I wipe my eyes with my fingertips. “Maybe not when it did, but eventually, before I left for school something would’ve happened whether you were here or not.”
“If I was here, I could’ve kept an eye on him. Made sure—”
“What? That we didn’t talk to each other? That we didn’t see each other and wish we could be together. Maybe you keeping us apart made it worse. Maybe I would’ve seen what an asshole he is sooner. Before I . . .” I feel my emotions getting the best of me, so I take a breath.
I will not be a weak, sniveling girl over Cole. Over any guy, ever again. Even if he broke my heart. What’s done is done. I said no regrets and I meant it. The regrets I have aren’t about having sex with Cole. They’re about falling in love with him. And loving him with all that I am.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask, looking at my brother. He looks every bit as hurt and betrayed as I feel.
“Sure.”
“Did you really threaten him to stay away from me?”
My brother’s breaths are deep and loud as he hesitates to answer.
“Yeah.”
I pull out of his arms. I wish this part wasn’t true. Then I’d know for sure that truth is as foreign to Cole as the Aegean Sea. Now I’m overthinking everything he said and wishing the truths outweigh the lies.
“Why? Why would you do that? Do you think I’m so pathetic I can’t see through a guys bullshit?”
Tyler quirks his eyebrow up.
“Okay. I fucked up. But I was scared and emotional with no experience because you haven’t let anyone near me in the last three years. You left me at a disadvantage. I can’t tell the difference between the assholes and the good guys.”
“That’s the problem. You think there are good guys. There aren’t. They’re all assholes. ”
“Including you?”
“Especially me. Look what happened with Caitlin.”
I bite my lip, nervous to get back to the real issue. “Why didn’t you want us together?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“No it’s not.”
“Talking about this isn’t doing any good. It’s upsetting you, and pissing me off even more.“
“I’m getting upset because you’re not answering. Please, Ty. I couldn’t talk to anyone or ask for advice because we didn’t want you to find out and I promised Cole I wouldn’t tell anyone. It feels good to finally admit that we were together and talk about what happened.”
“You were together? As in it happened more than once?”
I nod. “Every night you were away.”
“Mother fucker!” I feel my brother’s anger bouncing off him as he punches his pillow.
In an attempt to ease his anger, I tell Tyler how it all went down. Starting with Cole waiting here at home for me when I got back from the bonfire. We talk until my eye lids are heavy, my face is swollen and sore from crying, and I can’t stop yawning.
“Can I sleep in here tonight? I’ll get my sleeping bag and sleep on the floor. I just . . . I can’t stay in my room. Please.”
“Go ahead.”
I grab an old sleeping bag, and some pillows. It reminds me of the sleepovers we had when we were kids. Only then we’d have sleeping bags side by side on the floor.
“Ty?” I ask, once the lights are out and I’m settled.
“I thought you were tired?”
“I am, but you never answered the question and I need to know. Why were you so against us being together?”
“He’s too old for you. With way too much experience. He knows how to get a girl out of her pants before she realizes what’s she’s doing.”
Great. Hearing this hurts more than I thought it would. Plus, he’s providing me with imagery. It’s perfect nightmare material. Does he want me to slit my wrists?
“You really thought Cole would do that to me?”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“No. Yes. I could tell he wanted me, but I swear, I initiated. All of it. He even turned me down a few times.”
“TMI. I’m going to be sick.”
“And then once things started in that direction, Cole kept asking if I was sure, telling me nothing had to happen. That it was okay to stop. He was . . . sweet.”
“He still fucked you.”
I nod and sniffle. “I wanted it. Then when we started to see each other, and I thought because of your friendship, he’d be honest and end things like man if he wanted out, not a coward. I never thought he’d cheat on me.”
“I told you, guys are assholes. The fact that he used you then ran to his girlfriend—”
“Have you listened at all? She’s not his girlfriend. At least she wasn’t at the time. I was, sort of.”
Even though it’s dark, I see my brother’s brows furrow. He looks much more serious than he did a minute ago. “How are you so sure?
I shrug. “He had no time to be with someone else, between work and spending time with me. And we’d talk and text for hours afterward. That was the routine, until you came home. But then he’s been here every night. Except for last tonight. He’s an asshole, Ty, but he didn’t use me the way you think he did.”
In convincing my brother that Cole’s doesn’t deserve to die at his hands, I realize I don’t have all the facts. Instead of hearing Cole out, I ran off half-cocked to fuck Hunter. I’m almost asleep when my brother’s voice breaks the silence.
“What do you want me to do? He’s my best friend, Sam. At least he was. I don’t know what the hell he is anymore. You’re my sister. It’s an impossible situation. Out of all my friends, If I had to see you with one of them, it would be him. But what happens when shit doesn’t work out? Like right now. I’m in the middle, and torn in pieces because I love you both.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I thought you were just being an over-protective older brother.”
“Maybe I was, am. I don’t know. But now I’m down a friend. My best friend.”
“He was being a jerk before.”
“Yeah, he was. But so were you. If he did think you guys were a thing, he’s hurt by what you did last night. You weren’t at Abby’s. You lied to Mom, and to us, and he knows it. Where were you really?”
“Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
“See, this is already coming between us. You and me. What happens if out of this, I lose you, too?”
“You’ll never lose me.”
“Really? Because, it already started. Lying about Cole. About where you were last night. I know the path you’re on, sis, and trust me, it doesn’t end well.”
Chapter 15
Cole
Days pass since I last saw Sam. In person anyway. It’s been minutes since I looked at the pics of us together in my car. Pics I hate. The pics that ruined my life. I should delete them, forget the whole ordeal, but I can’t. They’re all I have left of her. Which sucks.
The best part of being with Sam was being myself and not pretending. We started out as friends, sort of. We had years of history between us.
She knew me. The real me. Not the I’m-trying-to-impress-you-me that shows up on the first few dates. She knows my quirks, along with
my imperfections. And she wanted me anyway. The way I wanted her. Want her still.
I should’ve told Tyler the night he came home. I had the perfect fucking chance, too. My bad for not listening to Sam and Austin. I worried too much about my friend’s emotional state. Maybe I was just too chicken shit and didn’t want to lose his friendship.
A lot of good that did me. Now I lost him and Sam. Who knows, maybe it wouldn’t have made a shit of a difference. But then he would’ve known I wasn’t really with Callie. Would never be with another girl while I’m with Sam.
The irony is, they think I cheated on her. I didn’t. But she had no qualms about falling onto another guy’s mattress. I still can’t believe she ran to someone else at the first hint of trouble. Fucking Zane. I hate him.
Thank goodness it’s Thursday. I’ve been going through the motions all week. Waking up, going into work, then coming home and hibernating with a six pack. I’m on my sixth since the weekend.
I open and close my mouth, and move my jaw from side to side. It feels better today. No hint of pain. It hurt like a bitch the first couple of days. Now I can hardly tell Tyler used my face as a punching bag.
I reach in the refrigerator and grab another beer. I love that the basement is my territory. My domain. Yet all I have to do is go up a flight of stairs to find all the comforts of home. I didn’t believe my parents would respect boundaries if I lived here, but they’ve kept their part of the bargain. As long as I pay rent, which is a joke compared to what I’d pay somewhere else, they give me my space.
In the mood to forget them and everyone else in the outside world, I sit on the couch, lean back and close my eyes. I bring the bottle up to my lips and take a long swing. She’s here with me. Sam smiles. A flirty, come get me smile.
My dick jumps to life. She turns her back to me, lifts her dress and bends at the waist. I have an amazing view of her bare ass. With her legs spread just enough to be taken as an invitation, she wraps her fingers around her ankles. I pull my pants down and step up behind her. I spread her lips open, grasp her curvy hips and thrust hard, into her tight pussy. No condom. Nothing between us. Just my bare cock basking in her wet silk.
I pound into her, once. Twice. Harder. Deeper. She cries out for more. I keep pounding. I want to punish her with each stroke, make her remember that she’s mine. I want to tease her mercilessly, bringing her to the brink of orgasm over and over again, until she screams my name. Until no other man exists for her but me.
The basement door creaks open. Startled, I pull my hand out of my pants. Fuck, I was about to cum. I wanted to leave her high and dry, begging for more, and now it looks like I’m going to end up with blue balls.
“I know you’re down here, Cole,” Tyler calls, as he comes down the steps. That’s one way to go limp.
“Might as well turn around. I’m not in the mood for your shit.”
“Too bad. You don’t have a fucking choice.”
“I didn’t fight back because I fucked up and I knew it. You touch me again, and all bets are off.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not here to fight. By the way, you look like shit,” there’s a hint of pleasure in his voice. He’s mocking me. Tyler fucking Stone thinks he’s the superior one here. I see it on his smug face. I should punch him. Just for the hell of it.
“Fuck you.”
“Do you love her?”
“What?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
I look at him confused as I take another pull of beer. My brain hurts, and now he’s making me use it when all I want to do is turn it off. “Who, Callie?”
“No fucktard,” Tyler snags the bottle out of my hand. “Sam.”
I shake my head. Even hearing her name guts me. “I don’t love her.” Even if I did, I wouldn’t admit it. Not to him. Not now that she jumped into Zane’s bed and proved I didn’t mean a fucking thing to her. “I hate her.”
“Bullshit on hating her. You’ve never hated her. Even when you pretended to by annoyed that she followed us everywhere. Like the time we went to the lake to meet up with the girls. You bitched and moaned that she was there, and then you ditched us to go off and catch frogs with my sister.”
“Your point?” Great, he’s been watching us before I even realized he had a reason to. Before I had a clue that she worked her way under my skin.
“If you love her, I might be able to forgive you in time. If she doesn’t mean anything to you, she’s just another drop in the bucket, then you’re a bigger dick than I thought and we’re through.”
“Sam’s not the innocent flower you think she is.”
He shrugs. “Maybe not. Unlike you, it doesn’t change how I feel about her.”
“You don’t know what she did, where she was.”
“Look man, I know she’s not perfect and that she shares in the responsibility of all this. She owned up to her shit. She even insists it was her, that everything that happened between you was initiated by her, so that we,” he points between us, “can salvage our relationship.”
My foot bounces up and down. Great, then why are we rehashing this? Does he want to rub salt in the wound? Look in my eyes to see if tears gather there? Like I’d let that happen.
“No.” I answer. “It wasn’t all her. It wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t want it.”
“I didn’t think so. But, still, you must have been looking for an easy, fast, fuck.”
“Don’t!” I warn. Anger boils in my chest. He doesn’t know what I went through that night, between fighting my desire for her and my guilt over wanting her. How all I wanted to do was the right thing, for everyone. “That’s not how it went down. Not at all.”
He nods. “Doesn’t matter, because in the end it’s what happened. I mean it’s not like you have feelings for her. You sure as shit don’t love her, you just said so yourself.”
“Fuck you!” I explode, jumping to my feet. “I care about Sam. I’d cut off my right arm for her and I went out of my way to make sure I didn’t hurt her.”
“That’s straight up bull. Because she’s hurting right now. Hurting bad, and yeah, that part, it’s all on you.”
How could he say this to me? Doesn’t he see the pain his sister put me through? How completely fucked I am right now? I can’t even think straight. And for what? To protect him? A self-absorbed jerk.
“But the worst part of it all is that you know what my sister means to me and still you did this. You shit all over our friendship. And for what? You didn’t see her as anything more than a piece of garbage. A cheap fucking whore.”
I’ve had enough. I step toe to toe with my ex best friend and get in his face.
“I don’t know what she told you, but I never treated her like a whore. She’s lying.”
“Really? So you treated her like any other girl you were interested in? You took her out to dinner?”
My eyes drop to the floor.
“A movie?”
“No,” I mutter, under my breath.
“She meant something to you, so you made sure she knew it. You took her on a date of some sort, right?”
I shake my head.
“I get that you didn’t want to go traipsing all over town with her. Tell me you at least invited her here, to your place. There’s no one here but you.”
I’m seeing his point, but he’s twisting this all around.
“No.”
His face lights up like he just thought of something. “Coffee’s innocent enough. You planned to meet up with her at the coffee shop, where you’d sit and talk.”
“I was thinking of you. We didn’t go out in public together because we didn’t want anyone to know.” I say through clenched teeth.
“Right. For me. You wanted to keep it quiet. So what did your parents think of her? Were they surprised to see you two together after all these years? Because I know if you explained the situation, they understood and agreed to keep it quiet.”
“Fuck you!” I rub the back of my neck thinking about
all the different ways I could’ve handled this. I’m not entirely to blame. Am I? Did I really make her feel like shit? Like I just wanted to fuck her fast and dirty? It doesn’t matter. It’s too late to second guess. “Your point?”
“My point is, maybe I could’ve forgiven you if you treated her right. If you treated her special, the way she deserves. Instead, you kept everything a secret and pressured her to do the same.” As the volume of his voice rises, so does the color in his face. “You fucked her in your car like a prostitute. Like someone you pick up off the side of the road whose name you don’t even bother to learn. You were too fucking cheap to even rent a hotel room.”
“You don’t know shit about what went down or how I feel for your sister,” I snap.
“I know she’s in love with you. Even after all that you didn’t do, that you could’ve done better. I’d be able to forgive you if I thought maybe you loved her, too. Maybe you had a lapse in judgment because love makes you stupid. You can’t think straight because your head is flooded with thoughts of the girl you’re crazy about. I get that. I know how it can fuck you up. Make you do shit you’d never believe. But no, I can’t even give you that. Because you just said you don’t love her!” He yells, in my face.
“How I feel about her doesn’t matter! Not now. Not after what she did.”
“What could she have done that’s so bad? So unforgivable?”
“She was with someone else the night she didn’t come home.” God I sound pathetic. Worse than a fucking chick.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do.” Doesn’t he hear the tone of my voice, doesn’t he realize that his sister broke me.
“You were with Callie before that. By the way, you still have a shitload of explaining to do about that. Sam saw you kiss her, right there for everyone to see, when you wouldn’t even be seen with my sister. That hurt her. Bad.”
“It’s not what you think it is. There’s a lot more to it. I was trying to protect Sam. It’s all I wanted to do.”
“I don’t really give a fuck right now. All I know is my sister doesn’t want to sleep in her own room. She sleeps on the couch or in my room because she says there are too many memories of you in her bed. Do you know what that makes me want to do to you?”