Chapter 5 #2
“You might as well leave also. I’m tired and ready to go to bed. I don’t need any more drama tonight,” Bristol states, drains the wine in her glass, turns, and makes her way toward the sink.
With the open space, I can track her movement and watch her ass sway as she walks. Just watching her move has my cock throbbing, but her words just piss me off.
“I’m not leaving, Bristol, so don’t try to bullshit emotionless void me,” I grumble, stalking in her direction and ignoring Jagger.
I still can’t believe she’s got a cat she named fucking Jagger.
I’m not a big cat person, but even I could tell the cat was pretty cool with its intense-looking eyes, even as a kitten still.
A thought hits me, and that hit goes straight to my gut. That day in the hospital, she’d given the emotionless void look to me when she told me to leave, and I fucking did.
It’s her shield, and I see that now. I allowed it to fool me when I shouldn’t have, and because of it, I’ve lost enough time.
We both did. Then again what time is it we would have had?
I refuse to allow someone to deal with what is my past. Hell, my own family doesn’t know everything, and they’re a part of it.
The only ones to know the truth are my brothers, grandfather, and father. The way I see it, it’ll stay that way. I don’t want anyone else to know the rest.
Still, when it comes to Bristol, she’s under my skin, and there’s no working her out. She’s in deep, and honestly, I don’t know if I want to get her out. Maybe I can have her and keep her from learning everything. Or keep my past from coming for her.
“You need to leave, Beast.” Bristol sets her wine glass in the sink and spins to face me, arms crossing under her breast, and the movement pushes them upward. My mouth waters to get my mouth on them again . . . to taste that sweetness I can only imagine between her thighs.
“Not leaving, Butterfingers, so get the thought out of your head. We’ve got shit to sort out.”
“No, we don’t,” she huffs, shakes her head and drops her arms. “We don’t have anything to discuss. I’m nothing to you, and same goes for you.”
“That’s a fuckin’ lie and you know it.” I’m not about to let her lie to me or to herself.
Closing the distance between the two of us, I wrap an arm around her waist, and my fingers go into her hair, holding her in place.
“There’s always been something between us, even if we ignored it, Bristol, and I’m not going to let you ignore it any longer. ”
“You won’t let me ignore it?” she whispers, blinks, and narrows her gaze as she presses her hands against my chest and shoves.
“Let go of me, asshole.” I don’t budge, but she doesn’t let up, she keeps shoving me.
“You’ve got some nerve saying that to me.
It wasn’t me who ignored you,” she all but shouts.
“Like I said, we’ve got shit to sort out, and we’re doing that starting right fuckin’ now,” I inform her, letting her hair go and wrapping my fingers around her wrists, stilling her from shoving me further. “Why did you tell me to leave that day in the hospital?”
Bristol stills in my arms, her body going tense. Eyes wide. Lips parting. Her breathing shallow.
“Why are you asking that?”
I don’t think she means to ask, but she does, and I’m going to answer.
“Because I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t want to leave you alone after what you’d just been through, but you told me to leave, that you didn’t want to see me.”
Bristol starts shaking in my arms, and I tighten my grip on her, hoping to still the shakes from her body, but it doesn’t work.
Letting go of her wrists, I scoop her in my arms and carry her through the house.
Without asking her, I find her room and move right to the bed, where I lay her in the middle and stretch out next to her, my arm still wrapped around her.
“Talk to me, Brissy. Why did you want me to leave you?”
“I didn’t want you to. Not really. I didn’t want you to see me like that. Not after finding me the way you did. I was embarrassed.”
I close my eyes and release a heavy sigh, feeling a weight slowly lift off my shoulders.
It is one of many things that have sat on me for a long time.
That one, though, was a heavy one, and I knew, some part of me damn well knew, that was the damn reason she didn’t want to see me.
Fuck. If I could go back and kill Porter, I would.
The bastard died way too easily. The fire he’d started was meant to kill him and Josephine.
He’d been obsessed with her and didn’t like that she was my brother’s woman.
Why he hurt Bristol, I’ll never understand, but he hurt her when he couldn’t get his hands on Josie, and that alone makes me want to bring him back from the dead and gut him like the piece of shit he was.
For Bristol, thinking of what happened to her as embarrassment guts me, but I can at least fix what I should have done all those months ago rather than walking away the way I did.