Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Me:
Question…
How many orgasms are too many orgasms in the space of forty-eight hours?
Keri:
Are you implying that you have spent the entirety of Christmas impaled by cock and that’s why you’ve been too busy to text back?
I was planning to send a search party of mountain dogs out looking for you.
Start spilling the sex-crazed tea, Mia.
I know you’ve got secrets to tell. Ding dong, it’s time for a pornographic bedtime story, bitch.
I’m officially high on the two men who have been doting on me all night. Well, more than that… all Christmas. Never in my life have I felt more wanted or safe than when I’m with them.
It’s strange to think that way. I miss my mom, of course I do, but it feels like a lifetime she’s been gone—over half of my years have been without her.
Whoever my father was, she never told me, and no one ever appeared magically after her death, so I can only assume she didn’t know who he was.
And even though we had our short life together, the harsh reality was that she needed to be absent a lot.
She was a solo mom, working three jobs, and doing everything she could.
Our time together feels even briefer than it really was, because she worked so hard to take care of the two of us.
I don’t blame her in any way, but it meant I never really knew a life where she was around. There were always bills to pay, and her soft hugs were a luxury I clung to whenever I had the chance. We should have had hundreds, if not thousands, more hugs.
What I can only hope is that she’d be a little bit in adoration of these men, that she’d find them equally as charming and funny and sweet.
I hum contentedly to myself as I linger in the hallway leading to the bar bathrooms. Flushed with the taste of whiskey and dampness coating my lower back from dancing, I take a moment to read over the texts from Keri.
Seeing her most recent message, I lift a hand to brush over my bottom lip, absently caressing the spot where both Reid and Henri have kissed me already while on the dancefloor tonight.
Oh boy, do I have stories to tell.
“What are you playing at, Mia?”
Unfortunately, it’s a voice I know, and the way he just crept up on me makes me jump. Dread slithers cold fingers down my spine.
“Don’t ignore me.” My ex, Dipshit Dale, hisses and grabs my wrist.
That unwanted touch and proximity catching me off guard makes me jerk, recoiling from him. “Don’t touch me, Dale.”
“All of this is pathetic. These little performances you’ve been staging are beyond idiotic.” He spits out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t… you’re here with your boyfriend? How could I forget?” His leering energy is slimier than I ever thought possible. “Get real, Mia. Cut the crap.”
Tugging my hand away, I rub my wrist, trying to erase any lingering sensation of him imprinted on my skin. “You need to leave.”
“Not a chance. You’re the one who needs to watch herself.” Dale looks down his nose at me, and I can’t help but feel physically repulsed by my own decisions in the past. How low did I have to be in life that I stomached this putrid man?
The bastard crowds me, forcing my shoulders to bump against the wall. “I knew you were only good for one thing. How many other men were you opening your legs for at the same time? I bet your phone is full of guys you’re putting out for.”
My blood runs cold. Not only is this prick going to corner me while alone, but he’s going all out on the asshole-with-a-grudge-mode, intent on slut shaming me?
Fuck this cum stain excuse for a man.
“I gave you five seconds to piss off before. This time, you’re going to wish you didn’t test my patience.” Reid’s voice ricochets off the narrow walls like a boom of thunder.
“Mia, are you alright?” Henri’s voice is right there beside me. Calm. Frighteningly so.
“I’m fine.” I meet both of their fearsome gazes, trying to reassure them with my eyes that none of this is worth causing trouble.
I’m not going to bring that upon them.
“I bet you’re just fine, Mia.” Dale raises both palms, giving me a look up and down like the pig he is.
“She loves to put out on the first date. Bet that’s what she did for you, huh?
It doesn’t even have to be a date, actually.
Nah, Mia will arrange to meet in a parking lot, ready to gag on any dick presented to her. ”
My throat burns with acid, and I wish there was something I could do to this foul man that wouldn’t land me in court.
“All too easy to convince this one to be some man’s cheap whore on the side. Always looking for the married ones, huh?” He keeps digging his own grave. I can feel the tension rippling off the two men who are now flanking me on both sides.
I don’t give them a second, no opportunity to come to my defense. If anything, I’m spitting mad, ready to lash out, wanting to protect them.
“You asshole.” I lurch forward, about to shove a finger into his chest, or better yet, claw his face, but Reid catches me.
He holds me firm by my waist, but that doesn’t stop me from verbally getting right in Dale’s grill.
“That was all your doing. You lied to me about being married. You were the one who pursued me.”
Heat stings the backs of my eyes. I hate that no matter how crude, what he said is the truth, and that’s a fact I have to live with.
He did get me to meet him in a parking lot for our first time doing anything physical together…
ugly as the memory is for me. He told me it was a fantasy of his.
He wore me down until the point I agreed.
I sucked his cock. He didn’t even touch me, didn’t even kiss me—no guy wants that after a blow job, apparently—all he did was drop me two blocks from my house, and said he’d text in the morning.
Afterward, I felt nothing but ashamed in the shower, trying to scrub away the skin-crawling feeling I’d been left with.
He love-bombed me non-stop for a week following that day.
Any hesitation I felt, or whispers in the back of my mind that I should block him and move on, were overrun.
Sending me flowers, texting all the time, he was persistent to the point I believed it wasn’t as bad as I thought.
I gaslit myself into thinking that was acceptable behavior.
Just a few quirks in his way of showing affection.
So I put up with the rendezvous at strange hours of the night. The random disappearances. The hot and cold attitude.
Guys don’t commit easily, do they?
Now, here I stand, knowing the opposite is true. These two men have shown me more affection and respect in two days than this man could ever.
“You always were such a miserable waste of space… now you’ve had to stoop to this level? Following me around? Making up a whole ass boyfriend just so you could ruin my engagement? God. How pathetic. Did they pay you to be their cheap little whore for the holidays?”
Reid steps forward, shoving me behind him and into Henri’s arms. This man doesn’t just ripple with protective energy; he quite possibly might tear Dale limb from limb.
Dale blanches ever so slightly, but tries to cover it up with more hot air and bluster. Compared to Reid, the pathetic little piece of shit he is becomes starkly apparent.
“I knew I smelled something rotten. Firstly, you turn up with a country hillbilly as a boyfriend? Then you’re getting all cozy with him?
” He sneers at Henri. “Man to man? Cut your losses while you can; that’s my advice.
This little bitch already broke up one marriage.
She’s nothing but a pathetic, sad leech.
She’ll try to bleed you dry. Now she’s trying to do the same thing all over again, following me here?
Hooking her claws into the first opportunity she saw with the two of you? ”
My stomach sours. He’s a foul person, but he’s right.
That’s my secret shame to carry around. I knew the guy was a cheater, and yet I allowed him into my life.
All that guilt closes tight barbs around my throat.
I was the other woman, and it stings like a bitch that I didn’t stand up for myself or walk away at the first hint of a red flag.
But knowing what I know now? Knowing how he’s already engaged to someone new, who he must have already been with at the same time as he was manipulating me? It’s plain as day to me now. I wasn’t the one who broke up his first marriage. That’s nothing to do with me, and everything to do with him.
Reid tucks his hands into his pockets, but fills the space and seems to grow by at least three extra feet as he does so. His massive frame is imposing as hell, without needing to throw around threats or descend into violence.
“Might I suggest, if you know what’s good for you, that you get the fuck out of Mistwood Falls. You’re not welcome here, your money is no good in this town, and you certainly have outstayed your welcome at the ranch.”
Dale scoffs. “Doesn’t matter what you threaten me with.
None of you will be working there much longer.
Think I came here only because this is a place for a vacation?
I’m about to seal a proposal to purchase the ranch property.
I’ve got a meeting scheduled to sign the contract tomorrow.
The lot of you are just goddamn backwater inbreds who don’t know how to make money with all that land going to waste.
But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find a job at a dollar store and a trailer park to live in somewhere the next town over. ”
My heart lurches. Oh my god. He can’t do this to them; he surely can’t take away Reid’s job and evict them from their home, just like that?
I start wriggling against Henri’s arm, banding me to his front, but instead of the reaction I might have expected—instead of the anger this asshole deserves to be flayed with—the man at my back starts laughing.
Reid begins to chuckle also, much more darkly, but it’s a raspy laugh coming from him all the same.
My panic churns with confusion.