The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (49 page)

I wanted to cry, to just fall apart right there, with Rhett’s cock still buried deep inside me, my body humming on the end of my orgasm. This was going to end, Rhett and I both knew it.

“It’s okay to let go, just for a little bit, even if you know it’ll be bad for you in the end.”
Rhett’s words from the other day fluttered through my mind. I had intended to walk away from this whole and intact, but now I knew I wouldn’t. When this ended I would be ripped apart, destroyed.

Laughter filled the air around us. It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from me. My chest shook with it.

Rhett tilted his head up. “That bad, huh?”

And the laughter came harder, so hard I was gasping for air.

He had no idea just how bad all of this really was.

TWELVE

“You ready?”

I glanced at myself one last time in the mirror. The woman there was me, but she was different. I had been with Rhett for seven days. Seven days I’d been in his house. In his bed. In his arms. For seven days I had lived in a dreamland. A world that didn’t really exist. We’d gone to the movies. To the mall. I’d even gone grocery shopping with him.
Fucking grocery shopping.
With Rhett. As if all of these things were normal. As if we were two regular people just making our way through life together.

The woman in the mirror looked more alive than I could remember. The waves in her hair were more defined, her eyes were brighter. But there was something else in them. Something dead. Even all the bright shine couldn’t hide that dead thing that lived behind them. It was the past and the future. They twisted together there in her eyes, daunting, reminding me that one would always be there and one would certainly come.

“Yes.” I adjusted my top.

“Good, cause I told Cayden and Katie we would meet them a little earlier than originally planned.” Rhett stuck his head in the bathroom. He was there now, with the woman in the mirror. They reflected back to me. Two impossible pieces of a puzzle that could never truly come together. “You okay?”

I blinked and looked down at the sink. “I’m fine.” I plastered a smile across my face before looking back up. Rhett had moved behind me.

“You sure? We don’t have to go.”

I met his gaze in the mirror. I could see that same dead thing in his eyes too. We both had it. We both knew.

“No. We should go. He’s been trying to get us to hang out all week.”

He nodded. His eyes tracing over her—the woman in the mirror. “You look beautiful.”

My heart pounded in my chest. “Thank you.”

He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. It was a chaste kiss, but it made my skin tingle and my whole body throb with life. It didn’t matter that Rhett and I had fucked like animals since that time on the floor in the living room. It didn’t matter that we had been consumed with each other’s bodies. Fucking over and over as if we could never get enough. I wanted him again, now.

A desperation burned beneath my skin. Panic.

“I’ll go start the car.” He left me alone.

I wanted to call him back. The desperation demanded it. But I didn’t. Instead I looked over myself one last time without meeting her eyes in the mirror. I could pretend the dead thing wasn’t there. I could live with it for right now. I had to.

“You’ll love this place. It’s my favorite bar,” Cayden said as we followed he and Katie up the steps into a small bar.

“What makes it so special?”

“It’s really not special.” Katie answered, glancing over her shoulder at me. “I don’t know why Cayden bothers coming here. It’s the least special bar in town.”

“Now, honey, we both know that isn’t true,” Cayden said quickly.

“It is true!” she exclaimed. “They don’t play
any
good music, and everyone in here has a beard. Even the women!”

I started to chuckle at Katie’s joke, but stopped when she shot me annoyed glance over her shoulder. Clearly she was being serious.

“You’re being dramatic.” Cayden said flatly as we reached halfway up the stairs. There was a bearded man wearing a bolo tie sitting at a desk. He waved us on up. I looked around curiously as we climbed the steep steps.

“
I’m
being dramatic?” She pressed a manicured hand against her chest and tossed a long blond curl over her shoulder. “I told you I didn’t want to come here.”

“And I told you, you didn’t have to come,” Cayden said flatly.

I sucked in a breath when we reached the top of the stairs. Floor to ceiling bookshelves lined most of the tall walls in the dimly lit area. The walls that didn’t have bookshelves were covered in old paintings. Some of them were stills of people’s haunted faces, others were gory landscapes of war. Different colored couches and chairs were spread around tables. I’d never seen a place so unique.

“Pretty neat, huh?” Rhett whispered in my ear. Katie and Cayden continued to argue in front of us, though it was more Katie griping than Cayden actually participating.

It continued through us standing in line to get our drinks and once we were seated. I hadn’t been a huge fan of Katie before, when we’d first met. I’d always felt out of place around her, like she thought she was better than me. And now I really understood what Rhett meant when he talked about living with them being a pain.

“This just doesn’t taste right. There’s too much amaretto.” Katie thrust her drink into Cayden’s face. It was the third drink she’d ordered tonight that Cayden had replaced.

“That’s what you ordered. An Amaretto sour. Of course there’s going to be Amaretto in it.”

“Yes, but there’s too much. I wanted more of the sour. This is why I hate coming here. They can’t do anything right.”

“I thought you hated it because of the beards,” Rhett intervened with a smirk.

“There are a lot of reasons to hate this place, Rhett,” she said, annoyed.

“I’ll have them make you another one.” Cayden stood up taking the drink from her hand and moving toward the bar.

“I’m gonna run to the restroom.” Rhett stood as well, planting a kiss on the top of my head as he went.

I nodded, suddenly feeling very unlucky that I was left with Katie. Rhett wasn’t kidding. How did Cayden put up with that all the time?

“So, tell me more about what you guys have been up to.” A thick smile spread across her lips as she focused her attention on me. Katie was pretty. There was no denying that. She was gorgeous, but I could see through that fake smile and red lipstick. I could see it like I saw it in her before, six years ago when we first met. I was a bug and she was the exterminator. I was beneath her—she was better than me. That’s what she thought, at least.

“Not much. Just catching up,” I said quietly, before taking a gulp of my Vodka 7.

“It’s really nice that you guys could get past all of those terrible things that happened in the past.”

The past.

The words rang like a fucking bell in my head. The past was here. It had always been here. Part of that dead thing in my eyes, but hearing her say it out loud made it jump out of me, exposed and raw.

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. I didn’t want to look at the dead carcass of the past. Not right now. Not when the week was almost over. I wasn’t ready.

“I mean, goodness, if y’all can get through that, then you can do anything. That’s some serious stuff, you know?”

I blinked at her.

Did I know? Did I
fucking
know that Rhett and I had some seriously messed up shit in our past? Did I know that? Did I?

I suddenly wanted to scream.

I took a deep breath. The smoky air calming me. “Yes,” I said.

“I can’t even imagine how hard that must be.” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t fathom it.

I stared at her, her bleach blond hair curling perfect around her face. “You have no idea.”

“I just couldn’t believe he just let you both of you go like that, you know?”

“What do you mean?” I frowned.

“You and Sarah.”

My spine stiffened.

“He ended things with her practically the same day you left all those years ago. But good for you for walking out. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay with a guy who still lived with his girlfriend either. Step-brother or not.”

I ignored the snark in her voice and leaned forward. “They broke up, right after I left?” My mind flashed back to that day. When I stood in the middle of Rhett’s apartment a woman in love. A woman so broken by that love that I begged. Desperate for the love he would never give me. Desperate for something, anything. But he didn’t give me any of it. Instead he left me there all alone.
“Please, Rhett. Don’t go.”
I had begged until my throat was dry. I had given him my love, everything. And he left me behind like I was nothing. Like I meant nothing.

“I fucked her.”

Rhett’s words. They rolled through me making me close my eyes to try and hide from the feelings of that bloody past. But when I closed them I was standing in their apartment again looking into Rhett’s eyes.

“But you love me.”

“I don’t.”

And then he was gone and that empty feeling closed in on me. Suffocating me. Pressing against my skin until I was gasping for air, desperate to escape, but nothing could save me.

“Is everything okay?”

My eyes popped open to Cayden setting a drink down in front of Katie. He glanced between us. Katie stared at me, a strange look on her face.

“Was it the same day?” I asked her, ignoring Cayden. “The day I left. He…they…”

Katie glanced at Cayden. “Uh, yes, I think so.”

A dark look covered Cayden’s perfect features. “What? Why are you talking about this?” His question was directed at Katie.

“Tell me,” I said to him, not giving her the chance to respond. “If he did…then why didn’t he come after me?” The ache in my heart spread throughout my body.

He shook his head. “Look, Faye, that’s something you need to talk to Rhett about. I can’t—”

“Can’t what?” I stood up, the pain was too much too unbearable. The three drinks I’d had seemed to slam into me all at once.

I didn’t think about that time. That night. I pushed it away to recesses of my mind. I buried that dead thing a long time ago. It was the only way I could make it through life with some sort of semblance of normalcy. It was the only way I was able to get up every day since that night. Since Rhett ripped me apart. “Can’t give me a straight answer? You didn’t give me one the other day in the driveway.” My mind fluttered, racing. “You said that you didn’t think he would survive it this time. If I hurt him.” My heart raced. “What was that supposed to mean, Cayden?”

He opened his mouth and closed it. A pained look overwhelming his features.

“Did he ever tell you about the things he did to me? Did he tell you? Did he tell you how I poured my heart out to him? Did he tell you how he fucked her? Did he?” I sucked in a deep breath at the feeling of the tears pressing against the backs of my eyes. “He walked away from me.” I bit the words out, but I doubted they heard them. The bar was noisy and they came out just above a squeak.

“Faye.”

I spun on my heel at the sound of his voice. He was real. Rhett. He stood there before me. He still wore the same jeans and shirt he put on before we left his house. He was the same. But different. Different because I was seeing him through the lens I should have been looking through all along. I had been seeing what I wanted all week. I had been pretending. We both had.

“When did you leave Sarah?”

The question hung there in the stale bar air between us. People were talking, chatting, laughing, buzzing all around us, but I didn’t hear any of it. All I could see was Rhett. His green eyes. The dead thing in them. The past there between us.

“Not here, Faye.”

THIRTEEN