Beautiful Brute (Court University 3)

But then she hadn’t come up.

That’s what my heart felt like now, like I couldn’t breathe, and though I physically didn’t get that, I did want to talk to her. I just… I wet my lips. “Cleo. Is she—”

“She is.” Dad made himself bigger now, confirming my fear. She’d told him, probably everything, but that didn’t mean he knew it all.

My jaw shifted. “Look. I don’t know what she said,” I started, a loss for words. I scrubbed my hair again. “Can I just talk to her please? There was a misunderstanding.”

That sounded about right, a misunderstanding.

My father merely allowed those words to hang in the air and I noticed something. Something pretty big.

He didn’t move. Not a goddamn inch.

If anything, he worked himself completely out of the door, closing it behind him. He cuffed his sleeves again, and I felt that heartbeat in my head once more. I really shouldn’t care about that, his judgment. But for some reason when it came to this? He sighed. “Jax, it’s one thing to be upset with me. It’s one thing to pull that kind of shit with me.”

Never in my life had I ever heard this man use such language. He was always perfect, sickeningly perfect.

Always.

Rick Fairchild never broke his holier-than-thou persona, a politician through and through. He kept his nose clean. No, he never used such words.

But he had on me, staring at me in this empty hallway. Eventually, in our silence, we weren’t alone, and the couple that passed, he gave them his perfect signature smile. They went into their room, and no sooner had their door clicked closed than he was pulling his hand down his face.

“Do you hate me that much?” he asked, the words croaking in this throat. “That much to do something so cruel and…” His throat bobbed. “So vile to her?”

He swung his gaze in my direction, pinning me down. I didn’t know what all this shit was about. But at the end of the day, what happened was a goddamn joke.

“I told you it was a misunderstanding,” I said, my voice incredibly even. I wouldn’t give this dude any of my emotion. Never. “And I don’t know what she said to you, but it really all was just a joke. Teasing between me and her.”

And nothing to get this upset about. If anything, she should be apologizing to me. She was the one who jumped into the water and didn’t know how to swim.

And had I not gotten to her…

Working my hands, I let those thoughts fall. I had gotten to her. I had saved her so no harm done.

Rick obviously didn’t feel that way. If anything, what I said made him only looked more and more pissed. He scrubbed into his hair too. As I just had and I wondered if that’d been how I looked not a second ago. I was well aware how much I looked liked this guy.

And how I hated him for it.

I did hate him, hated him so much I couldn’t see straight most days, but me being here and checking on Cleo had nothing to do with that. It wasn’t about him. Sometimes, just once? It was about me, and I didn’t know why I was still out here even talking to this guy.

I started to shoulder around him, but he grabbed me, not hard but he did stop me. He put his hand right on my shoulder.

“You won’t go in there, Jax,” he said. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you.”

I shouldered from under his hand. This guy wouldn’t touch me. “Just let me fucking talk to her. Apologize? It’s the least you can do.”

“The least I could do.” A nod as he parroted. His eyes flicked in my direction. “And what you call teasing was damaging, son. Do you know anything about your stepsister? This family?”

More than I wanted to, but apparently not enough when he sighed. He made it sound like it was out there to find, though. That it could have been if I’d looked.

I must have missed something.

“Cleo,” he started. “Cleo and her mother dealt with some heavy stuff before I came around. Maggie had a son before we got married. Cleo had a brother. His name was Nathan.”

Frowning, I didn’t understand. I’d never heard about another kid, never seen him.

But then he’d said… had?