Beautiful Brute (Court University 3)

I drowned in it, lost in this fucking shit just as much as my parents. I was tired of the weight of it.

I was just so tired.

“We all messed up, Jaxen,” Mom said, Mama taking her hand behind her. “And we’re not asking for your forgiveness. We don’t expect it. We just…” She rubbed my back. “We don’t want you to hurt anymore. Suffer over lies or half-truths. We don’t want you to hurt yourself or others for things we all had a part in.”

My eyes fell shut, knowing exactly where she was going with that. She thought I’d hurt others, more specifically, Cleo, and she didn’t have to say it.

That’s how they all felt.

They thought I’d hurt Cleo intentionally, and I shoved my hands into my hair.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt Cleo, Mom,” I said, lacing my fingers behind my neck. “I’d never want to hurt her.”

They studied me as I braced my arms, a million eyes on me in that moment. I think the heaviest were on myself. I didn’t want to hurt my stepsister, not on purpose and never again.

I wet my lips. “I’m in love with her.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Cleo

I took out the trash pretty late that night, but it took me t

hat long just to get the energy. I’d decided to come home for the weekend after midterms, pretty common at Bay Cove. The professors tended to schedule examinations early in the week, so Fridays, students basically blew off if the professors didn’t flat out cancel classes anyway. It became customary for me to come home and Mom catered a big meal for us to eat. Dad typically was in town too, but he’d left early this morning.

He hadn’t said exactly where he was going, but that it’d been important. I figured it must have been since he’d skipped out on us today. It’d been pretty out of the blue, but work did tend to take him away sometimes. It happened.

In any sense, I wasn’t angry. Mom had made sure to be around, and we stuffed our faces while watching old episodes of Friends. We did that for hours before she let me know she was zapped and wanted to go to bed. She’d kissed me goodnight, then I decided to take the trash out before heading up to bed myself.

That’s when I saw him.

Lawson Richards strolled the street in a pair of sweatpants and university hoodie, a border collie guided by a leash in his hands. He must have come home too for the weekend, his dog well-mannered as it didn’t tug at the lead. I’d seen the pair of them before. After all, Lawson and I lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same schools growing up.

The guy had just never left me for dead before.

That was outside of the strike against him for attempting to put his hands on me without my consent.

The pair passing my house, I immediately stiffened, but since I was basically on the sidewalk Lawson saw me easily upon striding past.

One would have thought he’d seen a ghost.

He stiffened too, tugging back his collie who’d decided to go on the walk without him. I didn’t think he’d actually say anything to me. After all, he had no right at all.

But then, he guided his dog in my direction.

“Cleo. Hey,” he said, wrapping the dog’s leash around his big fist. He wrestled with it. “You’re home too.”

Not really wanting to do this, I topped the trash can with the lid. I started to open the gate to go back inside, but he waved a hand.

“Cleo…” he started, but what else did he have to say? The guy was a complete jerk, and I couldn’t believe I’d idolized him the way I had. I had a tendency of making a lot of piss-poor mistakes lately. “Come on. Can I just…”

“Can you what?” I turned, bracing my arms. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”

As it turned out, it wasn’t much. He rubbed his mouth. “I guess I just want to apologize.”

Physically laughing in the open air at this point, I glared. “You already did that. Your text. Remember?”

And boy, did I remember it well. It came the next morning to check and see if I was okay. The only reason I believed he was even standing here apologizing now was because he happened to see me.