Bad Seed

“Your brother won’t see it that way if he comes looking for me,” I said.

She snickered and shook her head as she reached for her tank top. She pulled it back over her head, her movements telling of the anger she felt at the situation. I was angry, too. I wanted her. I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any woman in my life, and I couldn’t have her. Shouldn’t have her. I backed up from the towel as she pulled herself up, picking the fabric up from the ground before snatching the bottle of wine.

“Believe it or not, Grant, I can take care of myself.”

I watched her take another long pull from the wine bottle before she bent down to grab her phone.

“Are you driving?” I asked.

“Why the hell do you care?”

“Because you’re Hollis’ sister and I don’t want anything happening to you.”

That was why I’d fucking come to town in the first damn place.

“Really?” Theresa asked as she spun around. “Is that why you care? That’s the only reason? Because I’m Hollis’ sister?”

Her eyes were heated, heavy with anger as her chest heaved. She was gripping everything tightly in her hands, white-knuckling them and threatening to shatter the glass bottle in her palm. I shoved my hands into my pockets, forcing myself not to reach out for her and pull her into me, press my lips to hers, strip her of the measly fabric that clung to her body and cover her in a sweat-drenched tirade of wolfish desire.

But instead, I bit down on my tongue to keep from answering.

Her look turned from anger to sadness and it nearly broke me.

She turned away from me, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I reached out and grabbed her arm. I spun her around back into my arms, and she squealed, her body pressing heavily against mine. She looked up at me from underneath those long eyelashes, and I felt my heart skip a beat.

What the hell had this woman done to me?”

“I’m worried about you,” I said. “That’s all.”

And as quickly as it had switched the first time, her innocent doe eyes narrowed to slits as she pushed me away.

“I’m a big girl, and I can take care of myself. I don’t need you, or my father, or Hollis trying to map out and manipulate my every move,” she said.

“This isn’t about trying to control you, Theresa.”

“It is. It’s always been about that. My father expected something of me and did whatever he could to get it. He expected his daughter to go to school, get a business degree, and come work for him. And that was what I did because I wasn’t given any other choice. He threw you out of the house because he thought you were a distraction, right?”

I clenched down onto my teeth to keep from confirming her question.

“Right? My father threw you out because he thought we were fooling around and that it would somehow ruin my chances of getting into college, didn’t he? And it’s insane, you know that? That my father had blatantly manipulated the situation because he thought he knew what was best for me.”

Tears welled in her eyes, and I felt anger bubbling in my gut.

“And Hollis is no damn better. Telling me who I should and shouldn’t date. Wanting me to move in with him because he thinks I’m not capable of taking care of myself. I’m twenty-six goddamn years old!” she railed.

I bit down onto the inside of my cheek to keep from telling her that her own actions were what made Hollis feel that way. That if she hadn’t wasted eight years of her life on a verbally abusive and controlling asshole, Hollis wouldn’t think she needed saving. None of us would.

“But you?” she asked with a harsh laugh. “You, the man with the tattoos and the terrible home life and the business that’s all your own. You, who got everything you have now by breaking the rules and living life by your own means and on your own dime. You come out here and tell me I shouldn’t be out here exploring the reckless abandon I feel so deeply in my body waiting to burst out and claim a life I never got a chance to lead. And you try to frame it in the context of you giving a shit about me? If you cared so much, why did you stay away so long?”

Tears began streaming down her cheeks. Her words were like a punch to my chest. I did give a shit about her, more than she knew. I saw a strong woman struggling in front of my eyes, and I wanted to make it better. I thought that if I’d come into town and helped her get away from Ike that, somehow, it would make things better.

But it had made things worse. And I realized now that she felt I’d abandoned her. The thought of it nearly took my breath away.

“Don’t do it,” Theresa said. “Not you. I can’t—I can’t handle it from you. I’m used to it from everyone else. But not you, Grant.”

I watched her turn on her heels as she began to walk across the clearing. I resisted the monumental urge to run after her. I’d been looking at this entire process through a very biased lens. I thought Ike was the issue. I thought Ike was the reason Theresa had retreated into this pathetic shell of an existence. But all of this had started long before Ike came along. Her formative years that were supposed to be spent struggling to find a balance between what was expected of her and what she wanted from herself were instead used by others to manipulate her into what they felt she needed to be.

And in some ways, I had been no different.