Turned out, being drunk on the hard stuff was pretty damn gross.
Round two of the self-pity party started playing in his head. He wished he didn’t have a front row ticket. “This was probably all about your family,” he slurred. Could she even understand him? He barely understood himself. “Everything you do is to piss off your family- the tattoos, the swearing, the job, the- all of it. You’re so damn proud of being the black sheep of the family. You get a rise out of it because you’re the one who actually needs all the attention.”
Bella’s very pissed off face swam into view. His cock pulsed. There was definitely something wrong with him. The thing should have been deflated from all that whiskey, not turned on by the fiery woman in front of him. She shook her head so hard that the dark strands of her hair flew out wildly all over the place.
“You think I- that I- did this so I could tell my family and rub it in their faces?”
Her tone made him want to feel ashamed of himself, but he couldn’t stop there. He couldn’t help himself. He was like a train, careening off the rails, powerless to keep himself from ending in disaster. Maybe if he hadn’t been so damn wounded earlier and so drunk after, he could have shut his mouth and thought rationally.
“You all have an agenda. All the Berns do. You weren’t taught to treat people like people. Guys are just things to you. Things to use for a better life and an easy ride. Things to toy with and to wound and to manipulate at will.”
“Newsflash,” Bella hissed. “I’m not my sisters or my parents. Never have been, never will.” She glared at him, the anger in her eyes biting into his insides, which were twisted in a painful knot. “There is something seriously wrong with you if you can’t tell the difference between my sister, a con artist if there ever was one, and me, someone who just wanted to help.”
“You wanted to help by getting me drunk and fucking me?”
“Last time I checked, no one forced that whiskey down your throat and I sure as hell didn’t tie you up and force myself on you. We had sex. It was good. At least, I thought it was good. I’m an adult. I was going to throw some clothes on, maybe go for a swim, come back here, order some room service, watch some TV, maybe do the whole boning thing all over again because it was pretty amazing, wake up in the morning, and tell you that I hoped everything worked out for you. I thought we were both going to move on and just-use this as a way to move forward. As a good memory. Whatever. I thought we were both capable of being mature here and realizing that sex can just be- a- a good time. It doesn’t have to be complicated or come with strings or a whole bunch of meanings. I guess I was wrong.”
“Yeah, well, I guess so. You know what?” Rhett’s fingers tightened on the sheets. He’d never had casual sex in his life. He didn’t do that, dabble in it. His mother would have been so ashamed of him to find out he treated a woman like that, like it meant nothing. He’d been raised to think that it should mean something when it happened. That maybe if it wasn’t in a relationship, at least there was the hope of it getting there. He did not have revenge sex, hate sex, drunk sex, meaningless sex, casual sex. Ever. Period.
Maybe that’s why he was at a complete loss. Maybe he was just too damn drunk. Maybe there was something wrong with him in the worst way. No, no maybe about it. There was something wrong with him. He’d just been wounded terribly by a woman he thought he loved and had been with for seven years. She was what was wrong with him. And he’d just got hammered and slept with her sister like two minutes after the fact.
He was sorry alright.
For all of it. All his life he’d been a gentleman. He never should have done any of it. They were too drunk. She was his ex’s sister. He’d literally just walked out of his wedding hours before. The list went on and on…
It was just so much easier to do the right thing and not get into all this trouble in the first place.
When he opened his eyes, there was a finger wagging in his face. Bella’s eyes burned with rage right behind it. “You’re a prick, you know that?” She stomped off and he tracked her movements, towards the bathroom, the best he could. She was almost there when she turned and hurled one more parting shot over her shoulder. “If you have to puke again, use the garbage can or something. Oh, and one more thing. My sister was right, you know. You really do have a small dick.”