Owning Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 3)

“I swear to God, Jane,” I whispered, just barely holding back the fury inside of me. “Keep talking about Madison and my mother. Say one more word about either of them, and I’ll make sure you have an accident somewhere down the line. Maybe not now, maybe not even in a year, but it’ll happen. And it’ll be messy. It’ll hurt. You’ll suffer in ways you can’t even comprehend. Say something smart, Jane—I dare you. But if you know me at all, I’m betting you keep your fat, whore mouth shut.”

Jane’s lips parted, and I waited for her to say something stupid, anything at all that would give me a reason to carry out the sentence she so richly deserved. But then she shrugged, shouldering her Prada bag as she told me, “Just think it over, Preston. You can ruin both your lives, or you can both come away from this relatively unscathed. Maybe it’s a shit choice, as far as choices go, but at least he’s giving you one.”

“Go,” I said. It was the only word I could manage that wasn’t an expletive.

“You’re right,” she said. “I should. Mr. Harvey will be wanting an update.” She looked me up and down before adding, “We could have had it all, Preston. And maybe, if you play your cards right, we still can. I’ve always liked the thought of having a baby, you know? Stranger things have happened. Feel free to stare at my ass on my way out. Maybe you’ll be seeing a little more of it soon?”

I watched her walk away, fiddling with her cell phone as she stepped back through the doors to my office and out into the sunshine that seemed at odds with the anguish I was feeling now.

I spent the next ten minutes ripping everything apart. Everything I owned, everything I had built—I didn’t want it. All I wanted was her. And she was the one thing I could never have.

When my knuckles were raw and bloodied I sank to the floor in front of the stairway, my chest heaving as I fought for air between snarls and gasps. Everything was crumbling down around me, and the person I needed the most was the one whose heart I was going to have to break in just a matter of minutes.

Someone texted me. My hands shook as I reached across the floor and retrieved my phone from where it had struck the wall when I’d thrown it. Beyond the cracked screen, I read the last little message from Jane.

Carla went ahead and set up a few cameras on her way out. If you tell that sweet little stepsister of yours anything we talked about, your father will do all that he promised and more!

She was the most evil fucking bitch in the entire world. And I was the bastard who was going to do her bidding. What choice did I have? My father was going to ruin my life, and Jane had threatened to do something far darker than that. How did she know about my mother’s accident? What the hell was she trying to imply?

“Preston—are you okay?”

Maddy looked up at me from the heap of sheets she’d made on my bed. Her brown hair was a tangled mess around her face and her green eyes flashed with concern as soon as she lifted her head and saw me. She was wearing an undershirt of mine and no panties. She looked more stunning than I’d ever seen her before.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her as I committed her image to memory. This was how I wanted to remember her: her pretty face still bleary from sleep, completely unaware of what was about to come; that light dusting of freckles across her nose looking golden in the mid-morning light; her full, delicate lips chapped from where I’d roughly kissed them the night before.

“We need to talk, Maddy,” I said, willing my voice not to break.

She sat up on the bed and combed her hair with her fingers, trying to wrestle it into place as I looked down at her. Her gaze drifted to my knuckles. “Preston, you’re bleeding…”

“It’s over,” I said, trying to push the words out past the lump in my throat. I could feel everything inside of me screaming not to do this, to find some way to fuck Jane and my father over.

But there wasn’t a way that didn’t put Maddy directly in the line of fire. My father had connections, and with an almost laughably small amount of his fortune, he could make the rest of her life a living hell. I couldn’t do that to her. She didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t let her go down with the ship because of me.

“You quit?” she asked, a glimmer of hope flaring in her eyes. She smiled. “That’s… that’s great! I mean, we’ll have to figure a few things out now, but it’s what you wanted, right?”

I shook my head at her. She wasn’t getting it. I had to leave no doubt in her mind as to what would happen next. “No. I didn’t quit. It’s over. We’re over.”

Maddy stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. With every moment that passed, a new expression washed over her face. First there was dumb shock, then confusion, followed by a snort of denial, and then her lips quivered. That last one didn’t leave her, and I could see her emerald eyes filling with tears.

“You can’t be serious,” she whispered. I rubbed my face with my hands, trying to hide my own tears.

“You’re so stupid,” I said, turning my sob of despair into a rueful laugh. “You’re so fucking stupid, Maddy. Don’t you get it? This whole thing has been one big laugh at your expense! I mean really, how pathetic does a girl have to be to fuck her stepbrother?”

When I lowered my hands, Maddy was still looking at me. I wished she wouldn’t. It only made things that much harder.

“Why are you saying this?” she demanded, her voice cracking. “Why are you being so cruel to me?!”

“Because you deserve it!” I roared. I tried to imagine Jane’s face instead of hers and felt my neck and face turn red with anger. “Because you’re fucked up and desperate and everybody knows it but you! My father and your mother—they bet me a sad, pitiful girl like you would do anything to resolve her daddy issues. I didn’t believe them, but look at you. I did it. I won!”

Maddy launched herself up from the bed and crossed the room to me. Tears streamed down her face and she shook like a flower in a storm as she cupped my face in her delicate hands.

“Stop it, Preston. I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t do this to me. Not after everything…”

I seized her wrists and she gasped. I knew I was hurting her, but I had to or she’d never believe me.

“You stupid girl,” I whispered. I managed a sneer, though the disgust I spat was aimed at me and not at her. “You filthy slut. You’d do anything to have a man tell you you’re not worthless, wouldn’t you? You’re just like your mother—”

Finally, something inside Maddy snapped. She slapped me so hard across my face I tasted blood in my mout

h. Stars burst in front of my eyes and I held my breath, staring at the wall as she panted in front of me. At least now I had an excuse not to look at her.

“You’re a monster,” she said hoarsely. My soul fractured. In every word, I could feel her beautiful, perfect heart was breaking. “You’re a fucking monster. I hope you rot in hell.”

As she grabbed her clothes and hurried from my room, I realized she’d never know that I already was.

Chapter 15

It had been two weeks since I’d last seen him.

The agony had faded into a comfortable numbness that, at the very least, prevented me from crying all night. In fact, sleep came now more than ever. I found myself spending a lot of time unconscious, and for that I was never more grateful.

Every moment I spent in slumber was a moment I didn’t have to think about Preston Harvey and how he’d ruined my life. And when the dreams came—the ones where we were still together, where his lips crashed against mine so fiercely they stole my breath away—a bit of wine was all that was needed to chase them away again.

He’d tried to call me more than a few times since that morning in his room when he’d finally admitted he was the same soulless beast his father was. He’d texted, too, but I never read them. After the first three days I changed my number, and after that, he only made one other effort to contact me. He sent me an envelope in the mail with a check inside of me for one hundred thousand dollars.

I didn’t want to cash it. I wanted to pretend like I’d never need anything from Preston, or my family in general, ever again. But now that I was out of a job, the sad truth was that I’d have to find a new one, and in the meantime I needed a buffer to keep a roof over my head.

When I handed the check over to the teller, I secretly wondered how much of his winnings from my family’s sick little betting pool this constituted. I’d become so filled with rage that I’d nearly snapped the pen in half when she’d asked me to sign the back of it. I didn’t think that particular thought again.