“She was beaten so badly, Aiden. Are you going to have Sienna beaten, too?”
“What? No. Fuck no. I didn’t do that, Carly.”
“You didn’t order that? Like you did with Seth?”
Her forehead crinkles and she looks at me assessingly.
“I did not do that. Not to a woman. Fuck no. I did that with Seth because he was a sick freak who was trying to sniff around even after getting arrested, which meant it’d take something extreme to wake his shit up. I did not fuckin’ order a woman to get the shit kicked out of her.”
Her lips part. She’s searching my face.
“She has debts. Loan sharks. Jude dug and she’s a pill popper. Her parents cut her off a few years ago because she flunked out of school. She was blackmailing me, threatening to go to the press about my mother’s DUI unless I paid off her loanshark. She’s the one who stole my phone. She’s doin’ whatever she can do to fuck me over. But, the loanshark beat the shit out of her; nothing to do with me.”
“Your Mom’s arrest was on that gossip news TV show a little while ago. The video showed her slapping the cop across the face. Bella must have gone to the press,” Carly whispers.
I roll my eyes. “Great.”
She starts to cry.
“Carly, baby…”
“I thought you had her beaten up. I couldn’t… I couldn’t wrap my mind around being with you if you could do that and I…” she wipes at her eyes. Her shoulders are shaking.
My fucking gut is in knots.
“Shhh, I didn’t. Swear I didn’t.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
I lift her up into my arms like a bride and put my lips to her soft ones. “I didn’t.”
“Okay.” She puts her head on my shoulder.
I slip in and slide the door shut, then carry her to my bed. My room is spotless. My bedding has been changed. There are royal blue satin sheets on it now and a bouquet of flowers on my dresser in a vase. She’s cleaned the apartment, done all my laundry. She’s making this place feel like a home.
Fuck, I’m such a fucking asshole.
I hold her close as she cries for a few minutes, her head on my chest, my fingers in her hair.
She lifts her head and looks at me. “Do you need to call your family?”
“In a minute,” I say.
I hold her close and kiss the top of her head.
That fucking bitch. That Bella did this to her, to us, it makes my blood boil.
Carly lifts her head up. Her eyes are rimmed with red and her nose is pink. She’s so fucking pretty. I tuck her hair behind her ear.
“How’d it go with Babylon? She asks.
I smile a little. “It went really amazing, baby.”
“Yay,” she says softly and snuggles into me.
“I should go see what’s what with my mother,” I grumble.
“Okay,” she whispers.