Flawed (Ethan Frost 4)

“I have a key and a standing invitation. I wouldn’t exactly call that breaking in.”

“You don’t have permission from me.”

“I don’t need permission from you. This isn’t your house.”

“Maybe not, but I’m the only one living here right now. A courtesy call might have been nice.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath on that,” she mutters as she pours water into the pot.

“Courtesy not your thing?”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant, but now that you mention it…It’s hard to be courteous when I didn’t know you were even here, sponging off your sister.” She raises her voice to be heard above the coffee grinder. “Then again, you’re good at that, aren’t you?”

It’s a direct hit, and the hint of maliciousness in her smile tells me she knows it. The old familiar guilt tightens my stomach but I try not to let it show on my face. If the last year has taught me anything about Tori, it’s that drawing blood only encourages her. Only has her digging in for the fight.

“That seems a little like the pot calling the kettle black,” I finally answer when I can trust myself not to tell her to fuck off. “Considering I don’t see a rent check in your hand, princess.”

“Like there’s one in yours?” she asks as she flips the coffeepot on.

“I pay rent every month.” I don’t tell her that I end up putting the money into an account for the baby since Chloe refuses to take it.

“Do you?” She fake-applauds. “Now, see, that’s the joy of never having forced Chloe to prostitute herself. I don’t feel the need to throw blood money at her every time I turn around to try to make up for it.”

This time it’s my teeth that nearly crack as I clench them as hard as I can. She’s not wrong—I carry the guilt for my part in what happened to Chloe every day of my life—and so much of what I do is because I’m trying to earn her forgiveness. Not the money I pay in rent, because that’s only fair, but the rest?

Giving this invention to Ethan at a fraction of the price I could have gotten if I’d kept it in the family company.

Moving to San Diego so I can be close to my sister and her family.

Taking on more of the day-to-day responsibility in the company while Ethan is away, when all I really want to be doing is hiding in my workshop and thinking up new shit.

Everything I’m doing, I’m doing in an effort to make up to Chloe for what happened to her all those years ago. To make up for what my parents and I did to her all those years ago.

It’s not enough. It will never be enough. But it’s all I can do at this point, and the way Tori keeps throwing the past in my face is really beginning to piss me off. Chloe can take all the potshots she wants at me—she’s earned every single one of them. But Tori hasn’t and I’m getting damn sick of pulling my punches with her, getting sick of backing off just because she’s Chloe’s best friend.

I don’t answer her, largely because I don’t trust myself. Instead I concentrate on draining my coffee cup and keeping my mouth shut. Chloe will be less than impressed if I verbally savage her best friend, especially today.

But Tori doesn’t get the hint. Instead, she takes my silence for weakness and goes on the attack. Again. “Seriously, Miles, don’t you ever feel like a whore? Giving up your dignity and self-respect, giving up your sister, all for money?”

My restraint snaps like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far. I’ve been trying to be nice, but if she wants me to be an asshole, I can be an asshole. “They say it takes a whore to know one, Tori, so why don’t you tell me? Or isn’t that you, sucking dick on the home page of every major entertainment and news site in the Western world?”

She gapes at me then, eyes wide and mouth open, and I smirk as I reach past her to pick up the half carafe of coffee that she brewed just to spite me.

“Nope, it’s definitely you,” I say as I very deliberately empty the whole thing into my cup. “I recognize the look. Now get the hell out of my house.”

Chapter 7

Tori

Miles’s words resonate in my head as he picks up his coffee and slips silently past me into the hall. Over and over, I hear the word whore drop from his lips. Over and over, I hear the condescension and the derision in his voice as he looks me over, as he comments on me sucking dick. Like he and the rest of the world suddenly have a right to voice an opinion on what I do behind closed doors.

I know the videotape supposedly gave him that right, gave my father that right—gave everyone in the fucking world that right, apparently—but it still sucks. Still makes me feel like I want to scream and like I want to curl up into a tiny ball all at the same time.

For long seconds it’s all I can think about, the word whore all I can hear, again and again and again. I’ve been working so hard to get my life on the right track, working so hard to be the person I want to be. And now because of one jerk’s careless actions, I’m right back where I started all those weeks ago. Or worse, really, because now I’m also an Internet joke. One who is somehow supposed to find a job when half the country has seen what I look like having sex.

If I had anywhere else to go, I would do it. If there was anyplace else I could be, I would pick up my bag and get as far away from here as I possibly could. But I have nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, and as that knowledge sinks in, the rest of Miles’s words finally register.

As they do, panic skitters through me and I take off after him at a run. He can’t kick me out. He just can’t.