God, did I know how he worked. That charm.
That evil.
The guy had some kind of crazy darkness inside him, but what was awful was, clearly it was reserved mostly for me. Kit had been a victim in all this, another one of his cruel games to get to me. He hadn’t said this.
It’d just been obvious.
“You forgive me?” Kit asked, so much hope in her eyes, but I couldn’t in good faith accept her apology. I couldn’t because that meant she did something wrong.
And I definitely couldn’t without giving my own first.
I did as words spilled out of my mouth like a raging river, a current of the chaos and evil that was Jaxen Ambrose. I told Kit everything. How he was the one I’d met at the club that night, how he’d told me his name was Brett only for me to later find out he was my stepbrother. I told her how kind he’d been to me.
Until he wasn’t.
I’d told her everything and ended with how he’d promised I’d come back to him. How he’d called both my mom and me a whore when the only person I’d ever slept with was him in my whole life. Kit sat awed, a fair amount of disgust on her face the whole time. At one point, I actually thought she’d be sick.
That had been the part where I walked in on them together.
“And I slept with him?” Complete dread overtook her face, large breaths from her lips. “Oh my God.”
I’d grabbed her hands then. She really hadn’t known, and I had understood that. I really did, but was sick over this all myself. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Well, you should be. Fuck.” She tugged her hands into her lap, staring at the beach. “He’s a psychopath.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated about an asshole?”she asked, head tilted. “Do your parents know about this?”
“No, and that’s why it’s so complicated.”
Obviously, none of this made sense to my friend. I gnawed my lip. “My dad… both my parents just want us to get along. Jaxen and my dad spe
cifically have a really rough history, and though I don’t know the details, I do know that Rick Fairchild raised me when he had a biological son back in the Midwest.”
She frowned. “You think all this… you and him is about that?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I just know my dad wants this to work. He… craves it almost. I just don’t want to disappoint him, Kit. This whole thing would crush him.”
“Yeah, which is why you need to tell him.” She hugged her arms. “He’d want to know about this.”
“But what if Jaxen does really want to get to know him?” My greatest fear, that maybe he did have issues with my adoptive father but was here to legitimately try and fix them. “I can’t be the reason my dad doesn’t get to reconnect with his son.”
“You wouldn’t be the reason. Babe, that dickwad dug his own grave with what he did and continues to do to you. Don’t you see that? You have to tell your—”
“I said I can’t be the reason!”
Her eyes twitched wide, the clanking of coffee cups and various conversations filling the air between us.
I heard my heart in my head after that, felt it and was visibly shaking by the time my friend took my hands. She said nothing, of course, waiting. She knew a lot of my issues, God love her.
Which was why she didn’t say anything.
She knew what I felt, the guilt I had. We’d only been friends for a few years, but she was my ride or die. She knew stuff.