Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(92)

“You cheated on me?” she asked numbly.

“I didn’t, since technically I wasn’t sleeping with you at the time. I was sleeping with Dare. I would have been cheating on her if I took you to bed.”

Nausea roiled her insides. Amazingly, he shook his head in disgust. Aimed toward her. She tried to reroute some at him, refusing to let his self-righteousness go further, but as usual, he said something next that rattled her scrambling brain.

“It’s like I don’t know who you’ve become. My Charlotte wouldn’t move in on her best friend’s family and try to take what was once Rae Lynn Downey’s. In a church. In front of God, Charlotte. You stood witness at her wedding!”

“She’s been gone for four years!” It wasn’t what she wanted to say, it just sort of popped out. She went with it. “Everyone has moved on. You’ve moved on,” she managed to get in. “Evan has moved on.”

“Has Lyon moved on?” Manufactured sorrow etched his features. “Forget all about his mom, did he? Did Evan forget about the wife he once pursued doggedly while ignoring your teenage affections?”

Right then, she hated herself for having ever shared that tidbit with him. He’d kept hold of it over the years, waiting for the right moment to hit her with it. He’d loaded a slingshot and aimed for her heart.

“He didn’t choose you then. Why now?” Russell continued. “Did he suddenly forget all about the woman he made a child with? Did he forget the first woman he fell in love with? Did he forget the woman who bore his son, Charlotte? No, I don’t think he has,” he answered himself.

“It’s not about forgetting Rae.” She grappled on to the statement like a lifeline. She was onto something. A point. The truth. Russell had muddied the truth since he’d arrived, but she finally had something concrete to latch on to.

“It’s not about forgetting her,” he agreed.

Agreed. Which muddied her mind after all.

“Forgetting her is impossible, Charlotte. No one can forget a woman as vivacious and alive as Rae Lynn. And a man does not forget the love of his life for someone… else.”

In his own special way, he reminded Charlie she was not as vivacious, or as alive as Rae—even in her death. He solidified what she secretly knew he’d always believed. Charlie was forgettable. And as much as she wanted to rail against it, this, too, sounded true.

Her sister had forgotten her. Her father had forgotten her. And Russell, after he’d met Darian, had most definitely forgotten her.

How long until Evan did the same?

The hold she had on her earlier point slipped. So did her shoulders.

“You’re seeing what you want to see. You want Evan, and he’s desperate to have a woman in his life again. He’s using you, Charlotte.” Russell flicked a hand at her body. “Not your fault, darling, you are only using your best assets.”

“Get out,” she warned, her voice low. A quake rattled her bones, but she refused to break down in front of him. She could crumble inside. In peace. Away from his poison-tipped barbs.

“Not your fault,” he repeated. “No man, no matter who he is, can resist those hips.”

Her arm moved on its own, pulling back to land a sharp slap across Russell’s face. Eyes angry and teeth bared, he snatched up her wrist before she made contact.

“Get out!” she screeched.

He walked into her, shoving her back several feet, bumping her into the porch swing. Before she could become slightly afraid of the man who was a decade older than her, a blur moved behind him.

The blur grabbed him up by the scruff of his golf shirt.

“Son of a bitch!” she heard Evan shout loud and clear. They tumbled down the stairs as she blinked them into focus. He had Russell flat on his back in a manner of seconds. Russell, several inches taller and out-weighing him in the beer-belly department, tried to get up but Evan clasped his shirt again and delivered a hard right across his jaw.

Russell, never a fighter—no need to be when he could wield his tongue like a sharpened sword—held up his hands in front of his face to deflect another blow.

“Evan! Stop! My family!” he begged.

Evan ignored his pleas and pummeled him again. Another right busted open his lip. Another landing on his nose. One to the eye. Charlie covered her mouth with her hands, frozen in a combination of fear and awe.

“You ever touch her again, Hartman, I will put you in the hospital,” Evan promised, his hands wrenched in Russell’s collar, biceps flexing as he raised Russell’s face to his own. “Get me?”

“Let me go!” Russell scrambled again.

Evan tightened his hold. “Say you get me,” he said, his voice a low, dark rumble.

“I get you! I get you!” Russell shouted.

Unfortunately, right at the moment Evan loosened his hold on Russell, Darian rounded the side of the house and shrieked, her hands clutching a white purse hooked on one narrow shoulder. “Russy!”

Distracted, Evan looked up and Russell took a cheap shot, punching him square in the face. Charlie propelled down the stairs toward them as Evan rolled to the side and wiped blood from his nose.

“I’m going to kill him,” Evan growled, his eyes furious and unfocused as he pushed himself up.

Charlie hung on to Evan’s bicep as he stood, almost losing her balance. “Russell! Get the hell out of here,” she shouted. “And take that bitch with you!”