Broken Trust: A Dark High School Romance(35)

I closed my eyes, searching for some inner peace. These spoiled, arrogant assholes, were so used to ramrodding their way into everything. Always getting their own way. I was kind of glad I’d made it a little hard for them. At least for a while.

“It’s time for you all to go now,” I said. “I’m tired. We have to be at school tomorrow, and I don’t need to keep up appearances until then.”

Jasper, Evan, and Dylan didn’t argue with me. They just hugged me tightly, and one by one filed out the door. I always knew Beck was going to be the most difficult to reason with. He was a fucking immovable rock.

“You can go too,” I said to him when we were alone in the living room.

He responded by dropping his ass on the couch.

“Beck…” I said warningly. “I’m grateful you saved me. I really am. But I don’t forgive you. We are not friends. You don’t get to spend the night in my home with me. I need the space. I need you to fuck off, just for a while.”

He shook his head, picking up the remote. “I let you out of my sight today, and you almost got raped. Gang fucking raped. Don’t push me on this, Butterfly. Not tonight.”

All of my fury and fear and pain rose up in me then. Tonight was my breaking point, and suddenly words were spewing from me with a ferocity that was almost scary.

“I hate you, Beck!” I snarled. “I fucking hate you! Don’t push you? You fucking pushed me right off a goddamn cliff. How could you betray me like that?”

I curved forward as if to protect myself, but I was really holding my chest so that my heart didn’t burst from it. Something that might have been impossible, but the pain I was experiencing made it feel like it could happen. A sob escaped.

This fight was a long time coming. I’d tried icing him out, but that hadn’t done anything. So now he could see my fury. My agony.

He was on his feet again, paying no attention to the television. “I told you, Butterfly,” his soft voice about killed me, “this is a game. If you don’t play the game, you lose. Losing is not something that I’m interested in.”

I shook my head violently, straightening. “No. No fucking games any longer. That’s just an excuse you all use to do fucked up shit. This was real life. This was a real choice that you made. You hurt my best friend. You hurt Dante.”

Beck’s face darkened, shadows crossing it and turning perfect, handsome lines into something that scared the ever loving shit out of me. “Trust me, Dante deserved everything that was coming to him.” He was very close now. I could have reached out and touched him. “Not to mention, it was Dante or you.”

I had not expected those words to come out of his mouth, and I gasped a few times as I tried to comprehend what he was saying … or more accurately, implying.

“What did Dante do? Why was it Dante or me? What does that even mean?”

Beck moved with that stealthy speed that was almost inhuman, and his spicy scent hit me. I forced myself not to step into him. Not to touch him.

“Our parents are not good people,” he said without much inflection. “You must already have seen that. They will stop at nothing to get what they want. To force our hand. If they knew that you meant more to any of us than just the fifth seat of Delta, they would use you against us.” His hands twisted in the hair at the base of my neck, pulling me to him. “They would hurt you, Butterfly. Break those perfect wings. Destroy your fighting spirit.”

I couldn’t breathe, my hands somehow against the hard planes of his chest as he continued. “I would take Dante a hundred times, and beat him a hundred times more to make sure it’s not you.”

A gasp choked from me, and I frantically tried to suck more oxygen in before I passed out. “No!” I cried, finding my anger again and shoving him as hard as I could.

He let me go, because there was no way I could have forced him, and I pressed myself against the wall. “I don’t believe you. You’re just telling me what I want to hear. You’re a fucking brilliant liar; you had me completely fooled.”

Beck scrubbed his hands through his hair, sending the thick dark strands into more disarray. “I don’t fucking lie, Butterfly. I’ve never lied to you.”

Lies of omission were still lies.

His face softened, and it was such a weird expression on Beck’s features that it had me pausing.

“You’re scared,” he said softly.

Fuck yes I was. My life was in shambles, and I’d lost the one safe anchor I thought I’d had.

“You don’t want to believe my words, because then you’ll be vulnerable again. You’re scared to trust us again because then we’ll have the power to hurt you again.”

My temper made itself well known. “Can you fucking blame me?” I was close to screaming. “You fucking assholes almost destroyed me the last time I played happy freaking families with you. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“We are a family,” Beck said, his calm fading. “You’re just delaying the inevitable. The five of us, that is meant to fucking be.”

Today we were both a storm, mingling together to form a hurricane that would destroy everything.

And leave no survivors.

“Please just go, Beck,” I said hoarsely. The moment his nickname left my lips, sadness crossed his face, and for a moment my resolve wavered. I’d called him Sebastian most of our time together. Something he had loved. But right now, I needed the distance. So Beck it was. “I’m not ready to forgive you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. You can come in here with your pretty excuses and perfect lines, but in the end, you could have warned me. You could have done things differently. There’s always a choice.”