Fractured (Deep In Your Veins, #5)(60)

“I want to understand what makes you think you’re not good for people.” That dumb idea had to have come from somewhere.

His hands resumed drying me off. “There was a girl I dated in high school. Back then, I was thinking with my dick more than anything else, so I didn’t see that she was trying to lead me around by it. Kylie didn’t want me to enlist, but I’d made up my mind. She said she’d wait for me. She wrote to me a lot while I was away, always included all kinds of soppy declarations. When I got back, it was to find that she’d moved in with another guy.”

I gaped. “She was living with someone else?”

“In the letters, she hadn’t given me even a hint of this. She’d been seeing him since a month after I left. She hadn’t told me, because she’d wanted to enjoy my shock; she’d wanted to punish me for leaving her.”

I rubbed his chest. “Butch, that wasn’t your fault or—”

“This is just the background, baby. That wasn’t one of the relationships I was talking about.” He sighed. “I didn’t like that she’d played me or that she’d cheated, but after being in a f*cking war zone…the whole thing just seemed trivial. And considering she was a little wacked, I was glad to see the back of her. So instead of losing my shit, I walked away. I wasn’t interested in a girl who played games. But Kylie didn’t like that.”

I’d bet she didn’t.

“Maybe she’d expected me to fight for her or something. I know her parents were divorced and they spent most of her life in and out of court, fighting for custody and changes to the court agreement. Maybe that had messed her up. All I know is, she then decided to make my life hell.”

“I hate her already.” I kissed his chest. “Tell me the rest.”

“Any time I was with a girl for more than a night, Kylie would try to chase them away. Most of the time, it worked. If it didn’t, Kylie would step up her game.”

Following him into the bedroom, I asked, “Chase them away how?”

Dropping his towel, he pulled on a pair of pants. “She’d start with telling them lies about me; she’d say things like I was a drug addict or a serial cheater. Other times she’d claim I was actually her boyfriend, and even the father of her unborn—and of course fictional—child.”

“Oh. My. God.” I slipped on a vest and shorts as I added, “What a total bitch.”

“It didn’t even matter to her that she was still living with that guy, who either didn’t know what she was doing or just didn’t care. It didn’t matter that she was also sleeping with other guys. No, she’d decided my life was gonna be hell because I left her.”

“Sounds like this wasn’t about you at all. You said her parents were divorced, so one of them must have left home. That had to have hurt. Then they’d spent all those years fighting over her. Maybe she liked that kind of attention and thought that was what love was. But when you left her just like one of her parents did, you didn’t fight for her. I mean, she told lies about you—I’ll bet that was one of the court tactics her parents used.”

He shrugged. “Only Kylie knows why she behaved that way.”

“You said she stepped up her game if the lies didn’t work. What did she do to the girls?”

“Sometimes she’d spread false rumours about them to piss them off. Other times she’d turn up at their houses with bruises and claim I hurt her, trying to scare them.”

Grimacing, I said, “That’s…there aren’t words.”

“Sooner or later, even the ones who were wise to her games would leave because they’d had enough of her shit and just wanted it all to end.” And he didn’t sound in the least bit judgemental. “One girl, Tori, she was different. She saw right through Kylie, she said she knew it wasn’t my fault and she’d stick by me and make Kylie realise she was wasting her time.”

This was obviously one of the relationships he’d mentioned. “Kylie didn’t stop with her games, did she?”

He shook his head. “I tried to protect Tori from her as best I could; tried to shield her from Kylie’s shit—even got the police involved, which didn’t help because Kylie’s dad was a cop; they tend to stick together. I went to her parents, told them what was happening. They were no help. They coddled her. No one could convince them that their only child was anything but perfect. It was hard, and it sucked. But Tori swore she wasn’t going anywhere; that she wouldn’t let Kylie drive her away.”

“But she left,” I said softly.

“She said she would have stayed if I’d just opened up to her more; if I paid her more attention and—”

“Bullshit,” I snapped. “She was blaming you for her leaving, because she didn’t want to lose face and admit she couldn’t take it.”

He didn’t seem convinced of that. “After my second deployment, I moved to the next town over. I met someone. It got serious. All was good. Helena wanted me to put a ring on her finger. I wasn’t ready for that, but I took her to meet my parents.”

“Kylie saw you.”

He nodded and then pulled on a T-shirt. “She flipped out. Totally lost it. It wasn’t jealousy or a show of possessiveness. She didn’t want me. She just didn’t want me to be happy.”