CHAPTER TWELVE
Sinner
I SHOULDN’T HAVE run out of there, but I was so pissed about what she told me and I didn’t think I could stay around her. The worst part about it all was that she was almost killed after ten days because Sean was a cop. That had to have been weighing on her over the years, but she never said anything because she didn’t want to hurt Sean. To think that she might not have gone through all that if only she wasn’t the sister of a cop.
I drove into to town and headed for her brother’s house. He was the only one I wanted to see right now and it wasn’t going to be a friendly visit. After hearing all that she went through, I couldn’t believe how he treated her. He had no idea the damage he was doing to her. I was about to let him know.
I honked my horn as I pulled in the drive, wanting to pull the fucker outside. As expected, he walked outside and waited for me to get out of the truck.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
I slammed the truck door and stalked toward him. “I’m here because you and I need to have a little chat.”
“I don’t have shit to say to you.”
I grabbed him by the shirt before he could make a move, but he countered with a punch to my kidneys. I took it and relished the pain. I needed it right now to wipe away the thoughts swirling through my brain. He landed punch after punch and I didn’t move. I wasn’t ready yet.
“What’s going on?” Lillian screeched as she walked out of the house. “Sean, stop! He’s not even fighting you.”
Sean pulled back and glared at me. “Get the fuck off my property.”
I breathed through the pain and shook my head. “Not until we talk about Cara.”
“What? You want to tell me how much you love fucking with her head? Because that’s all you’re doing. I know your reputation and there’s no way you’ll ever convince me that you’re more than a fucking womanizer.”
“Sean!” Lillian gasped and covered her mouth.
He turned and walked away and thats when I let my bomb drop.
“Has she ever told you what happened to her that day?”
Sean stopped and turned to look at me. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he needed to know. This was something that ate at him.
“She never told anyone. It’s not even in the police report,” he croaked.
“Well, she told me tonight, and let me tell you, that’s shit that you don’t want in your head. What I want to know is why you treat her the way you do?”
“I take care of her. That’s a hell of a lot more than you do for her,” he snarled.
“You treat her like she’s broken.”
“She is fucking broken! You didn’t see her for the three years after she was found. You didn’t have to be there for all her freak outs. You didn’t have to see her terrified of her own shadow, not being able to leave her bedroom because she could swear that fucker was coming back to get her. You weren’t there last weekend when she sat in a closet holding a knife as she pissed all over the floor because she was so out of it, she didn’t even realize she went.”
“And you just love to throw that in her face, right?”
“I wasn’t throwing it in her face. I was trying to make her see that you weren’t good for her.”
“Yeah, well all you did was make her feel like a broken piece of shit that isn’t worth anyone’s time. She thinks she’s a nuisance. You did that to her,” I pointed at him accusingly.
“No-”
“Yes!” I shouted. “You may not think you did, but every time you rub her face in the fact that she struggles to do normal things, you make her feel less and less worthy of even being on this earth! You did that to her!”
I was shouting at him and I just couldn’t stop my tirade. I was so pissed that he couldn’t see how much he was hurting his sister, a woman that I had come to care so much about in just a short amount of time.
“All the people in her life think that she can’t handle shit. Instead of trying to find ways to help her, you tell her she isn’t strong enough. You could have been forcing her out of the house and helping her to be comfortable again, but you didn’t and now she can’t even sit in a fucking restaurant and eat because she developed a social anxiety disorder.”
His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He didn’t know. I huffed out a laugh and ran a hand over my face.
“Have you even bothered to try to understand your sister or talk to her about what happened?”
“She didn’t want to.”
“Of course she didn’t want to. You have to make her comfortable enough that she feels you won’t judge her. Did you ever try that? Did you ever fucking try to get to the root of the problem? She feels like she’s not fucking worth it! It’s so fucking clear and no one sees it.”
Lillian was standing on the grass with her hand over her mouth and tears running down her face. I blew out a breath and walked back to my truck. Enough was enough. Sean knew now and hopefully he did something about it before Cara no longer wanted him in her life. I slammed the door to my truck and drove back to Cara’s house. I had no doubt that I had just fucked with her head when I left, but I was about to make sure she knew exactly what I felt.
When I pulled in her driveway, there wasn’t a single light on in the house. I got out and banged on her door.
“Cara, it’s Mark. Let me in.”
After a few seconds, the door opened and Cara stood in front of me with red rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks. I pulled her into me and held her as she cried into my chest. I felt like such an asshole for leaving her like that.
“I’m sorry, Cara. I was pissed and I needed to leave. I didn’t want to scare you.”
“I thought-”
“I know what you thought and I’m sorry. I had to go have a talk with your brother.”
She pulled back suddenly and stared at me with an open mouth.
“You did what?”
“I needed to. He’s treating you like shit-”
“He is not!”
“Really, Cara? He stood here and threw it in your face that you went into a meltdown after your therapy appointment. He made a point of letting Drew and I know that you pissed on the floor because he wanted to drive home his point.”
“He wasn’t trying to be malicious.”
“No, he wasn’t, but he doesn’t see how much it hurts you either. He doesn’t see that he’s the one hurting your progress.”
She shook her head. “No, he’s not.”
“Lollipop, you may not be able to see this because you’ve been wrapped up in it for so long, but I can. It’s clear as fucking day to me that he doesn’t know how to deal with what you’re going through. He needed to be clued the fuck in before he said something that he couldn’t come back from.”
Anger flushed her cheeks and she crossed her arms over her chest. I didn’t understand. I was the one standing beside her to help her through this.
“It wasn’t your place to say anything.”
“You’ve never told anyone but me about what happened that day. Why do you think that is?”
“Because I don’t want people to pity me.”
“No, it’s because you’re ashamed and you don’t trust anyone to not judge you for what happened beyond your control.”
She kept shaking her head.
“Cara, you have to let people in. If your brother knew-”
“No! I don’t want him to know.”
“Why? He would understand.”
“Because it’s none of his business.”
“He can’t help if he doesn’t know what happened. He’s an idiot for the way he’s been treating you, but you have to give a little too. He needs to understand.”
“I said no! Just leave. I don’t want you here.”
“Cara, I just want to help you.”
“No, you want to fuck me. That’s what this is all about anyway. We agreed to fuck, not for you to become my therapist.”
I ran a hand over my hair in frustration. Why couldn’t she see that I was the only one that was trying to help her?
“I’m not trying to be your therapist.”
“Then stop telling me what to do. I didn’t tell you so you could go make my brother feel like shit.”
“I didn’t tell him anything. I would never go behind your back like that.”
“No, you would just go tell him that you did know so you could rub it in. Let me tell you something, my relationship with my brother is none of your business.”
This ship was sinking fast and I had to fix it before not even a life raft would save me.
“I care about you.”
Her eyes steeled and her body went rigid.
“Too bad. Whatever we had is over. I don’t need another person in my life to tell me what I need to do to get over my fears.”
I stepped into her space and wrapped my hand around the back of her neck, pulling her closer to me. I was desperate to get through to her. I couldn’t let her kick me out of her life. Not now that I really knew her.
“Don’t tell me it’s over. We have something good here and I know you feel it too. We just have to work past this-”
“No, what was good was the fucking, and from what I hear, you’re good at that no matter who you’re with, Sinner.”
She never called me that. She always called me Mark and now I was the piece of shit that slept around with women and was only good for a fuck. It didn’t matter that we had made progress with her social anxiety or that we had something special between us. She had years of practice shutting people out and I just became another casualty.
“Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll be waiting.”
“You’ll be waiting an awfully long time then.”
I turned and walked dejectedly out of her house, waiting for her to call me back and tell me she made a mistake, that she still wanted me, but she never did. Maybe it all happened too quickly with us. It had started as us just fucking, but the more I got to know her, the more I wanted her for more than just a quick fuck.
✯✯✯✯✯
“Cara, please let me in so we can talk about this.”
I had come over here every night for the past week and still hadn’t heard anything from her. She ignored me every time I knocked on her door. One night I sat out on her porch for over an hour and she still wouldn’t talk to me.
“Cara, please. Just open-”
The door swung open and one very pissed off looking Cara was standing in front of me.
“Can I come in?”
“No, we don’t have anything to say to each other.”
I pushed past her and entered her house anyway. “That’s where you’re wrong. I have plenty to say.”
“You’ve already said enough. Just like everyone else in my life, you think you know best how to swoop in and solve my problems. I didn’t ask you to go to my brother and make him feel like shit. What happens between us is my business.”
“I care about you, more than I thought I ever would and I’m not going to stand back and watch as people treat you like your some damaged piece of garbage.”
“That’s not the way it is!”
“You just told me the other night that you left Sarah’s house feeling like you weren’t enough. That they didn’t think you were worth the trouble.”
“Those are my feelings! I’m a mess and probably imagine half the shit that runs through my head.”
“Maybe that’s true, but I was standing there when Sean threw that shit in your face. You can’t tell me you were making that up. Drew and I both heard it.”
“He cares about me. He took care of me for over three years. He did things for me that no brother should ever have to do.”
“I get that and I’m so glad he was there for you, but that doesn’t mean that he’s treating you like he should now.”
“Mark, I appreciate that you helped me and you were just what I needed from a fuck buddy.” Ouch, talk about a slap in the face. “But, it’s time I stopped relying on others to help take care of me.”
“I wasn’t taking care of you. I was-”
“Please, just stop. We had a good time, but it’s over. You’re leaving to find a new job anyway, so we both knew this was going to end at some point.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was going to tell her I was falling in love with her and I wanted to make this work between us, but she was making it very clear that she no longer wanted me in her life. Not knowing what else to say, I nodded and walked to my truck where I sat for a good five minutes trying to figure out how it all went so wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have talked to her brother. Maybe that was some imaginary line that I crossed and couldn’t come back from, but I really felt he needed to know how his words were affecting her.
I pulled out of her driveway and went back to my apartment where I laid in bed staring at the ceiling, wishing I could go back and change the last two years of my life. I wouldn’t trade my friendship with Freckles for anything, but that’s about the time everything started going to shit for me at Reed Security. Now, I lost my job and the friends that meant more to me than family, the girl I was falling for, and now I had to move and start over.
✯✯✯✯✯
Carrying the pizza I had picked up, I walked up to Cazzo’s door and knocked. He had a house in the country and I had no doubt that was because he craved the privacy. It was a ranch house, so the renovations Sebastian had made were easy enough to accommodate him now that he had to get around in a wheelchair.
“Come in,” his gruff voice called from the other side.
I opened the door and shook my head at the mess in front of me.
“What the fuck happened here?”
“The nurse left,” Cazzo said as he stared at the TV.
“Don’t you pay her to stay here and take care of shit?”
“Didn’t like her.”
“How many is that now?”
“Three.”
“Three nurses since you came home? Jesus, Cazzo.”
“I can take care of myself. I don’t need someone here to do shit for me.”
“Right. I can tell by all the garbage laying around.”
I plopped the pizza box down on the table in front of him and went to grab a few garbage bags. The kitchen was a disaster. He might eventually be able to take care of himself, but for now, he was still healing and couldn’t manage on his own no matter how much he wanted. I started by picking up all the trash that was laying around. Empty beer bottles, wrappers, take out boxes, and water bottles littered every surface of the kitchen, living room, and his bedroom. After I gathered up three bags of garbage and took it out to the trash can, I went to the kitchen and got to work on the dishes. By the time I finished cleaning up, Cazzo had demolished half the box of pizza and was chugging another beer.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be drinking while taking painkillers.”
He shrugged. “It’s not hard alcohol. I’m sure it’s fine.”
I sat down next to him and grabbed a slice of the now cool pizza. “So, anyone been by lately?” I highly doubted it with the way his place looked.
“Burg was by the other day. He says that you got yourself kicked off the team.”
“Good news travels fast.”
“What the fuck were you thinking attacking Cap like that?”
“He pissed me off.”
“Yeah, well you piss me off sometimes too, but I don’t go after you.”
I just sat there in silence. Cazzo sighed and turned off the TV.
“What’d he say?”
“Didn’t you get the play by play the other day?”
“Couldn’t hear shit through the door. What’d he say?”
“Nothing, although he still thinks that I’m trying to screw Maggie.”
“He didn’t fire you because of that. What happened?”
“He wanted me to stay away from Cara. He said she was damaged.”
Cazzo’s brows drew together and he frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Cap.”
“I’d say the same thing, but Sean’s his friend and he doesn’t want her getting hurt. Apparently, I’m a womanizer and always will be.”
“You have had your fair share of women.”
“It’s different with her.”
“I would say I’d have to agree. Not just any woman would make you attack your boss and get fired.”
“Doesn’t matter now. She’s pissed at me.”
“Is there anyone you haven’t pissed off lately?”
“I’m guessing you, since I’m sitting on your couch.”
“I just wanted the pizza.”
“Yeah, well, you’re going to have to find someone else to bring you your food. I’ve got an interview set up in California. If I get the job, I’ll be gone within a few weeks.”
He reached across the couch and just when I thought he was going to hug me, which made me back away, he slugged me in the arm.
“Ow, what the fuck was that for?” I asked as I rubbed my arm.
“That’s for being a shit head.” Then he punched me across the jaw.
“Will you quit it? You may be weak, but you can still pack a punch.”
That earned me another punch to the face. I could have easily blocked him, but I figured the guy needed to let off some steam.
“What the fuck was that for?”
“So, you’re running away from your job and your girl?”
“I’m not running away. I need a job. Cap fired me, and Cara basically told me that I was a good fuck, but she didn’t need me around anymore.”
“Ouch. Guess you really are only good for one thing.”
I glared at him, but he just shrugged. “Instead of running away, you need to fix this shit.”
“Look, Cap has been pissed at me for the past two years. Until he gets over this irrational jealousy he has going on, we can’t work together.”
“I heard Maggie walked out on him.”
I nodded and let out a harsh breath. “He’s gonna lose her if he doesn’t fix this.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“I tried to fix it for a whole goddamn week and it didn’t work.”
“A whole goddamn week? And she didn’t fall at your feet and beg to suck your cock?”
I stood and gathered what was left of the pizza.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m taking my pizza and leaving.”
“Hey, that’s my pizza. I’m crippled. Get your ass back here!”
“You’re not fucking crippled, but you do need a goddamn nurse. Do yourself a favor and let the next one stay.”
“Fine, just leave the pizza.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, just bring it back here,” he said in exasperation.
I grinned and set the pizza on the floor by the door. “Now you’re gonna have to work for it.” I walked out and shut the door, hearing something shatter against it as it closed. I looked at my watch and hurried to my truck. I had a flight to catch in two hours.