I want to throw up.
My stomach sours and I fight the retching that threatens my throat. It’s the most vile, disgusting thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. How can Bellamy just sit there and pretend like we’re discussing the weather? How is she not equally as disgusted?
I remove my gaze from outside, where Jensen’s still playing. I can’t look at him the same, not anymore. I’m not sure what makes me more nauseous—the fact that he slept with someone who was essentially his stepmother, the fact that he convinced me it was perfectly natural to touch myself while thinking of him, or the fact that I willingly did it.
I was a fool to think he actually gave a shit about me. He’s a manipulative con artist, filled with sin and blackness, and I was nothing but a pawn in his twisted game.
I walked right into his web.
I took the bait.
I fell for his cunning lines. His persuasive insistence. His charm.
Nothing but one giant act to cover up his incestuous cravings.
I’m stunned senseless.
I’ve never hated anyone in my life, but as of right now, I hate Jensen Mackey.
CHAPTER 11
JENSEN
Waverly disappeared after dinner tonight. I watched her clear the table with her mom and sister until Kath asked me to go outside and play with the kids.
“They need to get to know their big brother,” she said with a soft smile. “You need to get to know them too. You’re family.”
I put on a good face, slipped on my jacket, and headed outside to teach the small kids the joy of good, old-fashioned puddle jumping.
Mark can thank me later.
After a solid hour, Summer called all the kids inside and they filed to their respective houses for what I can only assume is their bedtime routine. Everyone seems to head to bed around seven thirty in this family.
I trek up the stairs after an hour of watching public television documentaries about dead presidents and pass by Waverly’s closed door. I knock lightly and hold my ear up against it.
“Go away, Jensen.”
“How’d you know?” I whisper through the closed door.
It’s silent on the other side, but my feet cement to the floor. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got all night. My devious mind doesn’t shut off until half-past midnight, most nights.
The door swings open. She’s standing there in floral pajamas, her hair piled on top of her head and her face scrubbed clean. A small bedside lamp illuminates her otherwise dark room, and a book is lying open-faced on her bedspread.
“You always bother me this time of night.” There’s an auditory huff in her hushed words.
“I bother you? I thought you enjoyed it.”
“Never.”
“Lying is a sin.”
She squints, a feeble attempt at a dirty look. It’s cute at best. A wasted effort. “Go to bed, Jensen.”
She tries to shut the door in my face, but I block it with my body. I step inside, one foot on her blue carpet. “I’m not tired. Are you tired?”
“Exhausted.”
“You hide it well.”
“What do you want?” Her crystal eyes lock into mine. I like her this way—feisty. Feisty Waverly is sexy as fuck.
“I want to talk.” I stand firm.
She studies my face, and maybe she’s trying to summon strength from her God or whatever, but she and I both know I’ll knock down any walls she tries to build in two seconds flat.
“We have nothing to talk about.” She crosses her arms and steps away from me. I take it as an invitation.
“I want to talk about last night. We didn’t have a chance earlier. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
Her eyes fall to my feet, her arms locked tighter than ever. I hear her inhale. “I was okay with it, until...”
“Until?”
“Until I realized what a lying piece of garbage you are.”
Goddamn it.
She’s the prudish, eighteen-year-old, modern-AUB version of Josiah-fucking-Mackey. I refuse to stand there and let her judge me when she doesn’t know half of what my life’s been like.
My fists clench at my sides. The nerve she’s just struck is raw and stings like hell, but I grit my teeth and breathe through it.
“What did I lie about?” My jaw is set so tight it’ll take a pair of pliers to pry it apart.
She steps back until she falls on her bed. “You convinced me to… touch myself… but you did it for yourself. For your pleasure. I know what you did, Jensen. And it’s disgusting.”
“What did I do, Waverly?” I prepare myself for a whole host of things. I’m not a saint. I never pretended to be one.
“You slept with your stepmother,” she hisses. Her words cut me, but only because she doesn’t know the half of it. She’s judging me, looking at me with cold, piercing eyes I’d once found alluring.
“Don’t fucking look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Judging me, like you know fuck about what I’ve been through.”
“You’re a sexual deviant, Jensen. You get off on… incest.”
“We’re not fucking related, Waverly.”
“I can’t be around you anymore.” She folds her arms. “I’m going to ask Dad to move you into Summer’s house tomorrow.”
Have fun explaining that…
“Whatever helps you sleep.”
I toss my hands up. I don’t appreciate being treated like a shit stain, and I fucking hate assumptions. My nostrils flare, and my blood threatens to burn clear through my veins if I don’t do something quick. I could stand here and explain myself to her, give a crash course in my life that would leave her disturbed, tell her things she’ll never be able to un-hear.
Or…
I can just leave. Walk away.
For the longest time, I didn’t have that option with Josiah.
I have it now.
I can just walk out of here and mourn the words I’ll never have a chance to say because no one tries to fucking understand.
Besides, I don’t need to explain myself to her. My life is none of her damn business. I’m not sure what I ever saw in her anyway aside from the fact that she was a sexy as fuck, impossibly uptight virgin I was dying to unwind. I thought I maybe there was something good in her, something worth salvaging. A hunger for something real behind those pale blue eyes.
I was dead wrong.
Fucking waste of time, is what she is.
That’s fine.
We’ll live like two passing ships in the night for the next few months. As soon as August comes, I’ll slip out of here and buy a bus ticket to L.A. She can marry some secret polygamist who receives her father’s stamp of approval, and she can pop out a bunch of babies and judge people to her little heart’s content.
I must have blacked out between that moment and now, because suddenly I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat of my truck, my left foot on the clutch and the right one on the brake as I start her up.
She’s loud as hell, and I might wake up the whole neighborhood, but I don’t care. I fly across town, getting the fuck away from the Miller Circus, and speed into a parking spot outside the shop. The light is on at Liberty’s place.
I’ve only worked with her a couple days, but she seems like a pretty cool chick. She’s the only friend I have in this stupid ass town, and right now I need to get as far away from everything as possible.
“Hey,” she says as she pulls the door open. She lives in a little apartment above her father’s shop. “What are you doing here? Need into the shop?”
There’s music coming from behind her, which I assume is her guitar-wielding boyfriend, Kian. I met him at work yesterday when he came in to drop dinner off for her.
She examines my face and chews on her lip. “Shit go down at Uncle Mark’s?”
I shrug.
“Oh, God. What’d he do?” Liberty pulls the door wide and welcomes me in. I lock eyes with Kian, who’s cradling a cherry red Fender guitar and gives me a tightlipped smile.
Kian’s wearing a white tank top that shows off his sleeves. Every inch of his arms is covered in multicolored tats.