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I have to find a way out of here.
“Cleo?” Talon says, his touch jerking me back to my current reality. I gasp and slide out of his reach. I almost think I see his father’s face instead of his, but Talon’s concerned brown eyes come back into focus. “Are you okay?”
I know I can’t tell him what’s going on with me. The way he and his brother idolize their father, they’d probably never believe anything I said. I slowly shake my head and move further away from him.
“I think you should go,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. His brows furrow in confusion.
“What? Why?” he asks. “What happened just now?”
The longer he sits there, the more I think of his father and everything he’d done to me. All the pictures he’d taken, the watching me in the shower, forcing me to sit on his lap while he worked, touching me in places that he shouldn’t have. Their father was the reason I had to leave them all those years ago. I don’t know why I was delusional enough to think thatreconnecting with them wouldn’t involve their father, but it’s only proving that I can’t be involved with them. I can’t be involved withhim.
“Please, just go,” I say, my voice trembling as I fight the tears that threaten to roll down my cheeks. “This was all a mistake. I should’ve just avoided you guys instead of letting you infest my life again.”
“Infest?” He frowns at me. “So now we’re an inconvenience to you?”
“You’re a problem!” I snap. “One that I don’t need.” A tear falls before I can stop it, but I quickly swipe it away. “I need you to leave, and I don’t want anything to do with either of you.”
“You don’t get to do that again, Cleo,” Talon says, his face slowly growing red as he becomes more upset. “How the hell were we just having a conversation and then you suddenly freak out on me without warning? What the hell did I do?”
I know he won’t accept the truth, and he won’t leave otherwise. Fighting with him will put me on a slippery slope because if he chooses to kick me out of this apartment, I won’t have anywhere to go. But I can’t deal with him being here. The possibility of seeing their father again causes me to put up every wall that I’d finally pulled down around them. Maybe it’s best if I leave town. I can leave them and the terrible memories that follow due to their father.
“I don’t owe you anything,” I simply say. “Unless you plan to kick me out of an apartment you gave me, then respect my wishes and get the hell out.”
He stares at me in disbelief, his mouth agape. His eyes darken and his jaw twitches as he pushes himself off the floor and storms out of the apartment without another word, slamming the door shut behind him.
I put my head in my hands and exhale a long breath. I have to figure out my next moves so that I can try to be gone before they both come back and pay me a visit.
And when I leave this time, they’ll never see me again.
TRISTAN
She has some fucking nerve acting the way she did.
After Talon told me what happened at the apartment, it takes everything in me not to go up there and lose my shit on her. After everything we’ve done for her, everything Talon did for her, and she treats him like that? Ungrateful little bitch.
I look up from my desk to see Talon moping around at his. He’s been sulking for days, which has been doing nothing but further pissing me off. Cleo isn’t even worth the fucking energy. This is the perfect opportunity to tell him, “I told you so,” because I knew something like this would eventually happen.
This is the same woman who refuses to tell us why she left us all those years ago, so I don’t know why it’s surprising to him that she’s trying to run again. It’s for the best anyway. She has her money so she can go about her life, and we can continue on with ours, just as we’d done before she came back and fucked up our lives yet again.
I leave the office around lunchtime, not even bothering to tell Talon because he’s too busy being sad over a bitch who isn’t worth the energy. I want to talk to her myself to see if she’ll say the same things to me as she did to him. I want to see if she canlook me in my eyes and tell me that being with us was a mistake, that seeing us again was a mistake. I want her to tell me to my face that everything we’ve done lately meant nothing and that she wishes it never happened.
My hand tightens on the steering wheel. A part of me feels as if I’m setting myself up for rejection and failure. Whatever the hell happened between her and Talon triggered her so badly that she reacted that way, which only makes it easy to assume that I’m going to stumble upon an empty apartment when I get there.
A storm of negative emotions swirls in my chest as I get closer to the apartment building. My brain tries to account for every kind of conversation we’ll have, but I’m navigating uncharted waters. The same way Cleo left us all those years ago is the same way she could do that now. And no matter how pissed off I am at her, I don’t think I’m ready to accept her walking out on us again.
I quickly park my car and make my way up to her apartment, using the master key without bothering to knock. She looks up in surprise and then scowls when she sees that it’s me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she snaps as she jumps to her feet from the floor.
“What the hell is your goddamn problem?” I fire back at her. “All that shit you said to Talon? After everything he’s done for you? Everything we’ve both done for you?”
“No one asked you to do anything.” She pushes me, but I barely move. “You’re the one who took it upon yourselves to insert yourselves into my life. You could’ve left me alone after that first encounter at the club, but no.Youdecided to keep pursuing.Youdecided to keep bothering me, breaking into my apartment and shit.”
“You didn’t try very hard to reject the help, either.” I glare at her. “You can say whatever you want to me because I don’t givea fuck about you. But the way you treated Talon is fucked up, and you know it.”
“You need to get out.” She moves past me and heads for the door, opening it. “Get out.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I fold my arms across my chest and stare at her. “You have a lot of fucking nerve to act as you are. You act as if we didn’t give you this place. We could’ve been assholes and left you to fend for yourself.”
