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23
Addilyn
At Sunday brunch the next day, I sat quietly with my first hangover headache, my focus on my plate while trying and failing to talk away the guilt still eating at my mind.
Mother and Lloyd murmured about their dinner with friends the night before—and then onto business and stuff they needed to button up at the office on Monday. I ignored the two of them, same as I always did—but mostly due to the nausea swirling in my stomach.
Gideon had yet to make an appearance, and I forced myself to eat my dry toast and ignore the jittery flutters in my muscles. Lloyd had winked when I’d told Mother I hadn’t slept well and didn’t feel so great so I’d come home from Jenny’s before she woke.
But what would Gideon do or say? Would he act as though nothing had happened same as his father did? Be a jackass like usual?
My leg bounced beneath the table, hard.
“Addilyn Jane,” Mother snipped, and I glanced up to find her scowling at me.
The leg stilled immediately. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Lips pursed, she returned her attention to the supposed love of her life who sat back in his chair rather than leaning in close like he used to do whenever seated beside her. He didn’t seem quite as enamored with her after the last few outbursts.
Guess the unlovable woman finally got on his nerves.
The dining room door slid smoothly open without anything more than a whoosh, and I didn’t need to look up to know Gideon had arrived. I could feel his presence as if he’d physically brushed against me, the heat and friction of skin on skin pebbling mine from neck to knees.
Jackass.
Scowling over my heating face, I feigned interest in my toast as though starved, the memory of his thickness lodged in my throat choking off my desire to eat—and making me what he always claimed I was.
Shamefully wet.
Shit, if Mother ever learned what her pure daughter had done, the depraved act she’d been enticed into by her stepbrother…
I swallowed down rising bile.
Gideon sat across from me, and I didn’t give him the time of day, even though his stare sent pulses through my core regardless of my stomach wanting to upheave.
“Hungry, sis?”
“Don’t call me sis,” I hissed, shooting daggers at him from my eyes. But I feared my lust for more of what I’d tasted the night before shone in my gaze rather than the shame and anger twisting my gut.
He smirked, those blue eyes knowing. Winked while helping himself to the bowl of scrambled eggs the housekeeper had set on the table.
I tore my focus off the delicious perfection of him and went back to the toast that tasted like cardboard and made my mouth just as dry. The perfect food to settle my belly that refused to calm.
The doorbell rang, pausing the clinking of silverware and murmur of our parents’ voices.
Lloyd wiped his lips with his napkin and pushed to stand. “I’ll get it, darling,” he told Mother.
She beamed up at him, and I rolled my eyes, returning my focus to the crust still in my hand. One more bite, and I could escape her and Gideon.
Murmurs from the foyer. Male, I noted as their footsteps approached.
I glanced up to find Lloyd’s brow furrowed as he walked back into the dining room. Two cops followed behind him—one being the sheriff.
“Gideon Destil?” Sheriff Bradshaw rounded the table, intent on my stepbrother.
Oh shit…oh shit…I swung my gaze toward Gideon, my eyes wide—toast lodging in my throat and causing me to swallow hard.
“Yeah?” Gideon replied, gaze jumping from one cop to the other, his back ramrod straight.
