Page 36 of Beg for You

She lifted her head. “Did you do these?” she asked, still looking down at one of them.

I crossed my arms, feeling more self-conscious than I had in my life. “Yeah.”

She finally lifted her head and looked at me. Her cheeks were pink and there was a crease down the side of her face where she’d obviously had her cheek pressed against the sheets. My gut tightened.

“These are…” She shook her head. “Cal, you’re incredibly talented. I mean, I knew you were when I saw the beautiful sketch you did for me, but these”—she looked back at the paintings she’d lined up—“they’re something else.” She looked back at me. “They’re stunning, Cal.” She crouched down in front of one. “Dark, moody…haunting. I can actually feel the emotions that went into these pieces.”

Suddenly, I felt stripped bare. Raw.

The group of paintings she was looking at had been done about a year after the accident, when I was still struggling with my TBI, and I’d been desperately trying to get my brother back.

When I was full of rage and resentment, and frustration.

I hadn’t even let Dane or Bull see these. They felt too personal. Because Cassy was right; every bit of what I’d been feeling back then was on the canvas. Seeing Cassandra look at them, touch them, was like a slap in the face. Startling. Wrong.

But also—fuck—right in a way I was having trouble processing.

A spike of irrational anger—at her, myself—expanded inside me. The way I was feeling when I painted them rushed back. I’d felt fucking helpless. Bull had been locked up, my speech had been so bad I barely spoke, and Dane had been placed in a home he was way worse off in than the one my grandmother provided. He’d tried to pretend he was okay when I was allowed to visit him, but I’d seen the tears in his eyes, had known the people he was staying with were assholes, and I hadn’t been able to do a damn thing.

Cassy’s family, her brother, her father, they’d done that to us. I couldn’t forget it. I couldn’t get distracted by her tears, or her smiles, or the almost innocent way she touched me. I certainly couldn’t let how sweetly she came apart for me allow me to lose sight of that.

Shit, I felt off balance. Especially when I looked at Cassy again, all soft and rumpled. Guilt rushed me. My anger flared back up. I didn’t want to feel fucking guilty. I sucked in a breath to try and pull my shit together and instead took Cassy’s arms and pulled her to her feet. “This is my apartment, my shit. You’re not in your castle now, Princess. You don’t fucking touch what’s mine unless I say you can.”

She flinched and yanked her arm from my hold.

I hated myself. Hated that I was being an asshole to her, and hated how her family, just the thought of them and what they’d done, could still smash through my control and fuck me up like this.

I swallowed the boulder forming in my throat as she stared up at me dead on, spine ramrod straight.

“Please, accept my apology. I should never have touched your things.”

I fucking hated the uppity tone she was using. It hadn’t taken long to work out Cassy used it like a barrier. And she’d just locked me out. I only had myself to blame. “Cass—”

She pushed past me. “It’s time I left. I have to be up early to exercise the horses.”

I stood there watching her while she dressed, not sure what to do or say. There was no way I could get it together enough to say what I wanted to. There were things I knew I should say to try and make this better, but I couldn’t get the damn words out. I curled my fingers into fists, stunned by the strength of my desire for her to stay. Jesus, I was close to goddamn begging her not to go. That in itself was enough to keep me silent.

What the hell are you doing?

This whole thing, my plan, using her to get back at Lyall. Shit, I’d lost my mind. I couldn’t do it. Fuck, maybe I’d always known it. Maybe deep down I’d used it as an excuse to get closer to her. What did that make me?

And after my outburst, I was pretty sure I’d never see her again.

Something foreign coiled tight inside me.

I tried to open my mouth as she walked to the door, to tell her that she should find another tattooist, that it would be better if I didn’t do the work for her anymore, but nothing would come out. The words got jumbled and twisted before I could get them out of my mouth. Just being around her threw me to the extent that all the hard work I’d done to fucking talk again flew out the window. Because this woman shook all the control I had right out of me.

She walked out the door without looking back.

I stood there for several seconds, every muscle in my body locked tight.

But in the end, I couldn’t stop myself from going after her. I heard the shop door slamming as I reached the bottom of the stairs. I rushed over and threw it open in time to see her get in her car, start it up, and drive away.

I stood rooted to the spot, not sure what the hell had just happened or what I should do next.

Finally, I headed back up to my apartment and over to the painting she’d been looking at. The colors were dark, the brush strokes heavy, angry. Yeah, she was right. The emotion was there, plain to see, and it slammed into me again.

Chris Deighton had come into our lives and fucked them in a way we were still recovering from ten years later. Dane was still messed up after the shit he’d gone through as a kid. And Bull had retreated within himself, unless things got really bad. Then he used whatever bottle was closest to ease his pain.