Dirty Little Mistake (Dirty #2) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Brenna

It was ten in the morning and I was breaking into Ridley’s house once again, this time armed with the world’s best Cookies n’ Cream Cupcakes and a steaming cup of hot chocolate in my hands. 

I knew it wasn’t much
, but I hoped it was enough for him to at least listen to what I had to say.

“Ridley?
” I called as I stepped into his kitchen.

The house seemed unusually quiet.  No banging of the free weights, no music, no lights.  But his truck was in the driveway, so I knew he was home.

I glanced at my watch, confirming the time.  No way was he still sleeping.

“Ridley?”

I moved to the hall, where the scent of steamy water let me know he must be in the shower.  I turned to go back to the kitchen, but the bathroom door swung open and Ridley stepped out, cementing me to the floor.

For the first time, I really saw him without the cloud of Ian hanging between us.

You’re still not single,
I reminded myself.
Not really.

But it was impossible to ignore Ridley’s physical assets.

He had a tall, muscular frame, etched into perfection from all his hours pounding away at the weights and the pavement.

His shoulders were that perfect width, just right to strain a shirt.  If he happened to be wearing one.  Which he wasn’t.  His abs were as mouth-watering as his chest and the cut of his waist was just-right too.  The towel hugged his hips, low a
nd tempting.  One tiny tug was all it would take to send it to the ground.

I tried to settle on his face.  But as he looked in my direction, the thick wave of too-long hair that hung over his
crooked left eyebrow dripped a bit of water onto his lip and his tongue darted out to suck it into his mouth.  It was just as distracting as his exposed body.  Maybe more so.

I swallowed against the sudden rush of heat that started in my stomach and panned downward, dampening my underwear and making me squirm.

“Brenna!” He sounded startled and a little unhappy.

“Um. Hi. I brought the cupcakes
. And the recipe. If your boss still wants it.”

His eyes flicked up the hall nervously. “What are you doing here?”

I frowned. “I just said—”

He stepped forward, grabbed my arm and pulled m
e away from the bathroom. “Never mind. Can you wait in the kitchen?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine. I’m just gonna get dressed, all right?”

“Sure.”

Relief flooded his face. “Thank you. I’ll see you in a minute.”

“Uh, Ridley?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re still holding my arm.”

He dropped it like it was on fire. “Sorry.”

As I turned to go, a flash of movement from Ridley’s bedroom caught my eye.

“Is someone else here?” I asked.

“No.”

Except all color had drained from his face.  What the hell was going on?

“You’re lying,” I said. “Who’s here?”

“Just a friend.”

“A friend?”

I pushed past him, ignoring him as he called after me.  I stopped in his doorframe and stared in surprise at the girl seated right in the center of Ridley’s bed.  Even under her day-old black makeup and bleach-blonde hair, it was easy to see how pretty she was.

My heart fell to my feet.

“Who’re you?” I whispered.

Ridley’s strained voice came from behind me. “This is…”

When he trailed off, I spun to face him.

“You don’t even know her
name
?” I asked incredulously.

Ridley shot me a helpless look. “It’s…”

“Thea,” the girl filled in. “And you must be Pancake.”

My eyes widened even further and hurt stabbed through my chest. “You told her my nickname?”

“I’m just gonna go,” the girl said.

She jumped up and sidled across the room.

“You stay,” I replied. “I’ll go.”

“I was just leaving,” she argued. “Seriously. I was.”

She grabbed an army-print backpack and a helmet from the floor and dashed from the room.  Five seconds later the front door slammed.  I tried to follow her, but by the time I reached the living room, Ridley had grabbed my arm again.  I yanked myself away.

“What? Did you come out here to grab her number?” I snapped.

“No.”

His voice was too quiet and it made me even angrier. “Really? Because I think you can still catch her.”

“I don’t want her number.”

“So you’re the kind of guy who just fucks a girl one time, forgets her name, and then forgets
her
altogether?”

Something in his eyes changed.  The pleading, guilt-ridden gleam hardened and morphed in
to cold fury.

“The thing is, Brenna, that’s not the kind of guy I am. At all.”

“So how do you explain Thea?”

“I don’t have to explain her. Not to you. You have no right to be jealous.”

“You arrogant, self-centred asshole.”

It was all I could manage to get out.  I couldn’t deny the spark of jealousy that made my temple throb.  But whatever I was feeling went much deeper than that.  It was a dark, spiralling ache.  Just the thought of Ridley with that pretty girl shattered me.  But he was right.  I had no claim on him.

“Brenna, sometimes life just deals you a shit hand and you do what you have to so you can move on.”

“What would you know about being dealt a shit hand?”

In my head, I knew I was being irrational.  Maybe it was partly the hormones.  Maybe part of it was exhaustion.  But mostly, I was sure, it was just about Ridley and me. 

“What
would you know about what I know?” he retorted, sounding just as angry and just as juvenile as I did.

“I know that your mom died and you used that as an excuse to get yourself in
some kind of trouble. But the bottom line is…You’re a nice guy with a nice job and a nice family who took you in and that you have no idea how hard things can be for—” I cut myself of just before I said
single mom.

He barked out a laugh, then strode over to the fireplace and snatched a photograph from atop the mantle.  He waved it in my direction.

“Is this what you’re basing your assumptions on?” he demanded. “What you see on the surface?”

“They say a picture is worth a thousand words,” I countered snidely.

“They say a lot of things. Most of which are complete bullshit.”

“Whatever.”

“What do you see when you look at this?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Like fuck you see nothing,” he replied.

He shoved the frame into my hands.  I had little choice but to
drop it on the hardwood or hang on tight.

“Fine,” I said. “I see you. I see your cousin. I see his mom and dad. And I see all your stupid Santa hats and your stupid smiles.”

“You see a Christmas card.” Ridley snatched the picture away, sprung the rear piece free and handed it back.

I opened it slowly.  I wasn’t sure where to look.  It didn’t seem right to stare at Ridley’s face as I did it.  I wasn’t even sure if I
could
stare at him for that long without losing it.  But looking at the photograph somehow felt like giving in.  My eyes flicked between the two before settling on the object in my hands.

And it really was a Christmas card.  I saw that once it was open all the way.

“Yeah,” Ridley said. “That’s us. Ian, Aunt Penelope and me. But that man’s not my uncle.”

I sullenly refused to take the bait. “So?”

He raked his hand through his hair. “Let me tell you a story about an eleven-year old kid, Brenna. He lives with his drunk-ass dad who regularly kicks the shit out of his mom. Until one day, his dad is just gone. The kid has a huge fucking chip in his shoulder. Roughly the same size and shape as his dad, as you can imagine.”

“Ridley, it’s
—”

“Shut up and listen!” he growled and tears pricked my eyes. “The kid’s mom gets her shit together. Finally, the kid thinks. He’s almost thirteen when she meets his stepdad and for a little while everything is good. Then the baby comes. At the same time that stepdad loses his job. Suddenly the kid finds out that stepdad is also a raging alcoholic whom his mom met at a meeting. And the recovery isn’t going well. So one day the kid’s pseudo-family goes on an outing, maybe it’s a ball game, maybe it’s bowling – the kid has never been able to remember accurately no matter how hard he tries. Stepdad has been
drinking a lot during the day and has an open bottle in the sedan too. He’s angry. He’s reckless. He’s screaming and tossing things around and he’s already given the kid’s mom one backhand. The kid can’t take it anymore, and when stepdad stops at a stop sign, he jumps out with the intention of running as hard and as fast as he can in the other direction. He doesn’t get very far.”

I wanted to cover my ears before he could say what happened next.  The tears that had been threatening overflowed and fell down my cheeks.  Ridley ignored them and went on.

“The kid went a block. Or maybe half. Then he had to turn around and look; he needed to see if his mom was coming after him or if he’d enraged his stepfather a little too far. What he sees instead is this: the family car shoots away from the stop sign just as a semi-truck barrels down the road. In his head, he wonders why a truck so big is driving on the residential street. He never finds out. The truck smacks into the car. They all die on impact. Mom. Stepdad. Maya, who is two. The truck rolls and the driver dies too. They fucking
die
.”

He didn’t tell me it was him.  He didn’t have to.  I knew it was him before he looked me in the eye and spoke again. 

“But
I
didn’t fucking die. Not physically anyway. For two years I tried my damnedest to get there. I drank and I smoked and I fucked anything that walked. I didn’t think about legal shit or long-term consequences or any fucking thing at all. I bounced from foster home to foster home and still…I didn’t die. When I was seventeen, my Aunt Penelope took me in. Not because she wanted to. She could’ve stepped in when
they
all died, right? Nope. She didn’t want my shit-crazy self ruining her kid, Ian. She’d been sober for years and she’d washed her hands of my mom too. But Aunt Penelope got diagnosed with cancer – terminal – and the universe told her she
had
to bring me to live with her and Ian. I went. Not because
I
wanted to. Because the terms of my release from the juvenile detention centre required me to have a capable adult supervisor. So we had an agreement. Which grew into something more. She loved me and took care of me and it didn’t take all that long for me to love her back because essentially I was just a broken soul waiting for someone to help me. And Ian? He was a sweet kid. But the sicker his mom got, the worse he got too. And the better I became. Which may have been Aunt Penelope’s real plan. She knew what her son was going to be like and she needed someone like me to watch out for him when she died. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing for five years. That Christmas card photo was taken three weeks before my aunt died.”

Ridley’s speech finally ran out, and with it, the heated expression on his face.  He took the photo-card from my hands, closed it up and set it back on the mantel very carefully.  Without looking at me, he sunk into the couch.

“I’m sorry, Ridley.”

My voice wavered pathetically at the end and I had to wait a very long moment for him to answer me.  When he did, he sounded exhausted.

“I’m past pity, Brenna. Yours or anyone else’s. All I wanted was to show you that I
do
know what it is to suffer and to be obligated.”

I stared down at his face, taking in his features in a new light.  The
mussed hair.  The ever-present crease in his brow.  The hard-won muscles and the tiny scar on his ear and the guarded hurt I knew was in his slate-coloured eyes even though I couldn’t see them right that second.  His heart was layered and scarred and imperfect. 

Ridley was a body of work.  An emotional tribute to his past.  A hard-fought war of a man who rose above everything that should have destroyed him.

My heart broke into a thousand tiny pieces – one for each bit of pain that he had suffered. 

Dear, God. I’m in love with him. And he can never know. Because even if there was
a chance that he loved me back, I could never ask him to take on Ian’s baby.

My breath cut away at the simultaneous, definitive realizations.  The shards of my heart glittered and danced inside my chest driving the agony deeper.  It felt like an infinite number
of tiny deaths.  Again and again.  And again.

“Have I done it, Brenna?”

I stumbled over my answer. “Done what?”