Chapter Five

She broke off now; she hadn’t told anyone except Cheryl about what Gideon had done to her, and she hadn’t said much even then. She was damned if she was going to share any of that hellish humiliation with the two sexiest men that she’d ever laid eyes on in the whole of her life. God knows what they thought of her as it was.

After all, they knew that she’d been cooperating with Gideon for years to keep Cheryl safe, and surely they had to be judging her about that, even a little bit. If they knew about how she’d allowed Gideon to fuck and use her – though ‘allowed’ was a misleading word in this particular context – they’d definitely see her as weak and pathetic. She saw herself that way, so why wouldn’t they?

They were still standing there, clearly waiting for her to continue, and Briley knew as sure as she knew her own name, they weren’t going to let it go. She scrambled around for something to say, and finally managed to choke out a few words:

“I was – was thinking about what I did.” She looked around, making sure that nobody was near them. “About shooting – shooting him.”

The men stood there staring down at her, matching expressions on those gorgeous faces, then without a word they looked at each other and did that eerie, silent communication thing that they so often did. She watched an entire conversation take place between them, then as one, they flicked those x-ray eyes back at her.

“Bullshit,” they said in unison, almost as a single voice.

She started. “What?”

“Yeah, no, babe,” Dux said. “That’s not what you were thinking about at all.”

“How did you know?” she faltered, then mentally kicked herself. “I mean –”

“Because you were lying through your damn teeth,” Drake said. “We can always tell.”

“You can? How?”

They shrugged those massive shoulders, their muscles rippling even with that small, careless movement.

“Dunno,” Dux said. “We just can. Now why are you lying to us, when you’re so clearly upset?”

“What were you really thinking about?” Drake asked. “No tall tales now. We’ll know if you’re being dishonest with us, so don’t even try it.”

She gazed up at them, fighting back the tears that had just risen out of the blue and after so long. God, what would it feel like to actually tell someone what had happened to her? She’d thought that she’d go to her grave keeping it to herself, and she’d just cope with the paralyzing nightmares and waves of dark memory alone. Briley didn’t think she’d ever have a healthy relationship again – not feeling the way that she did about sex.

No way any man gets that close to me… no way I ever allow myself to be that vulnerable.

The twins obviously saw it in her face now, and right away they turned surprisingly gentle; it was such a one-eighty from their default setting of jokey and irreverent that Briley was stunned. She was equally astonished to realize that without a word or even a movement, they made her feel completely protected, even safe. It was the first time that she’d felt that way since that horrible night that Gideon had shown up at her house at midnight and told Briley what he’d figured out about Cheryl killing her husband.

“Listen, darlin’,” Drake said quietly. “You can tell us anything, we promise.”

“I don’t think that I can,” she said. “You don’t know what I’ve done. Not really.”

“C’mon now,” his brother said in the exact same tone. “It’s OK. We got you, babe.”

She’d never know where the lightning bolt of courage – or recklessness – inside of her came from, but in that moment the only thing in this whole goddamn mess that made any sense at all was to level with them. Maybe in the back of her mind, she knew that in a matter of days, these two men would be driving off into the sunset, taking her worst secrets with them. She wouldn’t have to look at them for the rest of her life, or even this time next month, wouldn’t have to see the pity or disdain or disgust or judgement (or however they would react) ever again.

She had to tell someone; she’d burst if she didn’t. And who better than two someones whose presence in her life was on a ticking clock?

“Well.” She cleared her throat and looked down at her feet, avoiding those intense eyes that seemed to strip the flesh off her bones and see absolutely everything that she’d worked so hard to conceal. “The thing is that Gideon, he – he dug up something really bad that Cheryl did a long time ago, and he told me that if I didn’t do everything that he wanted, he’d turn her in to the cops. Then he’d turn me in for covering for her, so we’d both end up in jail. He blackmailed me with this two years ago, and the only way to make sure none of that happened was to – to keep him happy.” She hesitated. “He – he hurt me.”

Dux and Drake were totally still now as they heard far, far more than she was actually saying. They waited, knowing that she was gathering up her courage to say more.

“Every day, I had to go to the cult compound at some point. He didn’t – he wouldn’t force himself on me every single time but – but it happened three or four times a week.”

“Wait.” Dux’s voice was all the more menacing for being so quiet. “He raped you three or four times a week? For two fucking years?”

“It wasn’t always full-on sex,” she said, slightly taken aback at him cutting straight through the crap and calling what Gideon had done to her what it actually was. “Sometimes it was – was just a blow job.”

“Just a blow job?” Drake said. “Darlin’, if you didn’t choose anything that was going on, then there’s no ‘just’ about it. It was all rape.”