Chapter 1: Betrayed

My hands shook as I walked toward the door.

Behind me, Garrett was rushing after me. He kept calling my name and demanding that I listen to him over and over again while tripping over his underwear and pants.

"Jade!" he shouted. "Wait!"

I didn’t wait. I couldn’t even look at his face. I tried to open the door but it was locked. Locked. I looked around for the key and didn’t see it lying on the floor or anywhere nearby. When I walked in, what did I do with it? I couldn’t recall at the moment.

Bag. It was in my bag.

I unzipped it and searched around for the key. There was so much junk in my bag that it was hard to find but I finally managed to grip it in my hand. Garrett made the most of the fact that I was rooted to the spot and finished getting dressed. He was still bare-chested. My guess was that he forgot to grab his shirt as he followed me from the bedroom.

“Jade,” he said again, exhaustion lacing his voice. He had just finished buttoning his pants and was walking toward me slowly with his arms extended like I was some wild and feral beast. “Come on. I just want to talk. Please.”

I struggled to shove the key in the keyhole but only because my hands were shaking so damn badly. I was holding back tears and trying to keep my breathing steady while my heart was shattering into tiny pieces inside my chest.

Garrett, my fiancé who had once been my whole world, was deep inside another woman just a few minutes ago.

And that woman was his step-sister.

I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around this. Samantha—that was her name—was close to us. We weren’t exactly the best of friends (now I knew exactly why she was always a little cold to me) but she was always around. Always. Every birthday. Every celebration. Everything. And because of their relationship, I never doubted them.

It would have never crossed my mind.

I was still struggling with the keys when he said, “Baby, please. I know what you saw in there was…confusing. I know that. I can explain it all to you if you’ll just sit down with me. Just for a second.”

I whipped my head around to glare at him. My voice was loud and shrill. I sounded hysterical. “I beg your fucking pardon? What is there to talk about? How could you possibly explain what I just saw?”

“There is an explanation,” he said convincingly. He stared at me with those auburn eyes I never failed to get lost in. “I promise you there is one. It’s not what it seems.”

I scoffed and dropped the keys. Again. “You’re not going to talk your way out of this. Jesus Christ, Garrett. She’s your fucking sister. You two grew up together. How could…it’s sickening.”

“Jade.”

“Don’t talk to me,” I said through my teeth as I shoved the key in the keyhole. Finally. I turned it but I must have used too much force because it broke in two. I stared at the piece left in my hand in disbelief. How the hell was I supposed to get out of here now? This was the only key I had. The other key was with Garrett.

“The key,” I said, throwing the broke one on the ground. “Give me the key.”

“Five minutes.”

“Garrett,” I said in warning. “Let me out of here.”

“Just a few minutes.”

Garrett was getting closer to me and I pressed my back firmly against the door. I even turned my head to the side so I wouldn’t look at his face. But he wouldn’t stop walking toward me and I felt caged in. I didn’t want him near me. I didn’t want him to touch me, not when I was sure that his fingers would smell like her.

God. It was a sickening thought.

I was going to be sick if he touched me.

“Baby,” he said, smiling at me though his eyes were filled with panic. Those eyes that I loved so much and now all I could think of was scratching them out with my fingernails. “It’s me. It’s us. We’re indestructible. Nothing can tear us apart.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said, fighting my nausea. “You’re so fucking wrong for saying that. We were that way before tonight. You sick bastard. Do you think there is anything you could say that could change my mind? Next you’re going to tell me you were just trying to scratch an itch on her cervix with your dick because that’s how deep inside of her you were!”

“I know I’m wrong,” he said, trying to cage me in my placing both his hands firmly behind my head. I realized then that the only way I’d get rid of him was by running, even if only around the house. So I ducked and headed toward the kitchen as quickly as I could. My high-heeled boots made clicking sounds as I ran.

Garrett groaned behind me. “Look, you’re not giving me a chance to talk.”

“You don’t have an excuse to give me,” I stated. “You keep repeating the same thing over and over again rather than try to tell me what the hell that was!”

When he entered the kitchen, he paused and then sighed. He rubbed his eyes and looked away. I couldn’t calm down. I was getting angrier by the minute and my bottom lip trembled as I spoke. My voice was also thicker than usual and I felt pain in my throat from trying so hard not to cry.

“Samantha and I,” he began, and my stomach lurched. “We have this bond that can’t be broken. It’s difficult to explain baby. I know you won’t get it. But she and I…we’ve…what I’m trying to say is that…”

He didn’t finish what he had to say because Samantha walked into the kitchen wearing his shirt. As I stood on the other side of the counter and watched them, I commented to myself that this couldn’t be. This wasn’t how things worked. I was supposed to walk away and not hear anything he had to say. I shouldn’t have seen her walking into the kitchen in his shirt, a shirt I bought him last week, and drape her arm around him lazily. Intimately.

He didn’t even shake her grip off.

Samantha tilted her head at me as if challenging me. I could positively say that that was the moment where things changed for me. That was the moment when I snapped, or a part of me did, and something thick and heavy was released inside of me. It was like my heart burst and my blood was now flowing wildly and not following its usual path.

I was livid.

I was raging inside.

“Look at you both,” I said through the pain in my throat. “Look at how pathetic you both look standing there. I wonder what your parents would think if they knew about this. You do realize how sick this is, don’t you?”

Samantha chuckled. “If you think they don’t know, Jade, you’re mistaken.”

I frowned. “You liar.”

“You don’t understand anything at all about us,” she said, “about how we do things. I always told Garrett to tell you about this sooner but it seems he didn’t want to listen. We wouldn’t be here if he had chosen to be honest with you, so don’t you look at me with that much judgment in your eyes. I don’t owe you loyalty. I never even liked you. He’s the one who should have been honest with you.”

“Oh, shut up, tramp!” I exclaimed. “Don’t think that I’ll excuse you from this. I never liked you either but that doesn’t mean you could’ve acted the way you did. And anyway, you’re siblings. You might not share the same blood but you grew up as siblings. How could you do such a thing?”

“Jade,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He finally shook off her touch. She didn’t even look offended. “I asked you for five minutes. Will you give them to me?”

“Open the door and let me out!”

“Let her out,” Samantha said. “Let’s see where this little orphan is going to go. You’re so eager to leave, Jade, but where are you going to go exactly? You don’t even have a place to stay. If Garrett hadn’t taken you in, you’d be living under a bridge.”

“I’ll gladly sleep under a bridge,” I said, though her words burned and were caught in my throat. “I’d rather sleep anywhere than be surrounded by people like you!”

Samantha chuckled dryly. “Good luck. Come, I’ll open the door for you. Don’t bother packing a bag because those clothes weren’t bought with your money. Don’t take anything at all. Just. Leave.”

I was fuming. I couldn’t even move from my spot. Samantha stopped when she saw that I hadn’t followed her and brushed her golden hair out of her eyes. “What? Changing your mind, are you? That’s too bad. Garrett isn’t going to give you a second chance. You want out? Fine, go. Leave. Everyone always told Garrett that you were a bad choice. You’re nothing but a parasitic, unemployed bitch who can’t do anything for yourself. You made him look bad. He could always do so much better than you.”

I glanced at Garrett. His eyes were on the floor. He didn’t tell her to shut up. He didn’t contradict her. She continued by saying, “You never deserved him. You just wasted his money and blamed your failures on your ridiculous mommy and daddy issues. Always the never ending victim. Always crying about your childhood. Grow up. Grow out of it. Stop blaming your failures on a past that is long gone. Jesus.” She shook her head and looked at me darkly. “No wonder your parents abandoned you. Who could ever stand to be near someone like you?”

I looked at her as that heat spread through me. I wished her dead. Both of them. I never wished for anyone’s harm, but the two of them? I wanted them dead. Dead and buried. How could he tell her those personal things? They probably laughed about it. About my pain.

It was heartbreaking.

My anger expanded. Tears slid down my face. I let out a piercing scream and closed my eyes. I screamed for a love I had lost. I screamed all of the frustrations right out of me. I screamed until I didn’t feel like tearing myself apart.

When I reopened my eyes, I was covered in blood.