Dirty Little Secret (Dirty #1) (24 page)

I understood, at least a little bit. “You assumed Mom was right, because she’s
always
right.”

Julie nodded. “Exactly.”

“But why not tell me later?”

“I made it clear to Mark from the beginning that I didn’t want kids. I didn’t feel right about it,” she replied. “It was my plan to tell you when you were old enough to understand, and I didn’t want you to feel second best, or think I’d replaced you with another child. But when you were twelve, I found out I was expecting. And believe it or not, it was the toughest time in my life. Harder than when I lost Andrew. Harder than when I realized you were better off with Mom and Dad than you would be with me.”

I tried not to be hurt by that, but when she put a gentle hand on my knee and squeezed, I couldn’t quite hold back the tears.

“It sounds selfish,” Julie said. “But it was all about you. The guilt almost killed me. What married, nearly-thirty-year-old woman gets pregnant accidentally? And why was I being punished with twins? I don’t know if you remember, but I spent most of the pregnancy in the hospital.”

I nodded. “I wasn’t allowed to visit you. Mom thought it would be too stressful.”

“Mom didn’t want you to see where I was,” she corrected. “She told everyone it was because of the twins. A high-risk pregnancy. But I was under suicide watch. For the whole nine months, and three months after. I wasn’t even allowed to be alone with Ginnie and Stephen. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I
wasn’t
being punished. And by the time I did, you were an adult. A well-adjusted one.”

The alarm on her phone beeped just then, and Nat came running out of the house.  She had slipped on a pair of rubber boots, and they thumped comically on the deck as she approached.

“Ready, Mama?”

Julie gave her hair an affectionate tousle.

“Five minutes, okay, sweet pea?” she said, then turned back to me. “Do you want to come with us? Or stay for dinner?”

I shook my head and came to my feet. “I’m all right.”

She stood up, too, leaned in for a hug, and spoke into my ear. “I wasn’t allowed to love you like a mom, but I loved you too much to be your sister.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“If you could go back to the very beginning, when you first met Andrew…Would you change it?”

Julie answered immediately, and I knew it must’ve been something she thought about often.

“Not a thing,” she replied. “I wouldn’t trade my time with him for anything. Love like that doesn’t happen often
, and when it does…It’s worth the pain.”

“I get it,” I said.

And maybe, almost, I did.

CUTTER

If I was a good man, I would’ve stepped in the second I realized Melissa was inside my apartment. 

I think, though, that
I’ve made it abundantly clear that while I was many, many fun and exciting things…A good man was not one of them.

So instead, when I stepped out
of the shower and heard the sound of her voice, I chose the very unkind – and somewhat unmanly – option of eavesdropping.  If I wanted to justify it at all, I could say that I just really wanted to hear her speak again before I had to tell her how badly I’d fucked up.

Brandy’s annoying giggle came first. “You’re not the delivery man.”

“Where is he?” Melissa sounded strained.

“The delivery man?”

“Cutter.”

“
Showering. He felt a little dirty. He’ll be out in a minute. We ordered Chinese. I just
had
to have some. A craving, I suppose. I didn’t realize they happened so quickly. But Cutter was happy to indulge.”

If I wasn’t dull as a fucking butter knife, I would’ve interceded then.  I didn’t clue in to what Brandy meant.  Because
all I could focus on was Melissa.  Maybe
she
knew right away what Brandy was implying, but if she did, she didn’t let on.

“I’d like to speak to Cutter,”
was all she said.

“That’s not a good idea.”

“I think he might say otherwise.” Melissa had turned on the snobby, get-what-I-want voice, and I smiled in spite of myself.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there was anything between you,” Brandy said
frostily. “Didn’t you have him arrested for assault?”

“It was a misunderstanding.”

My ex turned on her best, bitchiest self. “I’m sorry. Again. But did you, or did you
not
tell your friend that Cutter assaulted you?”

I held my breath, waiting for her to answer.

“Yes, I did.”

Fuck.

Her affirmation, which cut at my heart, was enough to bring me striding into the room.

“How?” I demanded.
“How could you do that?”

Melissa’s eyes widened,
and then her perfect, blue gaze went from me to Brandy and then back again.

I could see her mind working, see the assumptions playing out in her face.

Me, in a towel.

Brandy..
.being Brandy.

Melissa t
urned her pleading eyes to me.  The pain in my heart was like fucking shrapnel.

She looked at Brandy again.

“Bullshit,” Melissa whispered suddenly.

“
I was surprised, too,” Brandy said, rubbing her perfectly flat stomach affectionately. “We used protection and everything.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I demanded.

“Cutter, she’s pregnant,” Melissa stated.

My head swiveled toward Brandy, and
I laughed derisively. “Yeah, right.”

She shrugged. “A few weeks along.”

Jesus.  The last thing the world needed was a miniature of that crazy bitch running around.

“It can’t be your baby,” Melissa said.

I opened my mouth to deny it. 

Brandy beat me to the punch.

“I almost wish that were true. It would be easier, since Cutter and I rarely get along outside of the bedroom.” She laughed. “But what kind of people would it make us if we didn’t at least
try
for a relationship? For the sake of the baby.”

I didn’t like the way she kept saying “we”.  I didn’t like the way she linked herself to me. 

Melissa was whiter than one of my canvasses. “Cutter?”

Double fuck.

Bile crawled up the back of my throat. “Like fuck it’s mine.”

Brandy shrugged. “The dates line up.”

“Cutter?” Melissa said again.

“Just
because Brandy
says
it’s true, doesn’t make it true,” I told her quietly.

“But it could be?”

There was no point in lying. “We slept together once. We used a condom. And it was only three weeks ago.”

“
It was four weeks,” Brandy corrected. “And condoms fail.”

“That doesn’t make it mine.”

“All right. Tell yourself what you need to. But we lived together for three years, Cutter
.
You know as well as I do that my cycle is spot on.”

“DNA test.” I spat the words out.

“Sure. But the second this little bastard is born, with your blue eyes in his face, the whole world will know he’s yours.”

“
No
one is going to know.”

“I’ll know,” Melissa said, and
her voice still had a wooden quality that made me nervous. “It’s a
baby,
Cutter
.
A person. You need to do the right thing.”

“
I swear to you…You and I hadn’t met, Melissa. I know that’s a lame excuse. But I don’t want this baby.”

My ex interrupted then. “Melissa’s right
, though. And if anyone should know about how it feels to be an unwanted baby, it’s her.”

Triple fuck.

“You told her?” Woodenness was gone.  In its place was abject fury.

“I was mad, baby-doll,” I pleaded. “It slipped out.”

“That’s your M.O., isn’t it?” Melissa asked. “You get mad, you fuck up. And when you fuck up, everyone suffers. Tell me about the guy you sent to the hospital. Tell me about the house you burned down. Is that because you were mad, too?”

“I - ”

She didn’t even let me start.

“I came here to apologize,” she told me. “To ask your forgiveness for
what I said to my friend. And to tell you that I could see past what you’d done, even though you didn’t tell me the whole truth. Because we’re human, right? You made me promise not to give up. You told me you
loved
me.”

If I had been wondering at all
which one of us was living higher on the doing-shitty-things scale…Well, I had no doubts now. 

She was protecting herself from me and all the fall-out that came along with being near me.

Did it matter that the man I assaulted had basically let his friends rape my sister?  Did it matter than the house I lit on fire belonged to my shitty best friend?  No.  Not at all.  Because it was a fucking pattern.  I used those things as an excuse to let out my rage. 

For the first time ever, reality slapped me in the face.
  My vigilante justice, my revenge…I was fucked up.  I was the asshole.  The criminal.  Now.  And always.

“Goodbye, Cutter.”

The words had a finality to them that I almost couldn’t take.  As she strode out of my apartment, on out of my life, my knees gave way, and I fell to the floor.

MELISSA

My heart was in a million pieces.

It was the feeling I should have had when I caught Danny and Shelby together.

And at that second, I knew.

I loved Cutter Lane.

If I didn’t the pain wouldn’t have been so acute.

A million
tiny swords, stabbing into my chest, again and again.

I stepped into the street blindly, oblivious to the screech of tires, oblivious to everything but my pain.

I turned, just in time see the truck swerve.

And suddenly the swords
were everywhere on my body.

Cutter!

I don’t know if I called his name, or if I just cried it out in my mind.  But my last thought, as the world went black, and true oblivion came, fast and hard, was how much I was going to miss him.

CUTTER

Brandy’s
tirade rained down on me and bounced right off.  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t let Melissa go.  Not angry like that.  Not without doing my damnedest to convince her I was worth it.  I had to try, even if it meant getting myself tossed back in jail.

I jumped to my
feet, ignoring the way my ex squealed as I shoved past her.  I ran for the front door, ignoring, also, the angry shriek as my ankle monitor sprung to life as I stepped out onto the lawn.

What happened next stopped fucking my heart.

Melissa moved quickly, head down, in an attempt to cross the street.  A grey pick-up came out of nowhere, rumbling toward her. 

“Melissa!” I hollered at the top of my lungs.

I was two seconds too late.  The driver slammed on his breaks and turned the wheel frantically, but he wasn’t fast enough either.

My feet pounded on the pavement just as the front bumper clipped Melissa and sent her sailing into the air.
  The truck skidded sideways and slammed into a tree. 

By the time Melissa
hit the ground with a sickening crunch, I was at her side and on my knees.  I ignored everything I knew about first aid and dragged her gently from the ground so I could cradle her in my arms.

She was too fucking still.
  Her eyes were closed and her chest was barely moving. 

“Please,” I said into her hair. “Just
keep fucking breathing. Please.”

I leaned back, trying to get a handle on her injuries.  There was no blood.  Was that good?  Or bad?  I didn’t know.  Fuck.

“Cutter!”

Brandy’s voice cut
into my clouded thoughts.  When I looked up at her my eyes burned with unshed tears.

“Help me,” I whispered.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Call 911. An ambulance.”

She reached into her pocket just as sirens rung through the air. 

Thank God.

“It’s not your baby,” Brandy stated suddenly.

“What?”

“I’m really fucking sorry, Cutter.”

“You’re really fucking
sorry
?” My voice sounded like ice but the words burned like fire.

Brandy shot a frantic glance at Melissa’s unmoving form and took a step away.  The sirens were getting louder. 

“It wasn’t my idea,” she said.

“Whose goddamned idea was it?”

“Her mother’s.”

Jesus H. Christ. Of course it was.

“Are you even pregnant?” I demanded.

“Yes, but it’s Billy’s. He kicked m
e out when I told him. Then Joan Stover approached me, and I was desperate and I couldn’t say no to all that money. Cutter, I - ”

I cut her off. “Give me your phone.”

“Who are you calling?”

“The best fucking lawyer I know. My dad.”