"Torey?" I say his name one, two, three more times but the way he's staring directly behind me, clutching his abdomen, tells me Torey isn't here right now. No, Torey is somewhere in his mind, dealing with some internal struggle.
Fuck. I've pushed him too far.
"Come on, man." I cautiously walk up to him and place a hand on either one of his shoulders which has him automatically jerking away from me. "I'm sorry," I say gently and add, "come back to me."
He shakes his head slowly two times before seeming to blink back to reality. Being in the marines, experiencing this kind of behavior first hand, had me feeling a whole boat-load of shitty. I'd triggered him. His breathing slows and there's a look of resolve that washes over his features. Torey tears his hand away from his abdomen, looking down at it in disgust before bringing his intense lapis gaze back to mine.
"Tell me," his voice is calmer than I'd been expecting. It's the calm before the storm.
"Tell you what?"
"Stop playing stupid and just tell me."
"I don't know what you're—"
"JUST FUCKING TELL ME!"
I flinch away from his roar with a shake of the head, "there's nothing to tell." At least there's nothing I want to tell him yet, especially with his state of mind right now. His breathing starts picking up again, chest visibly inflating and deflating. "Torey, you need to calm down."
"Do not tell me to fucking calm down, you lying piece of shit."
"Torey!"
"No, you want to treat me like I'm some horrible degenerate? Then fine. I have no problem reverting back to that, it's become my default setting. You say I treat you and my family with no level of respect, the same disrespect I've shown my hostages? You know exactly what I had to do to those people and it was a lot fucking worse than being a blunt dick. If I'm being too straight-to-the-point it's because I know the people who are supposed to be loyal to me are lying to me. You are lying to me." The animalistic way he'd said those last words, that casual way he slinked closer, as if his body was moving on brute instinct toward prey, has all of my senses on high alert. Torey is in predator mode. "There's only one thing that I can think of that you could've walked in on him talking to his brother about that you would try and hide from me." I take a step backward, steeling my features as to not give anything away. He rubs his chin with his thumb and forefinger, looking me up and down. "She was with him, wasn't she?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You're good, you really are, but you're not better than me at this game." Those bright blues are sparkling fiercely, a sick, sinister type of satisfaction smeared all over his face. "They fucked. Dani and my replacement." I feel my mouth go dry but I don't show anything. "And it's the fact that you don't look surprised at my words that tells me I'm right."
Shit.
"Torey, they didn't—"
"No, no, let me continue." His voice is light, sounding almost amused and it is terrifying me considering the subject matter. "All this trying to distract me with talk about pregnancy and fathers and—" his mouth snaps shut and a look of absolute enragement captures his features just before he lashes out, wrapping his hand around my throat and slamming me into my car
"Torey stop," I'm just able to grit out. His grip tightens, stealing whatever breath I had left out of my lungs. I grab ahold of his arm with both of my hands and try to choke out his name again to no avail.
"You would lie to me. To me. About that. Right to my face. About that." Death. His voice sounds like absolute death. Like the devil himself, prepared to send me straight to hell. And just before I think I actually may pass out he loosens his grip and tosses me away from him, causing me to stagger, but thankfully I don't fall. "You want to talk about monsters, hostages, me being a terrible version of myself, then you better start saying the word hypocrite every time you look in the fucking mirror."
"What?"
"You," he points a finger at me and then at the house, "you and that piece of shit dragged my sister in the middle of this because you didn't want to tell me that TRISTAN GOT DANIELA PREGNANT!" Those last words were a feral roar.
Oh fuck.
"No, no." I put my hands out towards him and then immediately drop them when he eyes them incredulously. "Tor—"
"DON'T YOU FUCKING TOREY ME!" He screams. He starts pacing the driveway for a moment before whipping a gun out. "That's what's with your awkward fucking behavior every fucking time after we talk. You knew they were fucking. You knew. You knew and you didn't say anything. All you did was distract and confuse me with my fucking dick and I let it happen. Just like I let everyone else fuck with my head, manipulate and lie to me. Here you are doing it. Here you are keeping this THIS from me."
"She's not pregnant," the words were said as flaccid as possible because I feel absolutely deflated by Torey's words and the fact that a woman we mutually love just has sex with another man. "She isn't pregnant..." that I know of. As if he knew I were going to tack on that last part his brows raise in a mixture of disbelief and awareness.
"I'm going to ask you something and I suggest you answer it honestly," he raises his hand, the one with a loaded fucking gun, and aims it at me. It's my turn to look at him with disbelief. "Oh don't act so surprised, Brooks," my name a slur of a word off his tongue. "You may have sucked my dick and let me come all over you but this solidifies that you mean no more to me than those two drugged up whores that I brought back to The Harvey Watch." I feel like I just got punched in the gut but he continues on with, "and the reason I used you, fucked your hand and face, is because I wanted to fuck you over. Nothing more. Nothing less. Because you mean nothing. Nothing. Not a single thing to me." And those blazing blues, cold as a winter's day, hold exactly that— nothing.
I mean nothing to him.
He could pull that trigger but it wouldn't matter. Torey may as well have just stabbed me in the fucking heart. I take a pointed step forward and then another which has him aiming his Nighthawk more forcefully in the direction of my head. I grab ahold of it, jerking the aim toward the center of my chest with, "aim properly." I keep my hand firmly around the gun, digging it into my shirt and skin. "Now ask your fucking question."
"You say she isn't pregnant."
It's not a question but I nod anyway.
"But could she be?" I close my eyes and blow out a deep breath before opening them again. When our eyes meet I can see the hurt and anger, the utter betrayal brimming just beneath the surface. "Could. She. Be."
"Yes."
The painfully enraged sound that bellows out of him is one I have never heard. And that look, that look on his face is one I will never forget. Because this man has been betrayed over and over again. And that's how he sees this. How he sees me; as someone who betrayed him. As someone he can't trust.
"How long?" He's just barely able to grit out.
"How long what?"
"How long has she been fucking him. Raw." I grimace at that but he juts the gun into my chest with, "answer the goddamn question."
"Just once. Just today."
"Do not fucking lie to me."
"I'm not. I promise."
"Yeah well your promises mean jack-fucking-shit now." He tears the gun away from my chest and puts it in the back of his pants. When he'd even grabbed it I don't even know. "You and me— we're done. Whatever was happening is no longer happening."
I feel my features fall at his words because I have done just about everything under the sun to get this man to trust me. To get this man to love me. I blink twice at him in astonishment at my own thought process.
"Torey, please, I was only trying to protect you."
"Oh and how exactly were you trying to do that, huh? By what? Telling me what a shit father I am? What a shit son I am? What a shit brother I am? What a piece of fucking garbage I am? Newsflash— I am more than aware that I have let everyone I know down. And you want to talk about my inability to feel?" He let's out a sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, well, I felt all of that."
"Yeah, because you are self-fucking-absorbed." Shock takes over his features at my words. "I didn't say any of that. That's on you. That's how you feel. I said your inability to feel anything but your own bullshit. Which you can't, as you've clearly demonstrated." I gesture to the space between us. "You sit here and tell me I mean nothing to you after I just found out that Dani not only had sex with another man but oh, she did it without protection too. Which, you know, could put her in the same god awful predicament I found her in in the first place. So now do I not only have to worry about your child I have to potentially worry about another man's child. So excuse me if I don't sympathize with you after learning all of that and still trying to keep my shit together so that you'll keep your shit together but you know what FUCK IT," I throw my hands in the air in exasperation, "I am so tired of having to look out for you, for trying to dissuade you from having yet another meltdown. You want to have one— then have one. You blow everything up and it's on you. Not me. Not anyone else. But you. Because that's who everything is always about, right?"
"Brooks, I—"
"You know what, Torey, save it." I jerk open the car door again, making him have to take a step back. "Actions have consequences. Words have meaning. And, according to you, I have no more worth than a drugged-up whore." I sit down in the seat and grab the handle of the door and with one last look tell him, "you're right, what was happening between us is done. Because I know my worth." With that, I slam the door and take off.
A/N:
Yes, I know, it's been a while. A long while. But I hope to get back to updates, though they may be sporadic in nature. Anyway, hope you're all doing good because I've missed my readers and update days.
Happy hump day!
- Andi