Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) (36 page)

“That was a mistake,” I say finally, voicing my angry thoughts out loud. I open the passenger door for Bree and wait till she gets in before slamming it behind her. I walk over to the driver’s side and get in beside her, not allowing myself to look in her direction at all. I’m more mad at myself than at her, I know this, but I’m an idiot and I’m taking it out on her anyway.

“What was a mistake?” she asks in a confused mumble. She can’t figure out why I’m so pissed and that makes me even angrier.

“Going to
The Misfit Mansion
to rescue your
ex
from Parker!” I say, putting emphasis on the word ‘ex’. “I’m not doing it again, Bree. I should have told you the minute you got the call that there was nothing to worry about, but I would have never forgiven myself if something did happen to her and we hadn’t done anything. But after tonight, after actually
seeing
her with him, there’s no way we are going to pretend that he raped her anymore, ok? Whatever you think happened that night is obviously completely wrong. I don’t know what happened, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to know. But you must see that they have a history with one another. She’s in love with him, Bree!”

“You’re wrong,” she replies, but I can tell by the look on her face that she’s unsure now. She knows what she saw in there and it kills me that she’s so affected by it.

“So what did she tell you then? What do you know about the two of them?” I ask pointedly. A part of me wishes she’d just figure it out already! Why can’t she see that all she was to Skylar this whole time was a rebound?

“I don’t know much. We never talk about him,” she says, shooting me an annoyed look. My anger is irritating her but her refusal to see the truth is irritating me too, so I guess we’re even. “She told me he asked her out and that she said yes. She was really excited, and I could tell that she really liked him.”

“And you’re sure it was only a first date?” I ask, attempting to lead her into the truth I already know without having to shock her with it. I really don’t want to have to do that.

“Well, yes, she had just met him.”

I shake my head sadly and sigh. I’m going to have to shock her with it. “I’m sorry,” I say. “She didn’t just meet him. She had been seeing him for a long time at the mansion, she just didn’t tell you about it.”

Bree doesn’t say anything for a while as she stares off into the distance. I can tell she’s going through conversations and memories in her head trying to decide if what I’m telling her makes sense. “How would you even know that?” she asks finally.

“Derrick told me. Skylar and Parker were a pretty tight item for months before that night. She was exclusively his and he was hers. I’m not lying. He cares about her, Bree.”

“You’re full of shit. If that were true, then Spencer wouldn’t have called me.”

“I don’t think Spencer knows what happened that night either. I think he’s just as confused about Parker as you are. But you saw it for yourself in there! How do you explain what it is we just walked in on?”

“I can’t explain it,” she says.

“Because you know what it is you saw. It’s no coincidence that only hours after she confronted us she ended up there. She went back to him. And while we’re on that subject, you want to know how she even knew about us to begin with? Parker told her! Yep, that someone ‘she trusts’, that’s him!”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

I shoot her an irritated look. “Come on Bree, he’s the only person who saw us.”

“So you knew all of this and you didn’t bother to tell me?”

“I couldn’t. Derrick made me promise not to break his
Misfit
code or whatever. I wanted to, believe me, I wish I could have. My nose might not be so broken if I had,” I say bitterly.

She turns away from me and sits in complete silence for a long while. I start up the car and begin to drive to her house, because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t be sure if she’s finally accepting it or if she’s coming up with more arguments to dispute it.

“This is a lot,” she says finally. I think she’s accepting it.

“I’m sorry it all had to come out this way,” I say. I can feel myself calming down. My initial anger toward her is subsiding and I start to feel sorry for her instead. Skylar’s been lying to her for a long time, about everything. I know a little bit about that myself.

She seems to sense my thoughts drifting over to Adrienne somehow. “He’s one of the guys who was sleeping with your ex-girlfriend. Why didn’t you tell me that?” she asks.

“I didn’t think it mattered,” I say with a careless shrug.

“Who was the other guy?”

I don’t reply. Do I even want to get into this right now, or ever, with her? Does a new girlfriend need to know everything about your past before she decides she wants to take you on permanently?

“Full disclosure, huh?” I ask, turning to look at her for a quick moment before bringing my eyes back to the road.

She laughs. “I’ve already slept with you Evan, I think it’s a little late for a full disclosure contract.”

I force a smile. “It was Tris Gallagher,” I tell her. “He was my friend. I mean, we had drifted apart by the time it happened, but it was still a slap in the face, you know?”

“You used to be friends with Tristan Gallagher?”

“He was the first friend I made when I moved here to Markson Grove,” I confess. “He started hanging out with Parker around the same time he and I stopped hanging out, so I never really got to know Parker.”

“And then they started sleeping with Adrienne,” she says, attempting to lead me through all of the details. Why she even needs to know, though, is beyond me.

I sigh loudly, raising my right brow in her direction. “Basically,” I decide to reply because it’s the only thing I can think to say. “Look,” I add, feeling as though I should be defending myself for having been involved with a girl like Adrienne, “when she and I met, she was in a really dark place. Her brother had committed suicide only a few months before and she was a mess. I thought I could fix her. I wanted to fix her because I cared about her a lot. But she couldn’t be fixed, at least not by me.”

Bree’s eyes open wide and she turns to me in disbelief. “She’s Mark’s sister?”

I shoot her a quizzical look. “Twin sister. You knew Mark?” I ask, confused.

She shakes her head. “No, but Spencer did.”

“Oh,” I say and then I realize what she’s telling me. “Oh! Spencer was the guy!”

She nods sadly. “He loved him very much.”

“Wow. I didn’t know. Adrienne never spoke about Spencer. He must have been devastated.” I think about how I would feel if Bree were to kill herself. I think I would want to die too. The thought is depressing.

“He’s doing better now… most of the time,” She says just as I pull up into her driveway and shut off the engine. After a moment, she goes on, “How did you find out about Adrienne being with Tris and Parker? Did she eventually tell you or something?”

I wish.

“Nope. I got a video sent to my phone. I don’t know who sent it. I never found out,” I say. I’ll never go into detail about what I saw on that video. I shouldn’t have seen it. Some things just shouldn’t ever be seen, and that video was one of those things.

“You can’t be serious?”

“Oh, I’m dead serious.”

“And it was happening at the mansion?”

“Probably. The room we were in tonight looked…similar. But there were a lot of differences,” I say with distaste. An image of what I saw on my phone creeps into my mind for a moment and I cringe.

Bree notices the look on my face and smiles apologetically. “That bad huh?”

“Yeah.” I grimace. “That bad.”

“I’m sorry I made you think about it,” she says, leaning over and kissing me softly on the lips.

I squeeze my eyes shut and push my lips firmly onto hers, suddenly needing her lips on mine as though my life depends on it. I take in the warmth of her kiss as I attempt to calm the fear that’s been slowly building up inside of me since the moment I realized that I love her.

She could hurt me as much as Adrienne did. She could hurt me even more so because she’s still in love with someone else. I know this, even though I refuse to admit it out loud. What happened tonight made it crystal clear.

“It’s ok,” I say once the kiss ends and I’ve managed to gather my emotions, “I’m glad there won’t be secrets between us. I think that’s important.”

She looks thoughtful for a moment before finally nodding and I wonder if she knows just how much need came from me in that one simple statement.

“I think so too,” she says and the words are comforting.

Skylar’s a liar, and now that Bree finally knows it, maybe she really can just be mine.

Maybe.

Skylar

Parker didn’t end up sleeping over last night although I did ask him to a number of times. Not that I wanted to sleep
with
him, I just wanted to sleep next to him. But being the chivalrous guy that he is, he thought it would be best for us to pick up where we left off first thing in the morning, and promised that he’d be over to see me as soon as he woke up.

Which is good, because from the minute my eyes opened this morning, I’ve been filled with drinker’s remorse. Should I have done what I did? Was it only because Bree broke me into pieces that I went back to him? Or is there a bigger force at play here? I just don’t know.

I shower and make my way to the kitchen. I need Tylenol and coffee immediately. I’m wearing only my bathrobe and my long hair is still in a mess of wet knots when a knock comes at the door. I panic and run to my bedroom, shutting the door behind me before whoever it is sees me looking like death run over twice.

“Come in,” I call out as soon as my bedroom door is closed. I really hope it isn’t Parker just yet. I need time to process last night’s events before confronting him.

“Babygirl?”

It’s Spencer. Thank God. I rush over to my closet to find something hangover friendly to wear, and end up settling on a pair of black yoga pants and a purple tank top.

“I’ll just be a second,” I call out to Spencer as I slip the clothes on.

“You want a coffee?” I ask him once I enter the kitchen a few minutes later. I take two Tylenol with a glass of water to wash them down.

“Yeah, I could go for a coffee,” Spencer replies. I can tell by the look on his face that there’s something bothering him. Which makes sense because, after everything that’s happened last night, he’s probably really pissed at me.

I sigh. “Ok, Spencer. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

He laughs. “What’s
not
on my mind is more like it.”

“She cheated on me,” I say defensively.

“I know that.”

“Do you think I did what I did last night
because
she cheated? Was it just payback?”

“You’re asking me?”

I shrug. “Just wondering what you think.”

He thinks a long time about the question, seeming to weigh his answers and trying to decide if he should either tell me what I want to hear or what he actually thinks.

“We-el,” he begins finally, leaning up against the counter. “It might have been payback but I think that even if she wouldn’t have cheated, you still would have ended up with Parker eventually. As much as I still don’t trust the guy, you two are drawn to each other.”

I narrow my eyes and turn away in order to reach for two coffee mugs in the cupboard. “You don’t know that for sure,” I say.

I pour him a cup of black coffee, the way he likes it, and hand it to him.

“Yes I do.” He takes a sip from the mug and then puts it down in front of him. “And you do too. You and Parker are inevitable, as much as I wish you weren’t.”

I look over my shoulder at him as I’m mixing cream and sugar into my coffee. Something about his tone makes me feel unsure about his words. How could he possibly think we are inevitable? He’s never seen us together before tonight and I’ve never once let on about my feelings toward Parker during our misfitting days. I mean, sure, he knew Parker and I were together at the mansion, but he didn’t know to what extent. At least he didn’t hear it from me anyway. “What do you mean by that, exactly?” I ask him.

He picks up his mug from the table and walks over to the living room, taking a seat on Cecelia’s old raggedy couch. “I’ve never misfitted with you till last night. You know that, obviously. But what you didn’t know, and what I’ve never told you, is that there were a few times that I was there on the same night as you even though we had promised that we wouldn’t ever do that.”

“Spencer—”

“Wait, I’m not done. I found out about your persona pretty early on. You had me worried, so I started going there on your nights. I wasn’t spying. I promise. I was just making sure no one was taking advantage of you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugs. “We had an agreement and I didn’t do it for long anyway. I asked a few good friends to keep an eye on you, make sure no one hurt you in those rooms while you were too high to think straight. I’m not judging, I’m just saying.”

I take a seat on the chair across from the couch where he’s sitting and light myself a cigarette. I’m so shocked by his revelation that I can’t even think of what to say in response.