Psycho Ex Boyfriend (Standalone New Adult Romance) (The Alpha Brotherhood Book 2) (14 page)

“Betty had hip dysplasia,” I explain, desperate to quell her disapproval. I’m so close to getting her back. So fucking close. “She had to be put down anyway. I felt lucky, all in all. I’d rather have done it quickly myself out in the woods than watch the light in her eyes fade away in some office.”

“How?”

I form a toy gun with my fingers and pull the trigger, pushing the memory of lying in the cool grass next to Betty back in to the deep recesses of my mind where it belongs. Bree bites the insides of her cheek, staring up at the ceiling. “That man, Adam. That fucking man.”

“It is what it is.”

“If it was so easy for you, why the hell did you come back so fucked up?”

I wasn’t that fucked up. 21, worth millions, my choice of women at my beck and call. I was on top of the world. But I clearly remember scaring the shit out of her, often in bed. Sabrina wouldn’t believe it so I won’t bother telling the story, but putting my limping dog out of her misery wasn’t the moment that cold darkness crept into my chest and never left. That’s my brothers’ story, not mine.

For me, it was the first time I fucked someone other than the woman beside me. That was the first time I felt like the miserable piece of shit that I am. My brothers were more than eager to lose themselves in the bound flesh of my father’s harem that was presented to us. I hesitated. I eventually got over my shit and then some, but not that night. I’d already had the real thing and didn’t want a replacement. I still can’t fuck women with dark skin or exceptionally curly hair.  I’ve made exceptions on the latter if I knew it would drive one of my brothers insane, especially if it might make them do something foolish. They often became attached to our toys. I never had the luxury. I left my heart inside of her and still haven’t gotten it back.

“What did you do?” I ask. “After I left.”

“I did what every teenage girl would do. Cried for months, misbehaved, and let my grades suffer over some silly boy that broke my heart and never looked back.”

“
You
let your grades suffer?”

She nods, shaking her head and laughing. “My GPA barely made it.”

Sabrina has never told me that before. She graduated with a perfect GPA, too, so I couldn’t have derailed her that much. “I looked back.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I
came
back.”

“And then you left, came back again, fucked around on me the entire time before you left again. And again. And again.”

“You never actually wanted me to stay.”

“You really believe the bullshit you say?” she shoots back.

“No,” I admit. “No, I don’t.”

She’s pissed and about to storm off, rising to her feet and taking a final look around the room that shaped our youth. And probably wondering why she wasted so much time on me.

“Why didn’t you just stay away?” she asks, turning around just before she leaves.

“Which time?”

“The first time. That damned first time you crawled back into my life when you could have just left well enough alone.”

“Unfinished business. Selfishness. Lust.” I reply. Her eyes roll again and she breathes out a bitter laugh. “Love.”

“
Love
.” she tosses the word back at me as if it’s meaningless. “You are a just a territorial psychopath hell bent on destroying my life.”

Territorial psychopath, maybe. But I never wanted to ruin her life. What’s the point of saying that again for the thousandth time?

“I eventually did sleep with Roderick, you know.”

My jaw drops open as my fist clenches. That’s Sabrina’s superpower. “When?” I can’t stop myself from asking. Twelve years or twelve days, it doesn’t make a difference. She’s still mine.

“Spring break of junior year.” The detail makes it more believable, but that guy was such a fucking dork. “He got a lot hotter after you left,” she says, reading my mind. “We were together for about two months.”

“Fucker,” I spit, approaching her. Add one more asshole to add to the list of men I need to watch out for. Once they get a taste of Sabrina, they always come back for more.

She holds out her hand for me to take, flashing me that triumphant smile. “Want to hit my college campus next?” she asks. “Maybe we could start screaming at each other in front of my dorm, for old times’ sake.”

College. Christ. That’s when I really fucked it all up.

Adam

Age 20

November 21
st
. Sabrina is turning 20 today. That’s a mile marker birthday, the sort of occasion that makes bad behavior acceptable for a good girl.

This should have worn off by now. Four years. Two thousand miles. Possibly a thousand girls, too. Yet I’m still tempted to call her every day. Every fucking day.

I sit patiently in the private room of this upscale restaurant like I do every third Tuesday of the month. Checking my watch, I realize that I only have an hour before the man I’m actually here to see walks through that door. I’d rather my brothers didn’t know about him.

“The real estate bubble is about to burst,” Shane says. “There’s no way I’m doing that.”

Trent finishes chewing the last bite of his steak slowly. He always waits a long time to respond when Shane is getting hasty, and Shane is always hasty. “We survived the dot com bubble well enough.”

“That’s because we were too young to invest in it.”

“You know what I mean,” Trent replies, referring to the practice portfolios we maintained in our youth. “You’re missing out, man.”

Shane isn’t missing out on shit and he knows it. Trent’s baiting him. These two never quit trying to trick each other into bad investments and I don’t have time for their bullshit.

“I personally can’t wait for the bubble to burst,” I remark, motioning for the check because the last person finished chewing and they were too busy arguing to notice. It’s always a race to see who will pick up the tab and leave the others looking like a girl trying to decide if she needs to put out on the first date.

“How can you say that?” Shane exclaims. “Millions of people will lose their homes and savings”

“I know,” I reply, feeling momentarily guilty but not foolish enough to let it show. “But the rental market is in the shitter and I’m tired of waiting for it to rebound.” It makes up the largest chunk of my currently very real portfolio, which is making me lag behind my brothers. On paper. For now.

“It will probably take the world economy down with it,” Trent adds.

“Our hands are clean. We haven’t underwritten any of those bogus loans,” I remind them. “Everything comes to an end.”

“Except us,” Shane and Trent say in unison, quoting our father.

At that, we all grin and mentally pat ourselves on the back for our penchant for diversification. And
starting
companies that provide value, not just playing the numbers game and betting on someone else’s work. We exchange a few more facts and figures, place friendly wagers on speculations, dots some I’s and cross some t’s. Then Shane checks the weather in New York City and we all laugh at Ian and Elijah for being foolish enough to build their castles in the old world when sunny California was ripe for the taking.

The laughter fades away as an unspoken longing settles over me and Shane. At least Elijah and Ian are home.

Exchanging niceties and jabs, we step into the sunshine and forget about Chicago. They ask if they’ll see me at the club tonight and I tell them that I might have to fly out for a meeting, the way I always do the third Tuesday of the month. I’ve shown up at the club every time, but who knows? This might be the day I break down and go after her.

I walk out the door with my brothers and get in a limo. Then I come right back here, tipping the hostess generously for her discretion. Oliver arrives precisely on time. He takes a seat across from me and hands me the stack of folders that I pay him for. The server takes his order and closes the door, leaving us to our business.

Trent is still hung up on Emma as I suspected, confirmed by photographs of them leaving the movies on two separate occasions in the last four weeks. Looks like I should start fucking her again.

Shane has been keeping to himself lately, seemingly more concerned with wiggling out from under his tortured mentor’s thumb than women. I’ll leave him to that. He should have never agreed to apprentice under that brother to begin with. He’s unstable. Most geniuses are.

My own mentor isn’t paying attention to me, which is why I wanted him. Jake will surely let me off the leash early. Still, I’ve become accustomed to knowing that no one is keeping close tabs on me at university. The idea of an apprenticeship is unpalatable. Unfortunately I don’t have a choice.

Ian and Elijah are both still wealthier than I am. On paper. Fuckers. When is that bubble going to burst again?

No word on where Father’s been spending his days. I’m not sure that I even want to know, aside from the fact that I’m paying someone to find out.

The next is a series of profiles on the younger brothers coming up behind us. I’ll be stepping up to be a mentor myself before I know it and I’d prefer to invest wisely.

The last two folders are the most important to me, as well as the most difficult to look at. What do I want first? The bad news or the bad news. I’d rather look at a picture of the woman I’m still reluctantly in love with than stare into the face of the man that murdered my sister. I’ll do that tonight over scotch.

“Same boyfriend?” I remark, transfixed by the image of Sabrina on the arm of her suitor. The same guy I’ve seen for the last six months. Which means they’ve survived the summer break apart. “Looks serious.”

“I’d say so. They’re in Ghana right now.”

“Sabrina is in
Ghana
?”

“That shouldn’t surprise you.”

It really shouldn’t. The first thing she did when she got to college is rediscover her place in the African diaspora after her whitewashed childhood. And her heart apparently just won’t stop growing. She’s still prepping for law school, her academic record impeccable as always. Probably could have done better on the test I’m staring at now, which means that he is probably distracting her. A Poly Sci major? Named Brent? What a joke. If he pushes her into public service, I’ll have him killed.

Her folder is unusually thick this visit, filled with prints of all the work she’s done so far in the elective art class that she doesn’t really have time to indulge in. There’s an abstract painting of a little blond boy holding an even smaller black girl’s hand. The top starts out bright and beautiful, but the colors fade into drops of murky browns and purples at their feet, as if they’re melting. My stomach turns over. A woman would say that it fluttered.

“Charity work?”

“Of course.”

“Is she safe?” I ask.

“Relatively. You’ll get pictures either way next month.”

“Fuck!” I slam my fist on the table, causing the utensils to bounce. Oliver catches a peapod midair and tosses it into his mouth, unfazed. “When does she get back?”

“It’s only for the Thanksgiving break. It was a last minute decision, or you would have known about it last month.”

“The next time Sabrina makes a last minute decision that takes her out of the country, I need a phone call.”

Oliver makes a note. “I’ll tell the private investigators assigned to her detail.”

“And I want more information on Brent.” I do my best not to spit out his name.

“Already done.” He slides another folder toward me.

“I appreciate the anticipation,” I say, tucking that information in with the rest of it.

When I get home, I finally get the nerve to learn more about the guy fucking my woman. There’s a stack of similar folders on Sabrina’s love interests over the years, but all of those relationships fizzled on their own. This guy though, this fucking guy… might actually be good enough to deserve her. Goddamn it.

I have her number, but I’ve never actually dialed it before. Today would finally be the day, but I can’t because she’s halfway around the fucking world. So I decide to start doing research on Ghana and the charity she’s chosen to work with. Or should I say, the charity Brent dragged her into.

For fuck’s sake. That was a depressing mistake. A few thousand dollars in donations later, I walk out the door and make my way to the club. The girls I’ve had before throw themselves at me, but I rarely go back for seconds. I’m looking for something new and when I don’t find it, I make a few calls to get it. They arrive at my door a few hours later, but I spend most of the night watching them fuck around with each other before finally indulging myself. Even that isn’t enough to get Sabrina off my mind.

The next month, a different representative from the organization brings me my requested information. I prefer Oliver, but he’s unavailable during the holidays. Must be nice to have people worth seeing.

Brent has some state of the art spyware on his computer now. And a week before Christmas, he started searching for conflict free diamond engagement rings. I don’t fucking think so. I request a weekly update on Sabrina from here on out, but I might have waited too long. I should have put a stop to this a while ago.

Logic and reason are the most important assets a man has. Emotion is the enemy. And I’ve ignored mine for a long time, but I can’t anymore. Sabrina can have her meaningless college boyfriends, she can have a few fuck buddies and one night stands. I tolerate that. I still can’t stop looking.

A motherfucking conflict free engagement ring. He didn’t buy it, but he fucking looked at it. I’m dialing her number even as I tell my fingers to hold still.

“Hello?” Sabrina’s voice. I haven’t heard it in four years. “Hello?”  I try to reply, but nothing will come out. She hangs up on me with a frustrated breath. I think I heard a guy in the background. It’s probably him.

It takes months to break them up. He’s older than her and graduating soon. The easiest thing would be to land him a perfect job right out of college, something across the country. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to set this asshole up for life, not to mention that they’d probably try to make it work long distance. That’s what she wanted to try with me when I left.

Instead I fabricate an affair, on her part. I’m too much of a coward and show up to the door to try to tempt her into the real thing. At first, I get someone to create photos of her with someone else and text them to him. They have a huge fight, but she manages to convince him that it isn’t her. Obviously it wasn’t, but I still hoped that would work.

The previous failure just seems to have made them stronger, which motivates me further. I get one of our tech guys to plant a series of text conversations on her phone, but it looks like Brent is one of those enlightened, trusting assholes that respects privacy. When that doesn’t work, I go as far as hiring a guy that looks like me and has a similar lack of morals to spike her drink at a party. She’s falling all over him in front of everybody and then he goes home with her. He doesn’t touch her of course, I’m not a monster. But he does text Brent to come over the next morning so he can find them in bed together.

Of course that works. A better man would feel guilty, but that man wouldn’t have done something so despicable in the first place. All I feel is relief.