Talkin' Trash
Page 38

When I’d woken up hours later, naked as a jaybird and lying next to a crinkled note that said, ‘Thanks for the good time,’ I’d had a minor freak out.
I hadn’t been able to control my body, and I’d laid there wondering what in the hell had happened to me.
It was only after I’d been able to get a hold of Elouise—since she’d been the last person to talk to me—that I’d gotten help.
I’d tried to send a text message to Conleigh as I’d waited for my body to respond to commands, but even that hadn’t gone well. My hands had felt like they’d been wrapped in cotton—right along with my mouth.
Honestly, I was surprised that Elouise had been able to understand that there was something wrong.
The next few hours were a whirlwind.
At some point that morning the paramedics had arrived, and after a ride to the hospital and another couple of hours on IV fluids to flush whatever I’d inadvertently ingested out of my system, I’d finally been aware enough to get back online.
Only, not one single time had Conleigh returned my calls, and I’d gotten really worried.
What if the same thing had happened to her that had happened to me?
It was only when I’d checked myself out of the hospital AMA—against medical advice, and was on a private flight back to Texas, that I finally caught wind of what had happened. Of what Conleigh had likely seen—and realized that things had gone from bad to worse.
Bayou had reported that she was fine, and at the hospital. But it was Pru who’d relayed what she had seen, and from there I realized the reasoning behind her radio silence.
The woman had filmed us. Filmed herself touching my body.
And then had released it to the public.
In the span of thirty-two hours—twenty-five of which I couldn’t account for—I’d lost Conleigh. I’d lost my contract with FaithSports, and I’d lost my sense of goddamn dignity.
I felt like trash. Like a piece of well-used, left-on-the-side-of-the-road, trash.
And dirty.
So goddamn dirty.
“Let’s go.”
I looked up to find the last person in the world I thought would’ve been there to help—Tyson.
Tyson was standing at the side entrance to the ER, the one that Conleigh had met me at a few times as I’d picked her up over the last couple of weeks, and was staring not at his brother, but at me.
I frowned, my head once again whirling.
“Uhh,” I hesitated. “What?”
Tantor started laughing and walking his brother’s way, but Tyson held up a hand. “No. Stay there.”
And that was about when the media finally got around the police officer who’d stopped them all and sent them back to wherever he’d had them corralled to anyway.
One of them slipped past the cop’s eye and started to make a beeline straight toward me.
Knowing not to look a gift horse in the mouth, I slipped into the open door that Tyson held for me and breathed a sigh of relief the moment I was through, Tyson slammed it shut.
It took me all of fifteen seconds to ask him, “Why’d you do that?”
Tyson was staring at the metal door and drew in a large breath that made his shoulders rise, then blew it right back out.
“My brother’s been fucking up my life for so long that I don’t know how to fix anything anymore.” He paused, finally turning to look at me. “I became a doctor just to spite him because he said I couldn’t do it. My brother’s spent his entire life making sure mine was a living hell, and the moment that he finally left me alone to live my life, I did. I went to school, worked my ass off and became a doctor. Luckily during some of that time, he went to jail, otherwise, I don’t think he’d have given me as much time away from his influence as he had, and I might not have graduated. I…”
The metal door had something slammed against it.
“My brother doesn’t like when he’s told no.” He flinched again when it was hit again. “God, I hate him.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I hated him, too.
But I had a feeling this man in front of me had more of a reason to hate him than I did, despite the fact that Tantor had practically ruined my life in one fell swoop.
He definitely knew the easiest way to get to me that was for sure.
The bad thing was, I had no clue whether anything was actually done to me or not.
Sure, there was a video and multiple pictures of us together, but each agonizing minute I’d sat looking through those pictures, and watching the short clip that was uploaded, nothing but touching on top of my clothes had ever happened.
Hell, in all honesty, I’d had my eyes closed and my mouth wide open because that was just straight up how I slept.
Which should’ve been the first indication that I hadn’t been there willingly, seeing as when one was enjoying what a woman was doing to him, they didn’t have their hands slack at their sides, and their mouth wide open with drool coming out of the corner of their mouth.
And hell, my clothes had still been on for the most part.
The way she’d positioned herself, she’d been blocking my lower half from the camera that she’d set up, but if you looked closely at my thigh, you could just make out the very edge of my black boxer briefs.
“You told my brother no, didn’t you?” he asked.
I looked over at him in confusion.
“What?”
“You told my brother no,” he said. “That’s why he had my sister help him do what he did.”
I frowned. “How do you know that your sister helped?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a picture, then turned it around and showed me.
“Not that I really needed to see the tattoo or anything because it looks exactly like Tara, but that confirms it to everyone else,” he explained. “That long hair is hard to miss. It’s too distinctive.”
I looked at the hair, and the tattoo, and finally realized that I knew the woman from somewhere.
“I don’t understand,” I finally said, leaning my back against the wall. “Are you going to help me?”
Tyson pushed his phone back into his pocket and nodded once. “It’s time that I start fixing what he’s breaking.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine for the first time. “And if you blame anyone out of all this mess, blame my brother. Tara? She was probably forced into it just as surely as you were. He and my father have such a stranglehold on her that it’s not even funny.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and if I was getting the man’s help to take down his brother, I definitely wasn’t going to quibble and risk pissing him off. Instead, I shrugged and hoped that it was a good enough answer to appease him.
But, if push came to shove, the girl was going down.
What she did was wrong, and I didn’t care how hard she was pushed. You didn’t do shit like that and get away with it.
Chapter 18
Stop destroying the Earth. It’s where I get my tacos.
-T-shirt
Linc
“That’s Tara, my ex.” Rome narrowed his eyes and stared at the picture for a long few seconds, and then stiffened. “God, she’s really good at fucking up lives, that’s for sure.”
It’d taken me a long time to come up with it with the way my head was so fucked up, but it’d finally come to me how I knew her, and I’d just had my suspicions confirmed.
“That’s Tara all right,” Liner muttered. “Looks a little different, though. Skinnier. A lot skinnier. Unhealthy skinny.”
I’d thought the same thing, too.
I hadn’t remembered it until he’d said it, but the memory of looking into the woman’s pale, sunken eyes had been one that I was surprised I forgot.
She looked like skin and bones.
Hell, on the plane, I hadn’t given her more than a few stray looks because of the way she looked.
She looked emaciated, and honestly, it was hard to look at her because she looked so frail and unhealthy.
She wasn’t the same pretty little viper that she was when she’d been making Rome’s life hell when it came to their kid.
No, this woman was night and day different from that woman.