Our Broken Pieces - M.E. Clayton Page 0,46

finally asking for an explanation. An explanation I would have gladly given him ten years ago had he not disappeared on me.

A part of me wanted to hold on to that anger and resentment, but if I had any chance of moving on from this destructive man, who had been a damaged boy, I needed to give my explanation just as badly as he needed to hear it.

Would he forgive me?

Would he laugh at me?

Would he still hate me?

It didn’t matter.

Nothing else matter, but this moment.

This fork in the road was going to send me going off into one direction or the other. One that had Gage in it or the other that didn’t.

He leaned in closer. “Why in the fuck did you leave me, Mystic?”

Chapter 26

Gage~

As much as I wanted to hear her reasons, a part of me feared they wouldn’t be good enough to keep me from killing her.

Yeah, I told Lorcan I wasn’t going to kill her, but standing in her apartment, facing her, angry and damaged as I was, I wasn’t too sure anymore.

Her big, brown doe eyes were filled with sadness and regret, but I wasn’t going to let that affect me. I didn’t want her regret. I wanted her pain.

“Gage-”

“Tell me!” I roared in her face.

Her eyes started to water and that just pissed me off more. “Mm…my…my parents found out, Gage.”

Of all the things I expected to hear, that wasn’t it. “Bullshit,” I snapped.

“It’s the truth,” she cried. “It’s the truth.”

I stepped away from her because I was holding on by a thread and I wanted to hear it all before I finally killed her. “How?” I asked. “How in the fuck would your parents find out, Mystic.”

She let out a deep, shuttering breath. “The…the day I… uh, left, I was called into Mrs. Berny’s office. I…I thought she was calling me in to discuss graduation since I still hadn’t given her a plan of action yet.” I hated how her voice sounded like the truth, but it wasn’t like I could prove or disprove her story when it was all said and done anyway. No one else was here to back up her claim. “When I got there…” A tear escaped and I hated that it bothered me. “…Mrs. Lemas, Mr. Grant, and my parents were in her office with her.” Mystic’s hand reached up as if she wanted to touch me, but she quickly dropped it back down to her side, but not before wiping the tear away. “Apparently, since we had to dress out for P.E., Mrs. Lemas began to notice my bruises. She took her concerns to Mrs. Berny.”

That didn’t make sense. It was Mystic’s word against a gym teacher’s suspicions. I shook my head. “So what?” I argued. “She saw some bruising. That could have meant anything.”

Mystic nodded in agreement. “You’re right. It could have. Except, instead of calling me in to ask me about it, they had called in Margot and talked to her first.”

I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel any more hate for that girl than I already had when she refused to tell me where Mystic had run off to, but I was wrong. “And?”

Mystic closed her eyes, defeat emanating from every pore. When she opened them, they no longer looked sad and regretful. They looked empty. “She told them everything, Gage,” she said, her voice matter of fact. “She told them we had an…abnormally aggressive relationship.”

I almost snorted. What we’d had was sick, twisted, violent, and soul consuming. It had not been abnormally aggressive.

It had been brutal.

“Margot told them I was beating you,” I surmised, wishing I could find her and wring her fucking neck. I knew Margot had a jealous streak in her back then. One Mystic had refused to see because Margot had been her only friend, but it had been there. I’d seen it every time I had refused to share Mystic with the world around us. Hell, everyone had known what Mystic had meant to me.

What she still fucking did, if I want to be honest with myself.

Mystic nodded. “Yes, she did.”

“And what did you say?”

Her entire body slumped against the door. It was as if she’s waited ten years to get her side of the story out and it was exhausting the fuck out of her. “I told them the truth,” she replied. “I told them that you were not beating me. I told them we were a couple and you didn’t do anything to