Our Broken Pieces - M.E. Clayton Page 0,47

me that I didn’t want. I told them they didn’t understand and that it was none of their business.” She shook her head. “I was already eighteen by then, so they couldn’t do anything about our relationship.”

So, what fucking changed?

I stepped to her and caged her in with my hands planted on the door on either side of her head. “And?”

Her chocolate orbs searched mine, and, in that moment, I wished I could kill her. I wished I could erase her off the face of the earth, because I was fairly certain she was going to take what was left of my sanity with her when we were done with this conversation.

I’d always been weak when it came to Mystic Anderson, and that was proving to be just as true today as it had been ten years ago.

“My father threatened to have you arrested and sent to prison for abuse and statutory rape,” she confessed. “Mr. Grant added that he’d ruin any chance you had to go to college and make a future for yourself.”

I reared back, rage making my body vibrate. “Statutory rape?” I seethed. “What the fuck?”

“Margot told them we’d been having sex since we were fifteen, and my father had done his homework with that little bit of information. He knew you had turned eighteen four months before I had.”

“So,” I bit out, enraged at finding out how our relationship had been attacked from all sides. “They couldn’t have proven that we had sex during those four months.”

Mystic shook her head. “Gage, I…I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted. “I had been blindsided and…there was no way I was going to let you get arrested for abuse or rape.”

I was livid.

I was fucking livid, and unfortunately for Mystic, she was the only person here that I could take it out on. “So, you just left?!” I yelled. “You didn’t trust me enough to tell me what the fuck they were doing?”

The blank look in her eyes vanished. It was quickly replaced with her own brand of rage. “Trust you?” she screeched, her hands curled up into fists at her sides. “Are you kidding me?”

I could feel my eye twitch with the need to put my hands on his woman. “You trusted me to wrap my hands around your neck and not kill you while I fucked the shit out of you, but you didn’t trust me with that?”

Her face flushed, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was all from anger. “Two weeks, Gage!” she yelled at me. “Two measly weeks!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I was shipped off to my aunt’s, in Montana, that very night, Gage,” she replied, filling in the blanks of the last ten years. “No phone, no anything. I was so terrified of you being sent to prison, I went. But I hadn’t given up on you, you sorry sonofabitch!” We were facing off like two raging bulls, the poison of the past bubbling over. “It was two weeks before I was able to sneak onto my aunt’s computer to try to contact you. I had some silly, delusional fantasy that I’d tell you what happened, and you’d come for me. I had already made these half-ass plans of what we’d need to run away together.” She was lying. She had to be lying. “But you want to know what happened when I logged onto her computer? I discovered that it only took you two goddamn weeks to erase me from your life. I had been blocked from every one of your social media accounts. I had been blocked from your life!” Her words were cutting deep beneath the surface of all my anger. If she was telling the truth, then she’s not the one who walked away.

I was.

“What the fuck did you expect me to do, Mystic?” I snapped. “From my end, you just up and fucking left. Your dad even handed me the goodbye letter you wrote.”

I realized her anger and pain were every bit as deep as mine when she yelled, “What did I expect?! I expected you to keep your word! I expected you to never stop coming for me! I expected you to prove all that shit you spewed when we were together. All that shit about how you would never let me go. But you did! You gave up after a whole whopping two weeks, Gage!” Her entire body was shaking. Her chest was heaving, and her face was red with hate. “I left because I