Chapter Twenty Six
Cyrus
Ilie in my bed, angry at myself, but not for crossing the line. I can’t regret it, not with her scent still on my fingers, tongue, and cock, making me hard all over again. I’m used to crossing lines, to doing what others say is wrong. It’s what Crew is, after all, but Blair…
Fuck, there was more than just sex there. I could feel the connection winding through us. Our emotions were heightened from the fight, and when we took it out on each other, it felt… different than it ever had. I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to fuck her, fill her with my cum, and leave her there. I wanted… fuck, I wanted to make sure she was okay, and that pisses me the fuck off.
What is she doing to us?
Isn’t it bad enough my brothers have claimed her as our own, as Crew? Now I’ve gone and fucked the one person in this fucking world I should have never touched. Not because she’s my stepsister or too real… but because Blair is dangerous.
To my family, to my control, and to my heart.
It’s clear her mother is a real piece of shit. I thought Asher’s was bad, even though he romanticises her. At least she truly loved him—unlike Blair’s—just not enough to stop sticking that shit in her body, even when she was pregnant with him. She told our father it was to forget, to forget… forget what? How she fucked a married man and got pregnant? Broke up a marriage?
Our father is no saint, he’s always looking for love, sometimes in the wrong places. Our mother was a cold, gold-digging bitch. It was obvious there was no love between them, so of course he found it elsewhere… but fuck. He got his mistress pregnant, and that pissed off our mummy dearest. But our dear old dad could never be an asshole, so he paid for the baby and everything she might need. He bought her a house and a car, paid her bills, and even tried to be there for her though she wouldn’t have it. Then, the money and items started to disappear, sold for drugs. He didn’t want to believe it, especially since Asher was a baby and her life. It seemed like she was finally turning over a new leaf for him.
I’d never met him, of course, since our cunt of a mother wouldn’t let us. I was angry at first, sure, but he was family, another brother, and maybe one not as crazy as Bray. Then one day, he showed up here with just a backpack, a blanket, a picture of her, and an apology. She left him to try and get clean, she said. My dad took him in and raised him. Mother didn’t like that… shit, the trouble it caused.
But I knew after one look into those bright eyes as he stood there crying and holding his bag… I knew he was my brother and I would do anything to protect him, even at eight years old. I shielded him from our mother’s wrath, helped raise him with Bray, and the three of us became inseparable. It was us against the world…
I grab my phone, not for the first time, to dial some contacts to find his mother. He says he doesn’t want to, that if she wants to find him she knows where he is, but he has an artist’s heart. All soft and yearning, just like her. She was a singer, after all, but we both know the truth. She is either long dead with a needle in her arm or she doesn’t care enough to come back.
I’m surprised Dad hasn’t tried to find her. Honestly, I think she was the only woman he ever truly loved. He found what he needed in her, but life got in the way, and now he buries himself in these cold, greedy women to forget. And Asher? Asher paints his pain. He may have us, a family, but he lost his mother, just like us… and it seems just like Blair.
Her mother may be here, but Blair lost her a long time ago. The way Meredith treated her tonight was the same way our mother treated me, just not so much Bray. She loved Bray, her little beautiful baby boy. She showed him off and doted on him when she remembered she had kids. Me? She hated me because I saw her for who she truly was. I tried to protect him from that side of her, from the callousness she was capable of. Who protected Blair from that?
Tonight, I saw the jabs hit home. They were delivered in the same way my mother used to attack me, ripping me up and replacing any sort of love I had for her and this world with nothing but anger and pain.
Fuck.
She was almost crying when she left. Blair tried to hide it, tried to conceal what was going through her head, but I saw past it. I saw into those eyes and saw the demons she was fighting, so much like my own.
Already irritated with myself and her, I leap to my feet and jerk my door open before storming down the hallway. My hand is on her door before I hear low murmurs and a familiar voice.
Bray.
Jealousy surges through me for a moment as I let my hand fall, and then a smile curls my lips. Good, he should be there for her. He can comfort her, I can’t. It’s not who I am. I can’t bare myself to someone that way, because to offer comfort, you have to make yourself weak. You have to let yourself feel what that person is feeling, and I can’t. It will skew my judgement; it will make it impossible for me to hate her. I turn away and head back to my room.
I need to be able to kill her if need be, to destroy her to save my family if I need to.
It’s… good she’s not alone.
I will never be what Blair needs.
I’m too scarred, jaded, and angry at the world. She may be tough, she might be angry and reckless like me, but she has this inner softness. I saw it earlier in her actions, in the way she loves her friend and protects those she believes need it.
I have no softness, no weakness.
Except for her, it seems.