Pricked (Page 21)

“That I stayed with one of my friends,” she says. Brighton slips her hands into the back pockets of her shorts.

I suppose this is goodbye.

And maybe I should walk her to the door. She did blow my fucking mind, body, and soul three times last night. It’s the least I can do.

Climbing out of bed, I slip on a pair of boxers lying on the ground and walk her across the apartment, to the door in the kitchen.

“Thanks,” she says. “You have no idea how much I needed that.”

“Going through a dry spell?”

Her eyes narrow. “No. I didn’t mean it like that. It wasn’t just about the sex for me.”

Oh, God.

This is exactly the kind of shit that ruins a good time.

“Look,” I preface what I’m about to say. “I don’t date. I don’t do relationships or any of that bullshit. Please, don’t act like last night meant anything. And please don’t project your boyfriend fantasies on me because I don’t care how good the sex is, it’s not going to happen.”

“Wow.” Her jaw hangs and she gives me some sort of death stare.

“Just being honest,” I say. “It’s better that I get that out of the way now before you get hurt.”

“I don’t want to date you either.”

“Good. We’re on the same page.”

“When I said it wasn’t about the sex for me, I didn’t mean it like that … I didn’t mean that it was special or meaningful,” she says. “I meant that I needed that taste of freedom, that feeling of being completely liberated. And I had that. With you. Three times last night. But now you’ve ruined it by being a presumptive asshole, so thank you for that.”

She leaves, slamming the door on her way out.

There’s a small but undeniable chance that I’m wrong about this one. That this butterfly is different from the rest.

I smirk as I strut to the bathroom and start the shower.

She’s hating me now.

But she’ll be back.

21

Brighton

"My God, Brighton, where have you been?” My mother stops pacing the living room when she spots me standing in the doorway.

I pulled the steam room trick again, stopping at the gym on my way home from Olwine, changing into workout clothes, and getting as sweaty as I could before heading home.

“I texted you earlier,” I say. “Remember? Told you I was going to the gym.”

“I know that,” she snips. “I meant last night. I checked the security camera log and you didn’t come home!”

I quell the shock before it registers on my face. My mother is the least techie person I know. The Iron Palace is armed with security cameras, but they’re all managed remotely and we’re only notified when there’s an issue, like a trigger or an alarm or unusual activity.

She must have called the company today and specifically asked them to check and see whether I’d come home last night.

“I ran into Honor this morning,” she says. “At the coffee shop in Brookhill.”

Shit.

“She says she’s been home for weeks and she hasn’t seen you once.” My mother’s lithe arms fold across her chest, her manicured fingers rapping against them. “What is going on with you, Brighton? Why are you sneaking around? What are you not telling me?”

The pitch of her voice gets higher and higher, laced with a frenetic undercurrent of terror. She truly believes something God-awful is going to happen to me if she lets me out of her sight for more than two seconds. I suggested to my father once that we send her to see Dr. Greenberg, but he brushed me off.

He told me I wasn’t a mother and I wouldn’t understand. He tells me that the night of my grandparents’ murder was a turning point for her, and clinging to me is the only way she’s been able to cope.

To this day, I’ll occasionally hear my mother wailing in the middle of the night, followed by my father’s hushed voice as he attempts to calm her down. It’s been over ten years and she still has nightmares about The Incident.

“Well.” She taps a house-slippered toe. “Explain yourself. I didn’t raise you to be a liar. And you will not sully the Karrington name all because you want to run around like a street child.”

My legs ache, the muscles trembling and threatening to give out. And my lips are swollen from hours of kissing Madden. I need a shower. A long nap. And time to come up with an explanation that won’t send her to the emergency room with palpitations like that one time she went to pick me up from school and went to the south door instead of the west and was convinced I’d been kidnapped because I wasn’t there.

I tug at my damp, sweaty clothes. “Can I take a shower first? Before we talk?”

Her eyes widen, as if she’s appalled at my nerve to make such a request.

“No,” she says. “I’ve waited all morning to have this discussion with you, and we will have it now. So tell me. Tell me what’s going on, Brighton. And don’t you dare lie or there will be consequences.”

I begin to say something and then I stop. While I hate to lie, I can’t tell her the truth. She won’t be able to handle it. It’ll traumatize her.

“Are you … are you seeing someone?” she asks. “A boy?”

I suck in a breath, quashing the urge to correct her usage of the word “boy.”

I’m a woman. I don’t talk to “boys.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not seeing someone. But would it be so bad if I were?”

She’s quiet, which probably isn’t a good thing.

“I’m twenty-two,” I remind her. “A college graduate.”

Her eyes narrow, like she doesn’t understand my point.

“You realize how ridiculous it is that you monitor my every coming and going at all times, right?” I ask. “I don’t know any other person my age who has to get permission from their mother to go somewhere, who has to check in or adhere to curfews, whose mother controls the vast majority of their wardrobe.”

“You’re embellishing, Brighton.” She rolls her eyes, scoffing. “It isn’t that bad. You’re making it seem way worse than it is.”

“Am I?” I cross my arms. “Because if you want to go there, I’d be more than happy to run you through an extensive list of examples.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she says, shutting me up because deep down she knows this is one argument she won’t win. “Transparency and honesty are not only an expectation in this household, but a requirement. You will not continue to sleep under this roof and enjoy the privileges you’ve known if you choose to stay on your current path of deception.”

She’s bluffing.

Letting me out from under her thumb would punish her more than it would me.

“I know you almost lost me once,” I say. “But you can’t spend the rest of my life punishing me because you’re scared something’s going to happen again. You’re not going to lose me, Mom. It’s okay to let me grow up. It’s happening. In fact, it’s already happened.”

She gasps. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m not a little girl anymore.” I linger for a minute, letting her take in my words and interpret them as she sees fit, and then I leave, heading up to my room and closing the door behind me.

Washing up, I free myself of Madden’s taste on my tongue and his scent on my skin.

Last night was nothing short of perfect—and he had to go ruin it by making assumptions. He might be good at reading people, but at the end of the day, how well can you read someone if you don’t know the core of who that person is?

If he hadn’t said what he did, I’d have entertained the idea of making this a regular thing for the summer. I could easily see myself becoming addicted. Addicted to the release, the escape, the sensation of being wild and free and not bogged down with the obligations and responsibilities that come with being Brighton Taylor Karrington.

For a few short hours, I was a butterfly exploring a strange new land with a man who made her feel the very essence of who she was before he set her free the next morning.

It was glorious.

And it’ll never happen again.

Because Madden Ransom is an asshole.

I finish showering and slip into a robe after drying off. With a towel wrapped around my head, I head out to my bedroom to grab the bottle of vanilla almond lotion sitting on my nightstand, only to stop in my tracks when I find my mother sitting on my bed, legs crossed and hands in her lap.

What I wouldn’t give for a lock on my door—but growing up, my mother wouldn’t have it. She wanted to be able to access me at all times “in case of an emergency.”

“Brighton,” she says, chin lifted and eyes on me. “If you’re dating someone, I’d like you to bring him over so we can meet him. I’d rather know who you’re with than have you sneaking out to see him.”

I laugh, unable to help it. “I’m not dating anyone.”

“Then where were you last night? If you weren’t with Honor?”

“With a friend,” I say. “Who happens to be a guy. A guy that I am very much not dating.”