Our Broken Pieces

Chapter 26

Gage~

As much as I wanted to hear her reasons, a part of me feared that they wouldn't be good enough to keep me from killing her. Yeah, I'd told Lorcan that 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, and her eyes started to water, pissing me off more.

"Mm...my...my parents found out, Gage."

Of all the things that I'd expected to hear, that hadn't been one of them. "Bullshit."

"It's...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, quiet, 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...she took her concerns to Mrs. Berny."

That didn't make any sense. It would have been 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 that it was possible for me to feel any more hate for that girl than I'd already had when she had 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'd been brutal.

"Margot told them I was beating you," I surmised, wishing that I could find her, then wring her fucking neck.

I'd known that she'd had a jealous streak in her back then, one Mystic had refused to see because Margot had been her only friend, but it'd been there. I'd seen it every time that 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 wanted 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'd 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 that we were a couple, and that you didn't do anything to me that I didn't want. I told them that they didn't understand, and that it was none of their business." She shook her head tiredly. "I was already eighteen by then, so they couldn't do anything about our relationship."