F*ck Club: Con Read online

  But Shame stalked over to the window.

  “Fuck you, Con,” he said in a raw voice. “Fuck…just fuck you. And me, too. Damn it, I told myself I’d never touch her. I swore it. I didn’t…”

  His voice was ragged, full of more emotion than Con had ever heard from him.

  “You didn’t what?”

  Shame turned to look at him. “I don’t sleep,” he said bluntly. “Too often, nightmares tear me up and I’m screaming or sweating. Until I was fifteen or sixteen, I still pissed my fucking bed. You got any idea what a mess I am?”

  “Better than anybody else.” Con hitched up a shoulder. “And the shit you went through? It would have had grown men shitting in their pants, not just pissing in their beds. You think I care if you needed rubber sheets for a little longer than some people? What kind of friend do you think I am?”

  Shame opened his mouth, then just sighed and went back to staring out the window.

  “I don’t want what’s inside me to ever touch her, Con. Not ever. It’s bad enough that she sat at the trial and had some idea of what he did to Skyler.”

  Skyler was Shame’s nephew, the other boy that Shame’s father had abused.

  Con understood, as much as he was able.

  But Shame didn’t seem to understand something vital about Charli. She was, and always had been, older than her years.

  Taking a deep breath, Con said quietly, “I have to tell you something. And you’re not going to like it.”

  Shame’s lids flickered. His face turned to stone. His lips barely moved as he responded with a low, “Yeah?”

  “When you were thirteen and I told my parents that I’d seen your dad…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. Even now. “When I told my parents and they called the cops…” He hesitated a moment and then forced himself to finish. “It wasn’t me who saw it, Shame. It was Charli.”

  Shame might as well have turned to ice.

  “What?” The word sounded as though it was being ripped from Shame’s very soul.

  “She knew it would tear you up if…well. She didn’t think you’d want to know she’d seen. So she told me to say it was me. I went to Mom and Dad. I had to…” Con sucked in a ragged breath and made himself continue. “I told them what she’d seen, said I’d gone over there looking for you, found the front door open and just went inside. But that wasn’t how it happened. It was Charli. She had snuck over there to leave a present for you. It was your birthday but you hadn’t invited her to the party your parents made you have every year. So she decided she’d just take the present over later that night. There was a window open. She heard you screaming. And she looked. You don’t need to protect her from your demons, Shame. She already knows about them…and she understands. And next to you, your nephew and your sister, I can tell you, nobody hates your dad as much as Charli does. Not even me.”

  At some point, Con had closed his eyes.

  At the sound of the door slamming, he opened them.

  Now, even more exhausted, he tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

  “This whole fucking year is turning out to be a blood-sucking bitch from hell,” he said to the empty room.

  The only response he heard was the sound of another door, the one at the bottom of the stairs, slamming so viciously he wouldn’t be surprised if the glass was broken.

  Chapter Eight

  Head pounding, Con had to drag himself into B&B. Not even six hours had passed since Shame had left his apartment and it had taken Con a while to wind down enough to sleep.

  It wasn’t just because of his aching jaw, either.

  Nor was it solely because of Shawntelle, although she had definitely been the only reason for the hot, restless, torrid dreams that had plagued him through the night.

  He’d spent a ridiculous amount of time worrying about Shame, and his baby sister.

  Then he’d tried to convince himself that he was wasting his time worrying about Charli. If anybody knew how to land on their feet, it was his facile, quick-thinking, genius little sister.

  But just that alone wasn’t enough to quell his worry.

  Charli could handle academia, the taunts from those who hadn’t liked having a kid several years younger turn out to be smarter than the rest of the class, and the deaths of her parents with admirable aplomb.

  But getting her heart broken by the person she’d loved since she was a girl was a different matter entirely.

  And she did love Shame.

  He doubted anybody else noticed the way she watched the man, but Con had always known how she felt.

  She’d almost barreled into the house when she’d seen Sam Schaffer sexually abusing his son, but even at ten, Charli had been smart. Too smart. She’d known that she, a girl, a small, frail thing, wouldn’t be able to save him.

  So she’d gone home and told Con, and they’d gone to their parents.

  Con’s father had gone straight to Shame’s house.

  Their mother had called the police.

  But by the time people got to the house, it was over and Shame was tucked in bed. He’d been suitably browbeaten at that time and he firmly believed that nobody would take his word over his father’s. So he’d lied.

  For days after, Charli had crept into Con’s room and demanded they go to the other boy’s house and talk to him, make him tell the truth. But Con had been trying to get him to do that for years.

  Now Shame knew that the person who’d finally made the police go to his house hadn’t been Con, but the little girl who’d watched him with moon eyes.

  Charli had been his silent rescuer.

  And she had rescued him.

  Whispers had gotten around after that night and while nobody doubted the word being passed around, neither would they push for anything to happen.

  Camille Schaffer, Shame’s ice-queen of a mother, had gotten tired of the stares and decided that Shame needed a more rigid educational environment. She’d sent Shame to a military school and he came home for only a few short weeks in the summer.

  Con and Shame had communicated via letters, then email for years.

  Then Shame finished school and came home, buying a house with money left to him from an uncle on his mom’s side.

  His mother had been trying to browbeat him into attending Harvard.

  Shame had spent three months working at a strip club instead. That had effectively silenced her about a career in law.

  She’d tried to cajole him into moving back into the family home or perhaps joining her advertising firm.

  He’d started bartending instead, even though he had enough money to lie on his ass on a beach in Tahiti for the rest of his life, had he so chosen.

  As a child, the family that should have protected the kid Shame had been had effectively broken him.

  As a man, neither his mother, his father nor even his distant sister had been able to so much as shake him.

  Then along comes Charli and in the span of a night, Con had a feeling she’d done a lot more than just shake Shame.

  The bastard wasn’t even returning his phone calls.

  Making his way into the kitchen, he caught sight of one of the regular cooks unpacking a box of supplies. “Hey, Sarah. Don’t suppose you’d make me a burger, would you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You have a perfectly good kitchen upstairs. I’ve shown you how to use it. And yet…here you are.”

  “Here I am.” He dropped onto a stool as she proceeded to wash her hands.

  Ten minutes later, he had a burger in front of him with fries just a few minutes away. He carried his food out to the main area of the pub and sat down at the bar. The pub was still empty. But the moment he took a bite, a door opened.

  He swallowed so he could greet his brother.

  Riley, though, wasn’t in the mood for greetings.

  “You son of a bitch. If I find out you had anything to do with Shawntelle quitting, I’m going to…shit. Con, what happened to your face?”

  Riley had come up
on his left and now stood there, eyeing the bruise blooming like an ugly rose on Con’s jaw.

  Con shot his brother a look. “It would appear that I hit something.”

  “Yeah? Like what? That looks like somebody took a swing at you.”

  “Okay, maybe something hit me.”

  Riley blew out a disgusted breath. “You and Shame went at it, I take it.” After a moment, he asked, “Things getting bad for him again?”

  Con ran his tongue across his teeth as he deliberated. Somehow, he didn’t think Riley was going to be as open about what happened with Shame and Charli as Con was—especially since Con already knew that Shame was going to fight any idea of a relationship, tooth and nail.

  Riley might be just fine with Con sleeping around. He had certainly been fine with the idea of sleeping with whichever woman was willing to pay the price.

  But their sister was a different story.

  It didn’t help that’s Shame’s history with women had a pretty solid pattern—one woman, one night, no repeats, ever, except for the ones who paid him. While that might seem to be a problem, considering he lived in a fairly small town, Shame had solved the problem easily enough. He’d been investing in his sex life long before Riley had tested the waters about Shame coming on board with them. Shame had off-handedly mentioned to Con that he could find all the fuck buddies he wanted, because all he had to do was go to one of the clubs he belonged to.

  Shame had a membership to any club within a three hour drive and that included Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis and Cincinnati. Mostly, he stayed inside Kentucky, but he’d built up a network, of sorts. Con suspected all Shame had to do was put out the word that he was interested and any number of women would be ready to respond back with a hell, yes.

  Shame literally spent his life trying to fuck away his demons and Con doubted Riley would appreciate knowing that their baby sister had been the recipient of Shame’s…attention.

  “Con? What’s up?” Riley leaned an elbow on the bar.

  Con could feel how closely his brother was watching him and he took a few more seconds to think through the response he wanted to offer. Finally, he shrugged and said, “You know how Shame is. He’ll get through it.”

  “You need some time to go talk to him?”

  Like it would do any good. “No.” He shook his head. “I think he needs some time to himself right now.” At Riley’s wary look, Con held up a hand. “Leave him be, okay? I’ll track him down in a day or two.”

  Riley’s nostrils flared and a muscle in his jaw pulsed, but after a moment, he gave a terse nod. “Fine. Now…about that other matter.”

  “Shit.” Con rolled his eyes. “No, I am not responsible for her quitting. She said she was going to be leaving soon anyway. Now will you get off my ass?”

  “So the two of you have talked.” Riley’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  Con thought about lying, then decided it wasn’t worth the headache that would come later. “Yeah. We…talked.”

  Riley swore and spun away from him, stalking across the floor before coming back. “Didn’t we decide it was a bad idea for you to get tangled up with somebody who writes exposé, bullshit pieces? Especially considering all the other shit we’re dealing with?”

  Con was getting tired of having to think through every step he made and how it would affect everybody around him. Maybe that made him a selfish son of a bitch, but was it so fucking wrong for him to just want a woman?

  Sliding off the bar stool, he faced his brother.

  “That other bullshit started because some dickhead developed some sort of crazy hate-on for you,” Con pointed out. “I get it—it’s not your fault. But am I supposed to weigh and measure every choice I make because of that piece of shit?”

  “It’s not about weighing and measuring choices, Con!” Riley slashed a hand through the air. “Although, guess what? That’s what it means to be an adult. This is about thinking about the people around you and how it affects them. What are you going to do if she writes that piece she was talking about?”

  “Write it how?” Con closed the distance between himself and his brother. “You think I actually told her anything? We went to a distillery, had some bourbon. Then we had sex. End of story.”

  “You…” Riley shoved the heel of his hand against his eye. “You had sex with her. I thought you weren’t going to do that!”

  “It’s not like she hired me.” Con hated the fact that he felt like he was being lectured here. He was twenty-eight years old. Shit, Riley had been too much the big brother, too much the surrogate parent, ever since their parents had died, and he got it, really. But Con was no longer the teenager he’d been when their folks died. He didn’t need lectures on safe sex or reminders on not to go out and get drunk then drive home.

  “Whoa. Am I interrupting, guys?”

  The sound of Charli’s voice had them both going quiet.

  Riley gave Con a quelling look and turned to their sister. “No. Everything’s good.”

  It was that look that pushed him over.

  “No, everything’s not good. Ry’s pissed with me because I slept with Shawntelle.”

  Charli blinked slowly, the only sign that he’d thrown her for a loop. “Um. Well. Okay.” She moved toward the bar and settled onto a stool. After bracing her chin on her upraised fist, she focused on her brothers.

  Con had never liked being the recipient of that stare.

  It reminded him too much of their mother.

  Mom’s stare had managed to drag long-buried secrets out of him.

  If she had shown up in the pub right then and there, he probably would have confessed to having stolen their dad’s Playboys, watching internet porn while they were out of the house, and cheating on a test his junior year in high school. Oh, and the three-month stretch where he’d smoked. He’d definitely tell her that.

  As it was, he was tempted to spill everything to Charli.

  But he was older than her. Therefore, he didn’t— “For fuck’s sake, would you stop giving me that look? It’s like Mom caught me hiding in the bathroom with the Victoria’s Secret catalog.”

  Charli smiled, but she didn’t laugh.

  He wasn’t surprised. The smudges under her eyes spoke of a long, sleepless night.

  And he knew she hadn’t been working.

  “So you slept with Shawntelle— Isn’t she an employee?” Charli asked, smothering a yawn behind her hand.

  “Not anymore.” Riley moved behind the bar and started to make a pot of coffee. “She quit. Con had a busy night. He slept with her and he got into a fight with Shame.”

  Charli went still.

  Riley had turned toward the coffee pot, his back to them, so he didn’t notice.

  Moving toward his sister, Con stroked a hand down her arm. “It wasn’t a fight. He was in a mood. I pissed him off. He popped me one. It was practically a love tap for him.”

  “Yeah.” Voice faint, she reached up and turned his face to the side, studying the bruise. “It looks like he just wanted to play around.”

  She started to say something else, but to Con’s horror, her eyes went big and damp.

  Oh, shit. Shit. Shit.

  If she started to cry…

  Without thinking about it, he curled an arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer. Lowering his head, he whispered, “It will be okay, Charli.”

  She said nothing and by the time Riley had turned back to them, she had settled on the stool. Her eyes moved to the cup of coffee in his hands. “If you give me a cup of that, I’ll be good for the day, Ry.”

  “Yeah, and you’re heading off to work…when?” He snorted, but once there was enough, she was the first to get some much-needed caffeine.

  Con gave him a disgusted look once Riley made it clear he wasn’t going to get Con any. Coming around the bar, he poured himself a drink.

  The tension in the air was thick enough to cut with a blade and Charli wasn’t immune to it. If anything, she was far more susceptible to
it than either of them would be. She slid a glance between them and Con wasn’t surprised when she focused her eyes on Riley. “So if she quit, what’s it matter if Con slept with her?”

  Riley opened his mouth, then closed it. As he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, Con crossed his arms over his chest. “Shawntelle wasn’t here just because she needed a job. She’s a freelance—”

  “Damn it, Con!” Riley snapped.

  “Writer,” Con continued, raising his voice to be heard over Riley’s.

  “She…” Charli held up a hand. “Hold up. Just…hold up.”

  Con lapsed into silence while Riley shot him a fulminating glare. He ignored his older brother while waiting to see what Charli would think. She’d met Shawntelle only a couple of times, but he’d trust his sister’s ability to judge character over just about anybody he knew.

  “I take it she was here to write a story.” Her eyes were troubled when she looked from Riley to Con. “About…you guys. And I’m guessing it didn’t involve the bar.”

  “She never outright said exactly what the focus of the story would be. She just…alluded to writing about…ah…male escorts.” Despite the fact that they both already knew that Charli was aware of what was going on—or what had been going on—it was awkward to be discussing it. “I didn’t buy it. It felt off.”

  “Male escorts.” Charli’s jaw went tight. Hands flexing on the surface of the bar, she looked away.

  “Ooooh-kay. Did you talk to her?”

  “Hell, no.” Con rolled his eyes.

  “You just fucked her.”

  “Charli!” Riley snapped.

  “Oh, shut up,” Charli snapped back. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m twenty-four. I graduated from high school almost a decade ago. I’ve got an IQ of 168. I’ve finished medical school, had my hands inside dead bodies and I’m halfway through my first-year residency. If I want to say the word fuck, I can.”

  Riley looked like he wanted to argue, but apparently thought better of it.

  Probably realized it would just make him look like an idiot, Con figured. He would have applauded, but when Charli was that mad, he’d just as soon not have her attention focused on him.