Page 69 of Knot your Princess
“He won’t hurt her,” I snap, defending my triplet regardless of how little I know him.
“I didn’t say he would,” Trent says with a frown and slips out, leaving me alone.
“Awkward,” I comment to myself.
Deciding to follow, I head out of the kitchen door, leaving the box burning the proverbial hole in the kitchen island. I always thought when I got my hands on it, I’d rip it open with or without the key. Now that it is in front of me, I want to leave well enough alone.
Funny how that works.
“I’m not sure I want to look now,” Trent mutters when I catch up to him.
“Same,” I mutter back as we follow the scent of vanilla back toward the woods. “This is super awkward.”
“Why?”
“I mean, the first time I really met you, if you could call it that, I had my cock in Sophia.”
He snickers. “That was hot. It was like watching myself fucking her…weird, but hot.”
“Yeah, I get that. I watched her with Cain, and it was the same.”
We avoid each other’s gaze for a moment before we hear the sound of flesh hitting bark, and we see them gathered a little way into the woods.
“Cain, stop!” Sophia says desperately. “You’re hurting yourself.”
“Go. Away,” he grits out.
“No.”
We pause a little way away from them, allowing Sophia to deal with this unless things go sideways.
“What did that tree ever do to you?” I ask, using the only tactic I know when things get mixed up with feelings and emotions.
“Fucked me over, like my parents did,” he quips quickly, but not giving up on his quest to destroy the poor tree.
“Ourparents,” I remind him.
That makes him stop. He drops his bloodied fist to his side, his shoulders slumping. “Why you and not me? Why was I the one that got fucked over by that bitch?”
“We all got fucked over,” I start, but then slam my lips shut when he glares at me with fury in his eyes.
“Hmm, yeah. I bet Sir-fucking-Cavendish over there thinks the same.”
“Hey!” Trent snaps. “Don’t fucking blame me for where I ended up. I was left just the same as you, in a fucking box on the side of the road. Any one of us could’ve ended up with a different life. That’s not anything we can control, and it’s not any of our faults.”
“But it wasn’tany oneof us that ended up in an abusive home. It wasme.”
“We know,” I say going forward, although I have no idea how much Trent knows about how Cain grew up. I know very little, just what he has thrown in my face, along with what Quinn said in his office the other day. But now is the time we need to stand together. I glance at Sophia. “Can you give us some time?”
“Of course,” she says and backs away, her face full of growing concern.
Watching Cain watching her leave, it triggers something deep inside him, enough to bring tears to his eyes that he lets roll down his cheeks.
It hits me in the guts so badly that a soft moan escapes my lips.
I lunge forward, flinging my arms around him, trying to comfort him when I know it’s useless. Trent hesitates, but then he does the same.
I can’t help the tears that prick my eyes at the pain and sorrow that our flesh and blood has endured. I let them fall, and I don’t even care.
