Betrayal: Brianna's Secret (The Betrayal Series) Read online

  BETRAYAL: BRIANNA’S SECRET

  THE BETRAYAL SERIES

  BY

  SOFIA VELARDI

  BETRAYAL: BRIANNA’S SECRET (THE BETRAYAL SERIES)

  Copyright © 2014 Sofia Velardi

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  DEAR READER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chapter I

  After staggering through the streets of Manhattan for close to an hour, Abby still had not summoned up the courage to look Kyle in the eye, let alone confess to her betrayal. But she knew there was no point in delaying the inevitable. So she went home.

  With her mascara smeared all over her cheeks and tears still pouring out of her red, puffy eyes, Abby stepped up to the curb and hailed a cab. She had to tell Kyle what she had done. She knew that if she kept her indiscretion a secret, she wouldn’t be able to go on like nothing had happened. She wouldn’t be able to hug him, kiss him, and make love to him without bursting into tears.

  She understood that coming clean would probably mean losing Kyle forever. But she didn’t want a relationship built on lies. She’d rather be cast aside by him than live with the burden of her regret and guilt for the rest of her life.

  Abby jumped inside the first cab that stopped. After giving the driver her address, she pulled her broken phone out of her clutch and began to read a handful of text messages Kyle had left her.

  Where are you? Are you all right?

  When are you getting home?

  Why aren’t you answering your phone? Read the string of texts.

  Kyle had also left her two voicemails. Abby listened to them, and they asked pretty much the same questions as the texts. Abby was not ready to talk to Kyle yet, so she decided to text him. With trembling hands, she popped up the keyboard on the cracked screen of her phone and started typing.

  I’m sorry. Heavy traffic. Be home in 15.

  She had to lie to him again. What was she supposed to say? Honey, I just fucked your sister. Be home in a bit? She had no choice. She needed to be in front of him when she confessed and he called her the world’s worst piece of shit girlfriend and kicked her out of their apartment.

  Convinced that their relationship was going to be over after her confession, Abby began to make plans for her life post-Kyle. She wondered if Jeremy, her boss at the bookstore, would let her sleep there while she figured out what to do. Abby reminded herself that she could always go home after she was done with her finals and then move back to the dorms in the fall to finish her last year at NYU.

  She had no idea what she was going to do. The one thing she knew for certain was that she did not want to see Brianna ever again and was determined to stay away from her whether Kyle forgave her or not. Brianna had also left her a string of text messages and voicemails, but Abby ignored them all.

  Abby leaned her head against the taxi’s glass window and sobbed softly, but not soft enough that the Middle Eastern cab driver couldn’t hear her.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” the driver asked with a heavy accent and genuine concern in his voice.

  “No. I’m not okay, sir,” Abby replied, gazing at the driver through the rearview mirror, her face contorting and the tears flowing even more copiously down her cheeks.

  “Why? What happened? Someone hurt you?”

  Abby shook her head. “No. I’m the one who hurts people, good people who don’t deserve it.”

  “You seem like nice girl. I’m sure what you did, you didn’t mean to do.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, but you should reserve your compassion for someone who deserves it,” Abby replied between sobs and sniffles. “I don’t. I’m not a nice girl. I’m just a terrible, horrible person.”

  “Don’t say that, Miss. God is great. If you are sorry in your heart, He will forgive.”

  A nervous chuckle escaped her lips as she stared at the sweet, bearded man through the rearview mirror. She was touched by his kindness. Friendly cab drivers are rare in New York. Compassionate, kind ones are even rarer. The cab driver’s words were like a soothing balm rubbing against her bruised spirit. She retrieved a piece of tissue from inside her clutch and dabbed her leaky eyes with it.

  Abby wished things were as simple as that nice man suggested. She wished she could’ve just asked Kyle for forgiveness and everything would’ve gone back to normal. She knew Kyle. Kyle was a kind, loyal guy, but he was also a guy who did not tolerate betrayal from anyone. She had watched him break long-term, solid friendships because friends betrayed his trust. Kyle had cut people out of his life over things that were nowhere near as serious as what she had just done.

  Abby understood that apologizing and expecting Kyle to forgive her was nothing but a pipe dream. The reality was that she was in for a truckload of heartache, and she felt she deserved every bit of it. She just wished there was a way she could’ve spared Kyle from the pain she was about to cause him.

  As for Brianna, Abby did not care whether she hurt or not. She pulled up her texts up on her phone screen and deleted all of them, one by one, without reading them. The space in her heart that once held compassion and goodwill towards her boyfriend’s sister, now held resentment and contempt.

  Abby tried to foolishly convince herself that it was all Brianna’s fault. She desperately wanted to believe that if Brianna hadn’t kissed her that night at Ryan’s party, they wouldn’t have ended up in bed together.

  But no matter how hard she tried to put it all on Brianna, deep down Abby knew she was just as responsible as Brianna for what went down at that hotel suite. Gazing at the busy New York City streets through the car window, Abby accepted the fact that she had to stop pointing fingers and take responsibility for her actions.

  Abby was still dabbing her eyes with tissue when the cab pulled in front of her apartment building. Abby gazed at the pre-war brownstone through the glass window of the car and wondered if she was looking at it for the last time. She fished a couple of bills out of her clutch and handed them to the kind driver.

  The sweet man grabbed the money from Abby’s fingers and said something in Arabic to her while she was getting out of the cab. Abby wished the nice driver goodnight and told him to keep the change. Abby didn’t understand what he had said to her, but the heartfelt words still gave her soul a much needed, albeit ephemeral, sense of peace.

  *****

  By the time Abby made it to her apartment’s door, the tears had finally stopped flowing out of her eyes, but the heaviness in her chest was still as suffocating as it was when she got off Brianna’s bed a few hours earlier.

  With her heart threatening to jump into her throat and her stomach doing flips, Abby stuck her key in the keyhole of her door and turned it slowly. She stepped inside the apartment expecting to find a worried and probably angry Kyle waiting for her. Instead, she found an eerily quiet apartment. All the lights in the living room and kitchen were on, but Kyle was nowhere to be found. He did not answer Abby’s text where she told him she’d be home in fifteen.

  She was starting to believe Kyle was not home when she hear
d faint coughing coming from the other side of the apartment. She stepped towards the bedroom, gently pushed against the slightly-open bedroom’s door, and snuck her head in. She found Kyle sprawled on the bed, lying on his stomach. The lights in the bedroom were off, except for the dim glow of a nightstand lamp that illuminated Kyle’s face. Abby tiptoed closer to the bed and saw Kyle was fast asleep.

  Abby gazed at him for a few seconds. She was not surprised he’d just crashed. He had worked eight hours that day at his work study job and then spent the rest of the day and the entire night studying for his finals. He looked peaceful and boyish lying on the bed, his unruly blond hair falling over his forehead.

  Abby fought the urge to lie next to him and brush those unruly locks away. Tears threatened to flood her eyes again when happy memories of their three years together began to flash in front of her eyes. Abby wanted to bang her hand against the wall. If only she had listened to Kyle when he told her to stay away from Brianna, she could have been cuddling with him in that bed.

  If only.

  Abby decided to let Kyle sleep and wait until the morning to crush his heart into a million pieces. Kyle looked like he needed that deep sleep, and Abby still had not summoned up enough courage to fess up to what she had done. She quietly took off her sandals, kicked them to the side, and walked out of the bedroom barefooted. She made her way to the bathroom to take a shower and to try to wash the last five hours of her life off her body and her memory.

  In the bathroom, Abby stared at herself in the mirror. She felt nothing but contempt for the girl scowling back at her. She wanted to kick that girl’s ass for being so stupid. She noticed how terrible the girl glaring back at her looked with mascara smeared all around her puffy eyes.

  Abby brought her hands up to touch her face. The skin on her cheeks felt stiff from all the dried up tears. She sniffled and wiggled her stuffed, red nose before wiping it with the back of her hand. She looked like she felt, like shit.

  Overcome with self-loathing and shame, Abby dropped her gaze to the floor and walked away from the mirror. She staggered towards the shower and turned the hot water on. As hot steam warmed and clouded the small bathroom, Abby began to peel her beautiful aqua gown off her body.

  She had maxed out her credit card buying that dress and the shoes she wore that night. The opening day gala of the New York Philharmonic was a big, prestigious event, and she needed to look presentable. She had kept the tags on the dress so she could return it the next day because she could not afford it. She had been very careful all night not to rip that dress or spill anything on it. But as she gazed at the elegant gown in the mirror, she no longer cared what happened to it.

  After unzipping it, Abby pushed the dress down her hips and let it fall around her until it was pooling at her feet. She slipped out of her panties and bra, and with her feet soiled from walking barefooted, she stepped on the dress, soiling it, to get inside the tub. She walked over that delicate, gorgeous gown as if she was stepping on some cheap bathroom mat from the dollar store.

  Abby stepped under the showerhead and let the stream of water snake down the curves of her body. The hot water was scorching her skin, but Abby didn’t care. She reached for her loofa, and after putting some shower gel on it, began to rub it frantically against her body. She desperately wanted to believe that if she scrubbed hard enough, she could make the evidence of her betrayal disappear. But she knew that no matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t turn back the clock to undo what had happened or to erase the memory of it from her mind.

  Abby closed her eyes and could still feel Brianna’s soft lips kissing her, moaning against her sex, tasting her. She could still feel Brianna’s skilled fingers sliding inside her. The mere memory of it was making her shiver, and she hated herself for it.

  No matter how hard Abby tried to forget, she could still see Brianna’s lust-filled blue eyes gazing down at her. She could still smell Brianna’s expensive cologne on her. She could still hear Brianna’s sensual voice pleading for her to stay and look at her. Brianna’s words have been haunting Abby ever since she stormed out of her hotel suite.

  The image of Kyle lying asleep in the other room suddenly popped up in Abby’s head and made her feel light-headed. Gasping for air, Abby leaned against the wall of the shower to keep herself from falling down. The realization that she couldn’t avoid Kyle forever was leaving her breathless.

  As soon as he woke up, she had to come clean and confess what she had done. As the blistering hot water continued to sting her porcelain skin, Abby gazed down at the water sliding off her legs and rushing down the shower drain. She wished she too could disappear down that drain so she wouldn’t have to face Kyle and break his heart.

  Abby remained in the shower until the water began to get cold. The quietness of the room after she shut the water off sent a chill up her spine. Her own heavy breathing and the pitter-patter of water dribbling out of the leaky sink’s faucet were the only sounds breaking the eerie silence. Abby drew the shower curtain open and glared at the sink’s faucet.

  Stop taunting me, she wanted to yell at the faulty faucet. The dripping sound reminded her of the tick tock of a clock. She knew the clock was running out on her relationship with Kyle. She didn’t need a reminder.

  After wrapping herself in a towel and drying her hair with another, Abby quietly made her way to the bedroom. She noticed Kyle was still fast asleep. Like a cat burglar, she tiptoed towards the dresser so she could pull a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top out of one of the drawers.

  After slipping the shorts and the tank top on, Abby crawled on the bed as carefully and as quietly as she could. Holding her breath, she laid her body down next to Kyle’s. With her back towards him, Abby said a silent prayer hoping Kyle wouldn’t wake up.

  Abby’s praying did not work because as soon as she laid down on the bed, she felt Kyle moving behind her. With her heart clenching and skipping several beats, Abby closed her eyes, held her breath and tried her best not to move. Her heart dropped to her stomach when she felt Kyle’s arms enveloping her while his nose and lips nuzzled the curve of her neck.

  “You’re home. How was the concert? Did you have a good time?” Kyle slurred, half asleep.

  “Yes,” Abby breathed, almost inaudibly, her voice shaking. Fear had overtaken her body, and she could no longer move even if she wanted to.

  “Good. I was worried about you,” Kyle yawned against Abby’s ear.

  “I’m sorry. I…”

  “Just answer your phone next time, okay?” Kyle cut her off. “This is a very dangerous city. When you don’t answer your phone, I fear the worst. I love you Abby, and I’d die if something happened to you.”

  “I love you too Kyle,” Abby cooed. Kyle’s words felt like a thousand pins were being stuck into Abby’s heart. She felt lower than a sewer rat. She fought tears and spent the next few minutes trying to build up enough courage to turn around and confess what a piece of human garbage she was.

  By the time she had summoned enough courage to turn around, Kyle had already fallen back asleep. Momentary relief washed over Abby. She let out the breath she had been holding and decided to let Kyle sleep. She thought it’d be better to talk to him in the morning before he left for work.

  That night was one of the worst of Abby’s life. She spent most of it tossing and turning and having nightmares about Kyle finding out what she had done. Dawn had started to break when she finally dozed off for good.

  When she woke up at around ten that Sunday morning, Kyle was long gone. Abby sighed. She felt as if something or someone didn’t want her to come clean to Kyle. Abby staggered off the bed feeling stiff and exhausted from the awful night she had. Luckily, she did not have to work that day.

  She spent the day doing chores, writing the papers that were going to serve as her final exams, and rehearsing what she was going to say to Kyle. Kyle was going to be gone all day working and studying at the Brooklyn campus. Abby promised herself she wouldn’t stall anymore. She wa
s going to talk to Kyle when he got home later that day and tell him everything.

  When Kyle came home that night, it was after midnight. Abby had spent the entire night curled up on the couch waiting for him. Abby sat up and watched him step towards her. “Hey, babe,” Kyle purred before kissing Abby on the cheek.

  “Are you hungry?” Abby asked as she watched Kyle drag his exhausted body towards the bathroom. “I cooked dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry. I had a burger and some fries not too long ago,” Kyle replied before stepping inside the bathroom and shutting the door behind him. A few minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and water dripping from his blond locks. With his eyes half-closed, Kyle walked past Abby and went straight to the bedroom. He was so tired, he didn’t even notice Abby’s eyes were all red and puffy from crying all day.

  Abby hesitated for a second before getting off the couch and going after him. By the time Abby made it to the bedroom, Kyle was lying on his stomach, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. He was already fast asleep. Abby sighed. It was going to be another sleepless night for her.

  The rest of the week came and went, and Abby still had not told Kyle about her affair with his sister. Between their jobs and their final exams, Abby and Kyle barely saw each other that week. Abby decided to wait until the following Friday, after finals were done, to talk to her boyfriend.

  Chapter II

  “Three down, one more to go,” Kyle cheered as he clinked his wine glass to Abby’s. It was Friday night, and Kyle had decided to take his girlfriend out to dinner to celebrate that their junior year at NYU was finally over. He took Abby to a fancy restaurant in The Village even though they couldn’t really afford it. Kyle felt they both had worked really hard all year and deserved a little treat. Besides, in two weeks he was going to be starting a well-paid summer internship with the New York City Transit Authority. Money was not going to be an issue for them, at least for the rest of the summer.