Read Online His Obsession by Ava Lore - Free Book Online

I'm starting over again with you."
    ––––––––
    "The coffee you make is almost as atrocious as your waffles."
    "What? No it isn't. I demand satisfaction."
    "Satisfaction... like this?"
    "... Oh."
    ––––––––
    "So what's so great about Don?" I asked him one day as we soaked in the hot tub. I couldn't remember how long ago we'd slipped into it and I was vaguely, distantly worried that I was somehow boiling my insides. However, beneath the luxurious pounding of the jets, my body had relaxed enough that I doubted my own ability to move.
    "There's nothing particularly great about him," Malcolm replied after what seemed like a long, thoughtful pause, although perhaps he was just coming back from being asleep. "He is like a brother to me."
    "How so, if he's so mediocre and you're so awesome?"
    He laughed at that. "One can't choose family. Don and I met in Kindergarten, if you can believe that. His parents were very abusive. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. He still has burns on his body from the cigarette butts they put out on him."
    I opened my eyes. "Holy shit. Really?" I'd heard of that sort of thing happening, but I'd never seen it in person.
    "Really. They were the worst. My mother liked to take in stray animals, and she thought of Don as a stray. So he spent more and more time at our house, until he was basically moved in. My family took him in and my father took us both under his wing." His head was tilted back, soaking in the rays of the sun. I don't think he knew I was watching him, because he frowned slightly. "Although now that I think about it, that's kind of a dubious honor. My father was a little fucked up, I think."
    "Oh? You think?"
    "Yeah. I do. He taught us both about how to succeed in life, and everything we did had to be a competition against each other. I always won, but Don was more ruthless." A humorless smile passed across his face. "That's the strange thing. My father liked him more because he was willing to do whatever it took, and I always found myself on the defensive. Just like now, I suppose."
    "So... he's like your brother, but the brother who's always trying to fuck you over and take the family inheritance."
    Malcolm sat up and looked at me. "I suppose so."
    I sat up, too, turning toward him and putting my elbow on the side of the tub. "You guys are like some kind of screwy Shakespearean family. Right down to you trusting him enough to give him control of the company."
    His lips thinned. "He's like my brother."
    "You are fucked up. He's a fucked up brother. You know what you do with people like that in your life? You cut them off. You never talk to them again."
    His brows raised. "If I recall correctly, you acted horrified when I suggested you cut me off."
    "Yeah... because you're not batshit insane and trying to destroy me." At least... I didn't think so. I didn't feel particularly under assault, and I knew what that felt like so I was pretty sure his talk of going to war with me over his ultimate fate was just that—talk. I'd never seen a guy with more unresolved business in the world, and given his perfectionist nature there was no way he was going to off himself before he set it all right. I was as good as victor in our 'battle.' "Cutting people off who become toxic, who make you feel like shit all the time? That's fine. That's good. Healthy."
    "But..." His face was pained. "When we were younger, we'd band together against my father. We'd trick him into thinking one or the other of us had won whatever stupid challenge he'd put before us." I noted his use of the word 'stupid' to refer to challenges. "We looked out for each other. Saved each other's asses all the time. I don't know what happened..."
    Again that lost look on his face, the one that came whenever I'd made him think of something uncomfortable, something so at odds with the way he had accepted the world that it caused him physical pain.
    I could see it, too. A kid alone in a house with a frivolous mother and a