Chapter 10
RAVEN
Connor has the audacity to look confused or maybe even angry with my response. As if I am the one who did something hurtful that night instead of the other way around. As if I somehow caused all these years of hostility and animosity.
Any potential softening of my hatred for the man sitting in front of me that might have even been a glimmer of a possibility before vanishes as I push to my feet. “You really don’t get it at all, do you?”
Lightning flashes through the window, illuminating his glower from where he still sits in the chair. That vulnerability and softness that was there only a few minutes ago is gone. The man looking back at me is the one I hate, the one who broke my heart. “I don’t, so why don’t you explain it to me?”
I shove my hands through my sleep-tousled hair, my frustration growing as the old feelings settle deeply into my chest again.
Of all the things I never wanted to relive, that night has always been damn near the top of that list. To have to open up about it after fifteen years with the very person who caused all the anguish seems like some sort of sick joke, about as bad as being trapped on a remote mountain in a tiny cabin with him.
“You destroyed me that day, Connor McBride.”
It’s the only word I can think of to sum up how it felt in that moment and how I continued to view it in the years since, as I’ve allowed my hurt and anger to grow.
His mouth falls open, and he gapes at me for a few seconds.
“You can’t be fucking serious.” He finally shoves to his feet, towering over me, his massive bare chest, exposed in his cutoff shirt, heaving, his skin still slick with the sweat that covered it during his nightmare.
“Why the hell can’t you ever see when I’m protecting you? ”
“You didn’t protect me that day, Connor.” I fight the way my voice wants to crack on the next words. “You rejected me.”
He presses his lips together as if he’s biting back his response, and I can feel his anger building, the energy and crackle of it as palpable as that of the storm outside. It’s the same hatred I felt that day, and every day since, from him.
The fact that I never noticed it before then, that I had somehow convinced myself that he was different, is what made it even worse.
I’ve held all this in for so long, kept it locked up in an impenetrable vault, and now that the door has been opened, I don’t know how to stop the flow of emotions that rushes out.
I poke my finger into his chest, his hot, hard skin barely giving way under the pressure. “You looked at me like I was a chewed piece of gum stuck on the bottom of your fucking shoe that you needed to scrape off, and I have never felt worse about myself than I did in that fucking moment.”
My voice wavers slightly on those final words, and I have to bite back anything else I might want to say because I don’t trust myself not to open my mouth without releasing the sob that sits lodged at the base of my throat.
Connor closes his eyes, clenching them as tightly as he does his fists at his sides. “You were fifteen, Raven…”
“And?”
When he opens his eyes again, they’re that onyx that always seems to be bottomless. “You were a freshman. You were fifteen, and you were drunk. You would’ve regretted it.”
I dig my fingernail deeply into his chest, wanting to hurt him as badly as he has me. “Fuck you, Connor.”
He stands his ground, not backing down, not retreating a step to get away from the pressure of my finger and nail biting into his skin. “I know you wanted to, but it was the right decision not to.”
My mouth falls open and I release an incredulous laugh. “You arrogant son of a bitch.”
Of course, Connor Fucking McBride would try to justify the way he treated me by taking my words and throwing them back at me with such precision.
That’s what he’s so damn good at.
I jerk my hand away from him, hating the physical reminder of his unyielding nature right under my fingertips. It was that same attitude he carried that night—holier than thou, arrogant, and determined to hurt me.
What did I ever see in him?
It’s hard to know now, after so much time, so much hostility. After that night, I never looked at him the same way. I couldn’t. Not when it had exposed how he really felt about me.
And now that he’s cracked open this door, I can’t just slam it shut. Not when fifteen damn years of pent up hurt and resentment are already spilling out like a tsunami.
“I wanted my first time to be with you because you were my friend, because I trusted you, because I didn’t want it to be with some random guy.”
“You. Were. Drunk.” He steps closer. “You were too young to even be thinking about…that. I was protecting you!”
His voice booms around the small shack, making me wince, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as what he did that day.
How he rejected me and walked away. Left me sitting on the tailgate of the truck feeling like no one wanted me.
More embarrassed and emotionally traumatized than I ever had in my entire life.
I practically threw myself at him. Told him that I wanted him. That I wanted him to be my first…and this man looked me in the eye with zero emotion and walked away. Gave me his back and disappeared into the night the same way he left his cabin weeks ago without a glance back.
It was so easy for him to walk away. I saw it in that moment, in the way he looked at me before he left—the fact that he just saw me as some stupid kid he put up with because we lived in a small town and everyone was basically forced to be friends.
He never saw me as anything else.
And he never would.
“Do you want to know what happened after you left that night?”
His eyes widen slightly, as if he’s suddenly realizing that something might have besides me just heading home.
It’s what I should have done.
In hindsight, I can see that.
But I was so shaken, so upset, so unnerved by what happened with him that I was frozen in place.
I’m not frozen now, though.
Connor doesn’t intimidate me anymore. His rejection all those years ago made me who I am today. It made me strong.
I step closer to him, until our chests are almost touching, until the tension is so thick I can barely drag in a breath.
“I sat on that fucking tailgate and I cried, and I don’t fucking cry, Connor McBride.
I never have. Not when my dad left, not when my mom got sick, not when she finally passed and left me alone in this world.
But that night, I cried.” A grim laugh slips from my lips.
“And then Micah McConnell found me and asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t tell him through the sobs, not that I wanted to, but he put his arms around me to comfort me. ”
Connor’s back stiffens, his shoulders tensing even more, as if he can already see where this story is going and doesn’t want to accept the ending he never imagined.
A sick feeling I never could have anticipated starts to build in me—elation.
I’m actually enjoying the fact that this might hurt him.
I push my finger back into his chest again. “And then…”—poke—“to feel better”—poke—“to get back at you”—poke—“I let him fuck me.”
Connor recoils so hard he literally backs up into the chair, making it rattle as it hits the wall.
In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Connor so…stunned.
Good.
Finally, an unguarded reaction.
Something real from him.
I was finally able to hurt him.
Though it’s nothing compared to the way I hurt that night, in so many ways.
Releasing a sardonic laugh, I shake my head at the memory of how rash I was in those moments after he walked away because of how upset I was.
“My first fucking time was drunk and upset, with a guy who lasted twenty fucking seconds and didn’t give a shit about me, a guy I never talked to again after that, who wouldn’t even look me in the eye in school during the years it took for us to graduate.
Who still won’t look me in the eye when I see him around town.
” I surge forward and dig my finger back into that same spot in Connor’s chest, pushing my nail in harder, trying to pierce the skin.
“But you know what? I couldn’t even blame him for it because it wasn’t what I really wanted and he probably knew it.
I blamed you for it all, and I still do. ”
His chest continues to heave, and he stares at me like the wheels are turning faster than he can process what I just told him, like he can’t grasp the fact that what he did led to something awful for me, something that I joke about with Willow, but that has actually haunted me since that day.
Because I could never tell her the full truth.
I couldn’t admit to her that I had thrown myself at Connor and he rejected me, because if I had, I would’ve exposed my most vulnerable moment.
She might be my best friend, but I didn’t want even her to know that.
Especially because I knew how much she liked Killian, how much she wanted to be with him.
I didn’t want any of my shame and embarrassment in the middle of any of that.
I didn’t want it to get in the way of any potential future they might have.
Instead, I let my hatred of Connor and what he did grow into a living, breathing thing, and he continued his hatred of me that he clearly held well before that night.
“You can stop pretending, Connor, that you said ‘no’ because you were protecting me. Just fucking admit that you never liked me. That you hated me then like you do now. That you’re doing this for Willow, not because you actually give a shit about whether I’m safe or not.
Just tell the fucking truth, and then maybe you wouldn’t hate yourself so much. Maybe you won’t hate me so much.”
The silence that hangs between us is suffocating, as is the tightness of the small space.
All I want to do is break down that door and run outside, to race home, but there are too many dangerous things in the woods and too many dangerous people who might come looking for me with all the digging I’ve been doing.