Chapter 15 #2
“Let it happen?” I asked, bewildered. “What did you expect me to do, huh? I just watched the girl I was fucking in love with get in a car with another guy. And it was pretty fucking obvious what was going on in that damn car. Did you want me to walk over there and pull him off you, put you on my bike, and take you home?” I shouted. “Hug it out, make it better?”
She looked up at me. “You could have kicked his ass,” she mumbled. “You could have dragged me out of the car. It would have been better if you had,” she added the last part quietly.
Her brow was beaded with sweat, her eyes haunted. She gave me the most tremulous, heart breaking and saddest smile I’d ever seen on her beautiful face.
“Wave?” I crouched down in front of her, my gut clenched. “What is this? Why are you making out like I did something wrong?” I was surprised at the calmness in my voice.
By rights I should have been yelling that at her, but that niggling feeling that something was off was gnawing at me again.
Then she cried. She’d never been a loud crier.
She’d always fought so damn hard not to let anyone look at her as being any weaker than the rest of us and when she had broken down, she did it quietly, with little fuss.
Just like now. The tears streaked her face, and she closed her eyes.
Her lashes clumping together and spiking with the moisture.
I dropped to my knees, and without conscious thought, I tentatively put my arm around her.
She tensed, but as I rubbed soft slow circles over her back, she let all the tension go and leaned into me.
I dropped onto my ass and pulled her into my side, at a loss here.
Was I being a fool? Letting her make me believe she hadn’t done something wrong.
“That’s why you came back here that night,” she said after a few minutes, wiping at her eyes and pulling her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “Why you… because of what you saw. You wanted to hurt me back.”
Not my finest hour. I already knew that.
“God, what a mess,” she shook her head. “What a fucking mess.”
“You need to explain this to me, Waverley. I know what I saw that night and you’re admitting that it happened, so what is this? Talk to me.”
She took a few moments to compose herself. She shifted away too, so my arm dropped to my side, which was for the best considering.
I needed to distance myself from her because I did not know what she was about to tell me and how it was going to affect me. Then she shifted, so that she was opposite me, her legs crossed, and she heaved in a deep breath, centring herself or something.
“I went to prom alone,” she started. She looked at me for about five seconds, then tilted her head up to the sky and continued.
“Andrew Reinhart was there with his date. She was a junior. I didn’t know her.
You know he was a prick who had done nothing but bad mouth the club, so I didn’t want anything to do with him. ” She paused.
“Look at me,” I said, my voice hard enough that she did. “Keep your eyes on me while you tell me.”
Waverley rubbed her lips together, blinked a couple of times, but kept her eyes on me.
“He kept talking to me, telling me he liked my dress, asking about college. I’d had a few drinks, and he must have realized I was upset you and Warren weren’t there. He played on it, being sympathetic and understanding.
“He was asking questions about the club. I told him to mind his own business. The club had nothing to do with him. He said he needed to talk privately about something. I wasn’t about to go wandering off with him. But then he said... He had something.”
“What?” I asked, knowing deep inside what she was about to say was going to change everything.
“He saw you and Warren. He had evidence and said he was going to go to the cops.”
“What the fuck?” I snarled. “What kind of evidence?”
“Photographs,” she whispered. “They looked bad. You were handing something over to some guy who looked shady as fuck and taking money from him. Warren had a gun that was visible in the pictures. He said,” she blew out a breath.
“He didn’t care about what would happen.
He said he was going to go to the cops, and you would go to prison. ”
“Son of a bitch,” I leaned forward and put my hands together, clasping them as if in prayer. That photo could have happened at any time. He was right. It would be incriminating, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Nothing would have come of it, even if he had gone to the cops.
“He never went to the cops,” I told her.
If he had, we would have heard about it, even if it were the Chief coming to tell us some pissant kid at the high school was trying to spread some shit, but he would shut it down before it could go anywhere. That hadn’t happened. My head snapped up, and I looked at Waverley.
“You should have come to us. We would have dealt with that asshole.” I rubbed a hand over my head as something clicked in my brain.
“I should have done that, I would have, but I had to protect you. And Warren. And the club. I couldn’t let him do anything like that. I told him I was going to go back to the compound and tell you what he’d done, but I… I felt weird and… I couldn’t think straight.”
She looked up at me, her eyes glistening with tears.
“He’d already slipped something in my drink. When he showed me the pictures, I was so angry, I threw the cup and spilled it, without even realizing.”
My eyes started burning as I remembered standing there by my bike, watching him lead her to that car. Thinking back on it, seeing it through fresh eyes, he was leading her. She wasn’t holding his hand, smiling, nothing.
He had hold of her and he was pulling her along with him.
“I don’t remember going to his car...” She was staring at her bare feet. “But I hadn’t drunk enough to knock me out, I guess… I remember him telling me if I did this he would give me the pictures. He wouldn’t go to the police and… I was confused...”
I put my head in my hands. He drugged her. That fucker drugged her and...
“He raped you?” I struggled to get the words out.
“I let him do it. To protect the cl-”
“You didn’t have a fucking choice,” I shouted over her as I struggled to my feet. “He preyed on you, convinced you while you were half out of it that the only way to protect us was to let him... He took you against your will.”
Rage and torment built up inside of me. I knew it was about to burst out of me.
The complete and total anger at what happened to her was consuming me.
That asshole attacked her. He’d been here at the compound over the years and although I’d avoided him, I had done nothing about him working for us.
I’d seen him laughing with War and King, shaking hands with Cassie, and drinking in the bar with my brothers.
Everything around me went black. My vision narrowed. I was going to pass out. Her words were repeating through my mind. All I could hear was air rushing through my ears.
I walked away, jealousy and anger consuming me. I’d not been able to see what was happening to her, to know Waverley would never do something like that. And I left her there with that fucking monster, then came back to the compound and fucked that girl, making sure she saw us.
I stumbled and dropped on one knee. My breath shuddered out of me as the burning in my eyes and nose grew harder to fight back.
All this time, for years, I’d hated her for what she did to me.
I hated myself for what I did to get back at her.
Over something that neither of us had any control over.
He had taken that away from me. Away from her.
I turned around and looked at her. She had gotten to her feet and was cupping her elbows in her palms, trembling and pale. Clearly coming to the same realization I was. She stared at me, and her heartbreak matched mine. We destroyed each other that night and that fucking asshole orchestrated it.
My vision narrowed once again, but this time I was seeing red. I clenched my fists at my side, felt the cut on my palm split open again.
“Hudson,” she took a step towards me.
Her soft voice stopped me, only for a moment. She stood in front of me, tears tracking her cheeks. I touched her chin and tilted her face up to mine, seeing the pain and humiliation and anger swirling in the dark depths of her eyes.
I felt sick to my stomach. Waverley might not think she was blameless in this situation, but I could see it for what it was.
That fucking animal had intended to drug her all along. She’d been angry enough not to believe his bullshit, but it wasn’t enough to prevent her from drinking what he had given her.
She was talking, her lips moving, concern etched her features, but I couldn’t hear a word. I could barely see her through the rage taking over me. There was only one person I wanted to see right now, and I knew where the fucker was.
I charged past her, but her hand snagged my arm, and she pulled me hard, screwing up the sleeve of my top in her hands, forcing me to stop. I looked at her clinging to my arm, her eyes still wet with tears, but there was a fierce look in them now.
“You can’t go down there, you’ll kill him.”
“Let me go,” I growled out.
“Hudson, don’t do this,” she put her other hand on my chest, stepping in front of me, like she could stop me if I wanted to get by her. “Please, listen to me.”
“He won’t be the first man I’ve killed, Waverley,” I growled out. “I’m going to put a fucking bullet through his dick before I beat the shit out of him. He’ll wish he never set foot on this compound. I’m going to fuck him up and I’m going to bury him where no one will ever find his mutilated body.”
“No,” she tugged on me again as I moved.
I grabbed her arms and lifted her, intending to move her aside so I could go find that prick, but she winced and cried out.
“Shit,” I set her down. I hadn’t meant to hurt her.
She was rubbing at her arm. I looked down at it at the same time she did. Her eyes widened as she looked at me. There was no fucking way those bruises could have come up that fast, bruises in the shape of fucking fingers.
I remembered him grabbing her down by the pool, pulling her to him.
This time, she couldn’t stop me. I let go of her and then I was moving. I could hear her calling out to me, but I broke into a run.
Nothing was going to stop me from getting my hands on that bastard.
Nothing.