Chapter 13
Ami
“Don’t,” I breathe, as I drop my dress like the hem is some special brand of slow acting acid and it’s burning my hands, eating away at the flesh of my palms. “Don’t think it.”
Gage’s face is destroyed. I see the devastation in his eyes.
The shocked disbelief. The horror. The pity.
The fucking fury. Everything I never wanted to see on another person.
Every single reason I’ve never shown another living soul.
That I’ve never opened up my mouth and let anyone know what happened to me.
“Don’t what?” he seethes, his shoulders heaving. His eyes gleam and spark as murderous rage finally overrides every single other emotion.
“Don’t look like that. Like you’re going to find him and kill him. You deserve better than the inside of a jail cell. He might deserve your wrath, but I don’t deserve your vengeance or your pity, so just… just… don’t.”
His hands ball into fists, but then his eyes settle on my face, and I’m shocked at the wild possessiveness I see there. He looks like he’d not only kill for me, but that he’d die to protect me.
I blink hard, knowing that can’t be real.
He can’t be looking at me like that. I’ve done absolutely nothing to him or for him other than leave.
Leave and be too much of a coward to come back.
I’ve lied. Lied and accused him of horrible things, so there is no way he should be looking at me like I mean something to him.
Like all that fury bubbling up inside of him actually stems from righteous rage, rage that he looks like he truly feels to the pit of his stomach and the bottom of his soul.
“You… you pulled away because of that? Because of what happened?”
“Yes,” I breathe, and I hate that his face folds in on himself.
I never wanted him to know. I never wanted anyone to know. I took so much care over the years, never, ever to let anyone see. Even the morning of my wedding when my sisters got dressed in the same room, I made sure that they didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of my bare skin.
For nearly a year after it happened, I showered with a tank top on, afraid to look at myself, afraid to see the ruined destruction on my body, the brand of a man who I thought I could trust. A man who I thought loved me.
A man who took everything from me and gave me nothing but sorrow and lies and emptiness in return.
“I called you a whore.”
“You didn’t know. You were angry, Gage it’s—”
“No.” His jaw, shadowed with a days’ worth of stubble, clenches so hard that it looks like it could shatter like glass dropping to the floor, at any second. “Don’t try and excuse it. What I did. What I said. I had no right.”
“You were… you did have a right. I know I should have called. Texted. Anything. I didn’t.
I said you did horrible things to me and then even after people knew the truth, I never came back.
I left you, high and dry, still married to me.
Unable to move on with your life. Unable to get past the past. Just like this. ”
I realize that I’m still standing there, naked on the bottom half, and I hurriedly drop my dress.
Gage isn’t looking at me like that though.
As soon as his eyes traced the black letters marring me, a symbol of my impurity that I wear like a scarlet letter, those burning orbs raced back up to my face, to the wall above my head. Anywhere but there.
When Gage looks back at me, I’m shocked at how tired he looks.
How sad his eyes are. How the creases at the corners seem deeper.
It steals my breath to notice the imperfections, the fact that his hair is mussed from my hands, then his hands after.
The too thin set of his lips. The half inch scar just above his left eyebrow that I’ve never noticed before because it’s so faded it nearly blends in with his golden-hued skin.
There’s an uneven one along his jawline, which I can see because his head is at just the right angle.
It’s longer and jagged, but also faded and worn with time.
I’ve never noticed any of those details before, because I’ve never been this close before and actually paid attention.
Somehow it makes him more human.
And even more harshly beautiful. Beautiful in the way that villains are beautiful too, since they never had a chance to write their own story.
They’re dark. Hopeless. Like they’ve never seen the light of day or felt the warmth of the sun.
Underneath that rugged exterior, I sense Gage’s heart bleeding, just like mine.
His hand shoots out and grips my jaw before I can pull away or stop him. Oddly enough, I don’t want to. I don’t want to pull away. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to run. I want to face this, him, all of it, head-on for the first time.
“How? How did it happen?”
He forces me to look at him, his index finger and thumb digging into the tender skin of my flesh and jaw, but I don’t protest the rough hold.
I know he wants to help me. Ground me. Save me.
He only knows one way. He’s a rough man from, if I’d have to guess, a rough past. He doesn’t know gentleness or sweetness, but I don’t want gentle.
I just want him.
At any other time, I’d be alarmed by that thought. I’d run, because I’ve been running all my life and it’s the only thing I know how to do.
Gage stares back at me, his eyes burning into me, seeing right through me. Seeing me.
Me.
“I…” God. I don’t want to tell him. Even though it hurts, even though it shreds me, I force myself to look at his black eyes.
“I was fifteen. I went to a big school. I was fairly popular. I got invited to lots of house parties. Stupid things with kids of all ages. Not just high school kids. Older kids, college age and that. I met this guy. He… he asked me how old I was and I told him I was eighteen. We were outside. I felt drunk and I knew my mom would be pissed when I got home so I went out to the front where there wasn’t anyone around to try and sober up with a glass of water and some fresh air.
He found me there. I always looked older than I was and he took my word for it. ”
I stop there. I’ve never told anyone this before.
Taking a deep breath I continue. “Anyway, my mom wasn’t around a lot.
She was… well… I guess, busy with her own shit to care about what I did.
I kept seeing this guy in secret. For a month.
I always made sure it was public, though.
That we’d go out to the bar, and yes, I could get in since I looked older and all you have to do is smile at the right person and if you’re a girl, they don’t give a shit.
After a month he started asking me to come back to his place.
I guess I trusted him. At least, I thought I could. ”
Gage’s jaw ticks loudly, the crack echoing through the kitchen like a gun shot off right by my face, but he stays silent, and I continue, even though I want to steal the words out of the air and jam them back down my throat.
I want to keep them there, where they’ve festered and rotted for almost a decade.
Putting them out there makes them fresh and painful and real all over again.
“I didn’t know, but he was a tattoo artist. I went back to his apartment, and I knew what he wanted.
It was obvious. I was almost sixteen. Most of my friends thought I lost my v-card way before that, but I was a virgin.
I stole a couple of condoms from my mom’s nightstand.
I thought I was ready. That I knew what was going to happen.
He gave me a drink when I got there, to take the edge off, because I was nervous, and that was the last thing I remember. ”
I drag in a shuddery breath and blink fast, refusing to cry. I won’t cry telling him about this, putting this poison between us. I won’t give that bastard any more power over me.
“At least until I woke up. I don’t know what happened.
I was alone. On a bench in the middle of this park.
I didn’t know where I was. My head hurt.
My stomach hurt more. It burned. And it hurt.
Between my… well… lower. He drugged me. I know he did.
He took what was mine to give freely, and then he stamped his mark on me.
Not cleanly either. The stupid part is he was actually a good tattoo artist. I found that out after, in the weeks that followed.
I don’t know why he did it. Why he drugged me, I would have…
I don’t know why he did any of it. I’ve thought about it for years.
Nearly a decade, and I still don’t know. ”
Gage vibrates with anger, but he doesn’t release my face. He doesn’t pull away like I have the plague and I’m contagious, able to spread my vile disease to him with a single touch.
“There isn’t any reasoning on earth for something like that. The guy was a piece of shit. He deserves to be put the fuck down.”
“Gage,” I warn, my voice thick and broken.
I have to blink hard, since my eyes are on fire.
It’s amazing that salt water produced by my own body can burn as badly as it does.
“That’s the reason I never told anyone. Why I never pressed charges.
Back then my dad was a shit father, but I knew what he’d do.
Or what my brothers would do if they found out.
I didn’t want any of them to end up in prison because I was stupid.
Because I didn’t listen to my mom. Because I didn’t use an ounce of common sense or see it coming. ”
Gage’s hand falls away and his other comes up.
They land on my shoulders, his big palms bracing me, the heat of his body seeping into mine, bracing me.
“No. You do not get to blame yourself for any of this.” His voice is hard and commanding.
He captures my attention completely and for a second, I almost want to believe him.
“You should have gone to the police, got that bastard put away. They would have done a kit. There would have been proof—”