Chapter 10 #2
The problem is, the man standing in front of me is, by far, the most dangerous to me.
And there’s no escaping him.
CONNOR
It’s like I’m stuck in another nightmare, one that I can’t escape because I’m wide awake and staring at it in front of me with sunshine blond hair spilling down over her shoulders, bright green eyes wide and filled with so much contempt and pain, and a mouth I haven’t been able to stop staring at twisted in a scowl.
“That is why you hate me?”
There isn’t any way to keep the disbelief out of my question.
After all these years, all this time, I finally have a glimpse into the workings of this woman’s mind—no matter how distorted they might be.
And that’s clearly what happened here. Raven has somehow twisted up the facts, taken what actually happened and why and turned it into something completely different in her head.
And she’s let that fester for years.
She has let that taint her view of everything that’s ever happened or been said between us.
Raven continues to glare at me, that finger of hers pressed into my chest, the nail biting into the skin like she’s actively trying to hurt me and doesn’t have any other way to do it. “Why do you say that like you’re surprised?”
“Because I am. Because I had no fucking idea why you have always been so vile to me, so full of contempt. You’ve just always glared at me with such disdain, always looked for reasons to poke at me and piss me off, but I never imagined it was because—”
Her eyes widen, and she pulls her hand away and throws them both up. “Because you treated me like dirt and rejected me?”
The hurt in her voice tells me she believes it, but she couldn’t be more wrong.
That night, sitting around the bonfire with everyone, I never could have anticipated where it would lead. It was just another Friday night hanging out with everyone from school. If I had known this would be the result, I never would have gone.
I would have stayed on the homestead and sat by the fire there alone. It’s what I’ve always preferred, anyway.
It could have prevented this decade and a half long war between us.
I cross my arms over my chest. “That isn’t what happened, Raven.”
Her ire toward me never made sense. First, because I didn’t think she would even remember what happened the next day considering how much she had to drink. Second, because even if she did, she surely would have understood why I had walked away.
“It sure as hell was.”
Anger flares through my blood, heating it the way only this woman seems to be able to. Because Raven will always believe the worst in me.
It’s engrained in her DNA to think I’m the villain in every story, the big, bad wolf ready to eat those innocent little pigs even when he might just be seeking shelter from a storm like the one outside tonight.
“No, Raven.” I shake my head, stepping closer when I should be moving away. “And I’m not going to continue to let you make me the bad guy. You were a fucking child.”
“So were you.”
“Yeah, I was. I was only sixteen, and it would’ve been the first fucking time for me, too.”
She recoils slightly, and I instantly regret having admitted that to her.
Fuck.
I run my hands over my scruffy cheeks and squeeze my eyes closed, wishing all of this would just go away, but when I reopen them, Raven is still here. She’s still looking at me with a furrowed brow and so much confusion.
Her mouth opens and closes a few times, her lips glistening. Thunder booms, rattling the glass in the old window and shaking the floor. “But…”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I glance away from her.
This woman has already seen me far too exposed, and now, I just ripped that opening even bigger, allowing her to see even more. Now she sees the boy I was in high school. The one who was intimidated as fuck by all girls, but especially ones like her who weren’t afraid of me, who never shied away.
It would be best to end this conversation now, before things go any deeper, before even more gets exposed, but for some reason, I can’t bear the fact that Raven has been living under such vile misconceptions about me and my motivations since that night.
“I don’t know who the fuck you think I was when I was sixteen, Raven, but I sure as hell wasn’t a lady’s man. I wasn’t running around sleeping with all the girls on the mountain in high school, and I don’t know why you would even think that.”
She doesn’t offer any explanation, just continues to stare at me, dumbstruck. As if even now, while we’re standing here finally airing it all out, she still can’t believe me.
“I didn’t want you to regret anything that night, Raven. I didn’t want to take advantage of you. I didn’t want to be that fucking asshole. And I certainly didn’t want my first time to be with a girl who was so drunk that she didn’t even know what she was doing.”
Raven never blinks.
Never looks away.
It’s never been in her nature to back down. And she certainly won’t in this argument, either.
“I knew exactly what I was doing, Connor. There were any number of people I could have wanted to be with, but you were the only one I trusted.”
Those words drive into my chest like a knife.
You were the only one I trusted…