Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Sebastian finally broke the silence. “I can’t feel my ass.”
“I can’t feel my toes.” She laughed, but the sound wasn’t light and carefree. The words caught like a sob in her throat.
The sex had been incredible. Unbelievable. And it was not even her favorite thing about this man who had caught her so completely off guard. She could feel herself being drawn further into the web that was Sebastian Black and didn’t want it to stop.
How had she gotten here?
Carefully, he let go of her legs one at a time, and she was grateful she had the strength left to stand. She quickly put her leg into her pants and hiked them up.
Why couldn’t she turn him away the way she turned away everyone else who tried to get close? What would happen to her when he left?
Because he would leave.
She slipped her foot into her boot. Zipped up her coat and stood staring at Sebastian while he put himself back together.
Chance sniffed around the trees where the rabbits lived.
An owl sat in the branches overhead, a silent judge to her mistakes and follies.
Feelings rushed through her like an avalanche, and she wasn’t able to catch hold of any one specific emotion.
They were all there. Fear, excitement, disgust, lust, dread, and something else.
Something she did not want to acknowledge.
“I’m falling for you, Nora. This has never happened to me before.” The words were clear and honest, like snow crystals sparkling in the air on a sunny day.
Tears brimmed in her eyes because that was the emotion she was running away from. The one he was honest enough to acknowledge but too scared to label.
He had to know this would never work. She lived in Montana, and he was based in Virginia—as if geography were the biggest obstacle that stood between them.
Her past followed her everywhere. If the press discovered she’d killed a man, they’d tear her life apart wanting to know all the juicy details.
There were extenuating circumstances, sure, but it didn’t change the momentousness of what she’d done as a child.
She’d acted in self-defense, but how would her family view her if they found out?
What kind of person did it make her?
The thoughts churned inside her. She wasn’t in a place where she could see this relationship working between them and the idea of enduring his pity made her want to throw up.
But she owed him honesty. Better he know who she really was and prove she was right to keep her heart protected.
She stepped away and hugged herself, trying to control the nausea that threatened.
He watched her. Patient as ever.
“There’s something you should know about me.
Something I have never told anyone mainly because I only just remembered it myself—although I think, deep down, I always knew.
” She looked up at him then because she needed to see his expression when she told him.
The moonlight was bright enough she could see the way his eyes followed her and his lips pressed tight together with concentration.
“Last night, when I had that nightmare…it was about the night Kingston—my abductor—died.”
“I know who John Kingston was.” His voice was gravel.
She winced because he’d have read on the internet about what that man had done to her, and even though she was used to it in some respects, other people knowing the details of her assault still felt like a violation of her privacy. They had no right to that information. No damned right.
In some ways, her own experience helped her deal better with other survivors of sexual assault when they crossed her path, for which she was grateful.
But that didn’t ease how she felt each and every time someone she knew found out about her past. That a man had stolen her innocence as a child.
Had taken what he wanted by force, as if her feelings and wishes didn’t matter.
She cleared her throat. “You know how he died?”
Sebastian took a step toward her, brow crinkled, and the edges of his lips turned down. “I read that he fell while chasing you. It was an accident that couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“The reports were wrong.” She wrung her hands together and started to pace away from him, her boots punching through the snow crust to the soft underbelly beneath.
She touched her fingers to her temples. “I’ve been experiencing nightmares for some time now,” she admitted. “I guess the memories wanted out.”
“Nora—”
“No. I need to tell you. Please. I have to tell you. Last night.” She swallowed again. Why was this so hard? She steadied herself. She’d gotten through worse.
She blew out a breath and raised her chin. No more pretending they were a fairytale romance unless it was written by the Grimm brothers, and everyone knew they didn’t have Happily Ever Afters.
“Last night, I finally remembered a detail I must have blocked this whole time.” Her hands clasped together restlessly, but her voice was strangely calm. “Kingston didn’t fall off that rock face thanks to some divine intervention.”
Sebastian stared at her.
“I killed him. I didn’t remember before.
Not fully. He was chasing me and I’d climbed a rockface in a thunderstorm.
We struggled and I think I pushed him.” She bit her lip.
“He was hanging on the edge of the cliff, and somehow managed to grab my hair.” She gripped a lock from under her hat and tugged.
Was that why she’d kept it short ever since?
“I bit his arm, and then slammed a rock into his fingers as he tried to hold on.” She wanted to slap her hand over her mouth and close her eyes and never have to deal with the truth of what had happened.
“I hit him, over and over, and kicked him until he let go and fell to his death.” She swallowed with difficulty.
“I killed him, Sebastian. I was twelve years old, and I killed a man.”
She waited for the horror, the disgust, but he stood there staring at her in shock.
As the silence stretched, she felt something inside her crack wide open. Emotions crowded her throat and made it hard to speak. She turned away. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
“Nora—”
“No.” She raised a hand. “You don’t have to say anything. Your silence said enough.”
“I just needed a second—”
“You needed a second to figure out how to let me down easy?”
“What? No. That’s not—”
“To decide if you should report me?”
“Stop putting words in my damned mouth!” His anger was hot. Palpable. Tears glistened on his cheeks in the moonlight.
She raised her hands, palm up. “Look, I told you the truth because I wanted you to know who I really am before you went and did something stupid like declare mad passionate love for me. Now you know.” She didn’t want to listen to his excuses about why they wouldn’t work or his lies about how he felt. She knew how he felt. She felt it too.
She went to walk past him. He caught her arm, but she jerked away. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
He raised his own hands as if in surrender.
“The sex was great. Thanks. But we’re done now.” Tears flooded her eyes as she hurried away. She’d known this would happen. Was glad to have gotten it out into the open so they could stop pretending this was anything except a convenient stress release during a tense time.
The owl hooted in the black branches. Judge and jury and the verdict was in. Guilty on all counts.
Sebastian leaned his head back against the tree as hot tears ran down his cheeks. The fact that she’d been through so much as a young girl… He wanted to punch a hole in the tree, wanted to dig up the sonofabitch who’d hurt her and smash every bone into dust.
And he’d stood here like some limp-dick asshole because he simply hadn’t known how to react, except to cry, and he never cried. He’d struggled to hold tight to his own rage and anger because they were the last thing she needed to see or hear.
He didn’t know how to fix this or how to make it better for her, and he didn’t know how to deal with this feeling of impotence, of not knowing what to do.
He always knew what to do.
His breathing sounded erratic in the quietness. He was a man trained to maintain his blood pressure and heart rate even when under fire. But right now, he felt as if he might be having a heart attack.
He’d fucked up again, but he couldn’t have formed the right words even if someone had pointed a gun to his head. He still couldn’t.
Fuck.
He needed to catch up with her. To tell her she hadn’t done anything wrong. The fact she thought she had showed him what a good person she was.
He palmed away the wetness on his cheeks. He’d have carried Kingston back up that cliff and thrown him off again. For fun.
Now she thought he hated her because she’d defended herself?
What sort of monster did she think he was?
But what sort of baseline did she have? Something down in the pits of Hell, so no wonder she expected the worst.
He forced himself out of his frozen stillness and jogged awkwardly across the snow, spotted her near the cabin.
“Nora!”
She didn’t stop or look back.
Ryan came around the side of the cabin to meet him. “What the hell happened? She looked like roadkill just now.”
“She told me something.” The knot in his throat threatened to choke him. “About her past.”
“And?”
“And…I fucked up. I froze.”
Ryan frowned. “What’d she tell you?”
Sebastian lowered his voice. “I can’t say.”
The other man slowly shook his head. “How are you going to fix it?”
“I have no fucking clue.” Sebastian inhaled and tried to regain his equilibrium.
He was no good with women or relationships—as he’d proven repeatedly over the past few days.
Ryan was the only other person he could talk to about this because he was the only other person who knew what Nora had endured as a child.
And, despite his glib persona, he trusted the guy with his life—but these were Nora’s secrets.
“Is it about her abduction?” Ryan guessed.
Sebastian nodded reluctantly. “She did something, back then, to save herself.”