Chapter 19
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
KRAVEN
My jaw clenched, and my hand on Isla’s hip twitched.
“But look at that ass on your redhead,” Justin spat. “I guess I can’t blame you for keeping the truth about your dumpster trash family. We all know your mom used to deep throat anyone who’d cover her bar bill at the end of the night.”
I gripped harder.
“But I’d love nothing more than to go a couple of rounds with her red head too. The party is just getting started. How about you come bend over for me, darlin’?”
His roar started to sound muffled, and everything around me faded. I cracked my neck, my feet weighing heavily.
“Don’t worry, asshole! I’ll even let you watch. Or better yet, how about we just tag team her! She’s got three fucking holes for a reason! Let’s see who can make her come first. I bet you it’ll be my cock up her ass that really makes her scream while she bleeds!”
I saw red.
Nothing but red.
Fury quickly overtook every last fiber of my being.
It was too late.
I was too far gone.
Fight or flight…
There was a choice to be made by me, and I instinctively chose.
Fight.
“I’ll even pay your light bill for her! What’s that, a hundred bucks? I’ll throw in a fifty if she sucks my dic—”
I took off, hauling ass like a possessed man toward the piece of shit in front of me. I heard the faint sound of Isla’s loud gasp muffled in the background as I charged him. Ramming my shoulder into his chest, I forcefully slammed his back into the tree beside us.
The dipshit’s hands instantly flew to my vicious hold, trying to pry me off, but I didn’t give him a chance.
I went full force, yanking him away from the tree, only to slam his body back into it.
Gripping his hair, I spun him around so his back was to my front and smashed his face into the willow instead.
I didn’t pay any mind to the blood dripping off his face as he stumbled to remain upright.
Using his momentum, my fist connected with his jaw before he even saw it coming.
His head snapped back, taking half his body with it.
I was over to the piece of shit in one stride, grabbing his shirt and punching him in the face repeatedly.
I delivered blow after blow to his stomach, his ribs, his chest, and back up to his face. Hearing hasty cracks in my fist’s wake.
I let the asshole go, and he fell to the ground, covered in blood and whimpering in pain.
“Get up!” I angrily ordered, kicking him in the ribs. He recoiled, feeling more of the agony I was spitefully delivering. “Get the fuck up!”
Out of nowhere, Isla grabbed a hold of my shirt from behind me, but it didn’t stop me in the least. I heard it rip in her grasp as I continued my assault on Justin’s face and body, hitting him until my knuckles felt raw and aching.
I felt her hands on my shoulders, desperately trying to pull me off him. When I didn’t, she used my own momentum and forcefully spun around, snapping me back to reality by the frightened expression on her face. She rapidly made me realize what the hell I’d just done.
She fell to her knees on the grass beside Justin, trying to tend to his knocked-out body. I halted her attempt, clutching onto her wrists and roughly yanking her to her feet. I turned her to face me instead.
No one was around us, and I was surprised we didn’t gain a crowd. She didn’t back down, using all her strength to shove me away.
I stepped toward her. “Isla—”
She pushed me again and again and again, the words on the tip of her tongue, her wrath was right there for me to touch, to feel. I could see her struggling to form her words, battling to get them out.
So I did what I did best—I baited her.
“What? Huh?” I folded my arms over my chest. “What do you have to say? You never have anything to say!”
She shoved me harder, her eyes brimming with tears as she started to slam her fists into my chest. I let her take her aggression out on me.
Her adrenaline was pumping through her veins at full force, blowing through the woods.
She was in fight-or-flight mode because of me, and I hated that I dragged her there right beside me.
This didn’t go as planned. I shouldn’t have brought her here. That was my first mistake. This became something it wasn’t intended to be.
I allowed her to shriek.
To hit me.
To do whatever the hell she needed to calm her ass down and come back to me.
I took every blow to my bruised ego and my tattered soul until finally, I got what I wanted all along.
She screamed, “Is this who you are?! Is this what you do?!”
Her voice was smooth like silk, but it still sliced me open like daggers on my skin. Her words hit me as hard as my fists had laid Justin out.
She fervently shook her head, scowling, “Do you even know who you are?”
“Yeah,” I firmly argued. “I’m the guy who just beat his ass for fucking talking to you that way.”
She stumbled back, winded.
All the fight in her was gone as if she had only just realized why I kicked his ass. Her lips trembled as she backed away from me, slaying my heart a little more.
Fear was evident on her face.
For me?
Or because of me?
Her eyes shifted over to Justin, and I stressed, “He is not dead,” trying to ease the strain between us.
“Oh,” she mocked. “So that makes it okay?”
“I’m just spitting facts. You can retract your claws because he’s not dead. He just got taught a very valuable lesson. You should be thanking me instead.”
She strained.
“He fucked around and found out, but look”—I gestured to her—“it got you talking to me. Who would have thought the kitty could speak?”
She took one last look at me with so much uncertainty in her gaze, digging the dagger deeper into my chest. The fatal expression on her face vanished, replaced by nothing but remorse and shame.
There were so many sides to her, so many truths to see hidden behind those captivating green eyes of hers.
Her bright red hair was a nice added touch.
At that moment, she looked like a glowing goddess to me.
Maybe it was the moonlight cascading on her pale skin.
Or it could have been the white dress that was illuminating her features and curves against the night sky.
The strap on her dress had fallen, and I stepped closer to her.
Slowly, I lifted the strap back onto her shoulder.
My finger lingered for a second before I cleared my throat. “We need to go.”
She shrugged, pointing at Justin. “We’re just supposed to leave him here?”
“Hey, Justin,” I loudly announced, glancing over at him. “You want to go another round?”
He groaned, “Fuck you,” rolling on the ground.
Locking gazes with Isla again, I coaxed, “See, he’s fine.”
She shook her head in disbelief, and I placed my hands in the pockets of my jeans. There was nothing else I could do at that point but wait for her to see reason. We didn’t have the time, yet I was still giving it to her.
She backed away, ordering, “Don’t you ever do that for me again, understood?”
Tears swelled in her eyes, and I watched as she blinked them away, making me think I imagined them. My chest rose and fell as I stared into her mesmerizing yet painful gaze. Burning with so much raw emotion that it was almost hard to breathe.
Hard to move.
Captivating every last part of me.
I gazed profoundly into her eyes and exposed a huge part of me as she whispered, “But regardless, thank you. No one’s ever done that for me.”
I knew she meant it. She was willingly showing me what she had been trying to hide for so damn long. I wanted to see this side of her, and now that I finally was…
All I could feel was her agony, blocking out all of my other senses.
I couldn’t form words.
I couldn’t think.
Not when she was looking at me like that, scaring the fucking shit out of me.
She searched for something in my regard. She might have physically been there with me, but emotionally, mentally, she was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere deep inside herself. A place she visited often. And without words, she was confessing all her broken parts to me.
All her deepest wounds.
All her oldest scars.
Sharing her sadness and despair, and above all else, the damage it left behind.
Down to the bottomless depths of her soul, there was pain.
“Isla…” I muttered, my voice laced thick with uncertainty and concern.
My mind battled my heart, raging a war I never had a chance to survive. It was her loneliness that ate me alive, swallowing me whole, and that was when it clicked, that was when I understood…
We were one and the same.
It was why we pushed people away.
It wasn’t about her not wanting to speak to anyone. It was her trying to hide from everyone.
She was the first to break our trancelike state.
She turned, finally ready to leave without hearing my response. The Uber drove us back to the house.
Home.
Neither of us spoke. I jumped in the shower and then lay there in my room, staring at the ceiling.
I knew she was in my brother’s bed. I could hear and feel her through the wall that separated us.
Needing to make something right between us, I was suddenly sitting at my piano, playing the first song she ever heard us play at the subway station that evening, where we first met.
Knowing deep in my heart…
This song meant everything to her.
And I could give her that.
Even if it was only for tonight.