And now that he’s cracked open this door, I can’t just slam it shut. Not when fifteen damn years of pent up hurt and resentment are already spilling out like a tsunami.
“I wanted my first time to be with you because you were my friend, because I trusted you, because I didn’t want it to be with some random guy.”
“You. Were. Drunk.” He steps closer. “You were too young to even be thinking about…that. I was protecting you!”
His voice booms around the small shack, making me wince, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as badly as what he did that day. How he rejected me and walked away. Left me sitting on the tailgate of the truck feeling like no one wanted me. More embarrassed and emotionally traumatized than I ever had in my entire life.
I practically threw myself at him. Told him that I wanted him. That I wanted him to be my first…and this man looked me in the eye with zero emotion and walked away. Gave me his back and disappeared into the night the same way he left his cabin weeks ago without a glance back.
It was so easy for him to walk away. I saw it in that moment, in the way he looked at me before he left—the fact that he just saw me as some stupid kid he put up with because we lived in a small town and everyone was basically forced to be friends.
He never saw me as anything else.
And he never would.
“Do you want to know what happened after you left that night?”
His eyes widen slightly, as if he’s suddenly realizing that something might have besides me just heading home.
It’s what I should have done.
In hindsight, I can see that.
But I was so shaken, so upset, so unnerved by what happened with him that I was frozen in place.
I’m not frozen now, though.
Connor doesn’t intimidate me anymore. His rejection all those years ago made me who I am today. It made me strong.
I step closer to him, until our chests are almost touching, until the tension is so thick I can barely drag in a breath. “I sat on that fucking tailgate and I cried, and I don’t fucking cry, Connor McBride. I never have. Not when my dad left, not when my mom got sick, not when she finally passed and left me alone in this world. But that night, I cried.” A grim laugh slips from my lips. “And then Micah McConnell found me and asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t tell him through the sobs, not that I wanted to, but he put his arms around me to comfort me.”
Connor’s back stiffens, his shoulders tensing even more, as if he can already see where this story is going and doesn’t want to accept the ending he never imagined.
A sick feeling I never could have anticipated starts to build in me—elation.
I’m actually enjoying the fact that this might hurt him.
I push my finger back into his chest again. “And then…”—poke—“to feel better”—poke—“to get back at you”—poke—“I let him fuck me.”
Connor recoils so hard he literally backs up into the chair, making it rattle as it hits the wall.
In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Connor so…stunned.
Good.
Finally, an unguarded reaction.
Something real from him.
I was finally able to hurt him.
Though it’s nothing compared to the way I hurt that night, in so many ways.
Releasing a sardonic laugh, I shake my head at the memory of how rash I was in those moments after he walked away because of how upset I was. “My first fucking time was drunk and upset, with a guy who lasted twenty fucking seconds and didn’t give a shit about me, a guy I never talked to again after that, who wouldn’t even look me in the eye in school during the years it took for us to graduate. Who still won’t look me in the eye when I see him around town.” I surge forward and dig my finger back into that same spot in Connor’s chest, pushing my nail in harder, trying to pierce the skin. “But you know what? I couldn’t even blame him for it because it wasn’t what I really wanted and he probably knew it. I blamed you for it all, and I still do.”
His chest continues to heave, and he stares at me like the wheels are turning faster than he can process what I just told him, like he can’t grasp the fact that what he did led to something awful for me, something that I joke about with Willow, but that has actually haunted me since that day.
Because I could never tell her the full truth.
