I couldn’t admit to her that I had thrown myself at Connor and he rejected me, because if I had, I would’ve exposed my most vulnerable moment. She might be my best friend, but I didn’t want even her to know that. Especially because I knew how much she liked Killian, how much she wanted to be with him. I didn’t want any of my shame and embarrassment in the middle of any of that. I didn’t want it to get in the way of any potential future they might have.
Instead, I let my hatred of Connor and what he did grow into a living, breathing thing, and he continued his hatred of me that he clearly held well before that night.
“You can stop pretending, Connor, that you said ‘no’ because you were protecting me. Just fucking admit that you never liked me. That you hated me then like you do now. That you’re doing this for Willow, not because you actually give a shit about whether I’m safe or not. Just tell the fucking truth, and then maybe you wouldn’t hate yourself so much. Maybe you won’t hate me so much.”
The silence that hangs between us is suffocating, as is the tightness of the small space.
All I want to do is break down that door and run outside, to race home, but there are too many dangerous things in the woods and too many dangerous people who might come looking for me with all the digging I’ve been doing.
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.
