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Back in the bathroom, he found Haven sitting on the tub’s wide edge, staring out at the rain, the towel tight around her shoulders. “Hey,” he said.
She whipped around and rose, like he’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t. “Hey.”
He wasn’t having that. Walking up to her, he held out the clothes, but he didn’t release them when she grabbed for them. “We might as well wait out the rain here, so make yourself at home, Haven. Sit where you want. Open doors and cabinets. Help yourself to anything I have. Got it?”
A small smile. “Okay.”
Finally, he let go of the clothing, but he didn’t back away—because he couldn’t back away. Arousal still surged through his blood from their flirtation at the lake, from her looking so fucking perfect in his space, from the way her soaked shirt revealed just a hint of the porcelain of her skin beneath.
A low, drawn-out rumble of thunder, and Haven’s eyes widened, just a little.
He cupped his hand around her neck and adored the way she leaned into the touch. “Tell me why you’re scared of storms,” Dare said, protectiveness rising up inside him. If he understood her fears, maybe he could help her battle them. For however long they had together.
Haven’s eyes skittered away from his, and her cheeks paled. “I used to love them,” she said, her voice going distant. “The raw power and sound of them. But when I was fifteen, I had my first serious boyfriend. His name was Zach, and he . . . he was my first,” she said quietly, “and only.”
Something deep inside Dare disliked hearing about another man having known her in ways Dare didn’t, but the admission that she hadn’t been with anyone since sucker-punched him with such raw sadness for her that it outweighed the jealousy that threatened.
“I don’t know how, but my father found us together”—she made a face that made it clear exactly what kind of together that’d been—“and he . . . he was furious. Said I’d ruined myself, and that if I wanted to act like a b-bitch in heat, he’d treat me like one.” Her shoulders curled in as her chin dropped, and it reminded Dare so much of the way she’d acted during their first conversation that it just about broke his fucking heart—and made him want to rage.
His hand slid up to cup her cheek, his thumb lazily stroking the soft skin under her eye. “You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to.”
A little shake of her head, and for the first time in long minutes, she lifted her gaze to meet his. “I want to. This is me, you know? And I guess . . . I don’t know why, but . . . I guess I’d really just like to let you know me.”
Jesus if those words didn’t reach right into his chest and own him. The sentiment resonated so deep inside him that the world rocked a little around his feet, shaking him to the core. Because there weren’t many people who knew about his mom and Kyle, and Dare’s role in their deaths. For the most part, their murders were a secret shame he carried, one that left him feeling like almost no one knew the real depth of his pain—or his failings. And sometimes he felt like such a goddamned fraud that he could barely look at his reflection in a mirror.
“What did he do?” Dare asked, his growing anger coming through in the gritty tone of his voice.
The cast of her eyes went bleak. “We had two Rotties, Roxy and Xena. He chained me to the dog run in the backyard with them for two days. He put my food in their food dishes, and though the dogs were never mean to me, I wasn’t able to compete with them for it, either. The second night, it stormed. One of the worst storms I’d ever seen in my life—or maybe it only seemed that way because I was out in it. I think the only thing that kept me from going crazy was that the dogs laid right with me all night. They were scared, too. I’m not sure who comforted who more.”
White-hot fury ripped through Dare’s veins. He’d chained her up like a fucking dog? Dare’s imagination unhelpfully provided a picture of what she must’ve looked like, lying on the ground soaking wet, a chain around her neck, dogs huddled up against her shivering body. The revenge fantasies instantly tearing through his mind were gruesomely satisfying. There was little Dare hated more than a cowardly bully who got off on torturing those weaker than him. And Rhett Randall was clearly that in spades. “Haven—”
“I’ve never liked storms since,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him say her name.
