Page 21 of Plus-Size Bullied Mate

“I said I’m fine!”

“Enough!” Hunter yells, slamming his palm against the counter hard enough to send a sharp vibration through the floor.

The sound makes me flinch instantly, and I lock up completely involuntarily as a cold front moves through me. The second it happens, shame floods me, and every argument dies on my tongue at once.

Hunter goes completely still, and before he can even think to hide it, regret runs across his face immediately.

I recover fast, straightening and crossing my arms tighter like I can erase the reaction if I pretend hard enough, and if I can seem convincing to him. It infuriates me all over again that I couldn’t hide it.

As hard as I try to seem unaffected by the past, that flinch came from years of instinct and conflict, making my body brace automatically whenever voices rise too quickly.

And of course, Hunter saw it.

Just what I needed.

Chapter 6 - Hunter

The way Tessa flinches shakes something loose in me that I didn’t anticipate. No part of me could’ve prepared for that look on her face.

Everything in me was yelling for dominance one moment, and the next, Tessa’s shoulders curled inward, her chin dropped, and she visibly shrank like she wanted to disappear into the hardwood floor beneath her feet.

Any other words I have die in my throat as the echo of my voice returns to me in my mind.

I’ve seen men cower in the field, and I’ve watched hardened soldiers break under interrogation, yet the quiet, instinctive recoil from a woman who has clearly endured too much fucking guts me.

“Tessa,” I say, catching how rough my voice comes out. Trying again, I force my jaw to unclench. “What was that?”

Despite her previous fire, she doesn’t meet my eyes this time. Instead, her arms wrap around herself now, and she grips her elbows like she’s holding herself together by sheer will alone. That awful stillness I remember from when we were kids settles over her once more, just like it always did when she’d go quiet and small to make herself invisible.

All because I made being invisible necessary for her, all under the guise of protecting myself and keeping those instincts in check.

“You just yelled at me,” she says with such a flat tone it feels more like she’s reading from a script. “People tend to react when someone twice their size gets in their face and screams at them.”

“That wasn’t…” I trail off and run a hand through my hair, well aware that’s exactly what just happened. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

The huffed, disbelieving sound that escapes her isn’t a laugh at all. It comes out far too brittle, and more like a deflection that makes my inner wolf whine in the back of my skull. “Right, of course not. Because only something physical counts.”

The sarcasm feels loaded with barbs, and while it would be easy to rise to the bait, I don’t. I can’t now, not when I’ve just triggered this concerning response from her.

Opening my mouth to argue, nothing comes out. I don’t know what she wants me to say.

I want to tell her that the past isn’t a reflection of me now, and that I’m not the boy who tormented her and made her feel less than all because of something she had no part in. I made her life a living hell because she was an easy target, and because of all the things I couldn’t bring myself to face. The thought of being drawn to someone like her terrified me, and I was too much of a coward to handle it properly.

I should tell her that part of me is gone, and that I’ve left those reflexes behind.

Except that version of me isn’t entirely gone. He’s still standing right here in this room with us, watching the evidence of his cruelty written in the way she holds her body, and how she angles herself toward the door. It’s so clear in the way her heart pounds so hard that I can hear it from several steps away.

I made her afraid of me, and more than that, it happened like something that has long been built into her.

Guilt and self-loathing twist in my chest immediately. It’s ugly and raw, and feels too shameful for me to be comfortable with.

This is all because of me.

“Tessa… look at me.”

She doesn’t. Instead, her gaze stays fixed somewhere just past my shoulder, and even that seems painful.

I can smell the fear on her now as it’s layered beneath her scent that’s been driving me out of my goddamn mind since the moment I smelled it again.