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Mack came and sat next to her, crossing his legs and leaning in to study her face. “Let me take a look.” He gently removed the wadded T-shirt from her temple and stared at the wound. She flinched at his touch, but not because he’d hurt her. His fingers were warm and sure on her skin and sent frantic memories of their night spent together, tumbling through her head. “It’s stopped bleeding,” he reported. “You might not need stitches after all.”
That was good.
His gentle fingers trailed down the side of her face to rest on the skin of her neck. His amber eyes narrowed. “That bastard left bruises,” he growled.
Bindi had thought Mutt’s rough hands might well have left marks on her neck, but she hadn’t been near a mirror to check.
Mack’s voice softened, and he said, “While we wait for the cops to arrive, are you going to tell me about that guy last night, then? I think I should know why I shouldn’t go back and pummel the shit out of him right now. But more importantly, I want to know why you think he might’ve tried to kill us.”
His questions caught her off guard and stabbed at her like a hammer blow, coming out of the blue like they had. She stared at him blankly, fisting the wad of his T-shirt in her hand by her side.
“It might be a good idea to get our stories straight,” he prompted gently. “Before the cops get here.”
He was right. And she guessed she owed him some explanation. Perhaps she could try her story out on him first, before she blurted everything out to the police.
She nodded. Where to start? At the beginning, she supposed. “Mutt was best friends with my brother, Kai. They were inseparable, right from when they met in kindergarten. I’m ten years younger than my brother,” she explained. “I was one of those happy accidents, as my parents like to call it. I was born well after my mother had given up all hope of ever having another baby. So, my brother and I were never really close.”
“Mmm,” Mack encouraged.
“Kai had always been a bit of a wild child. I knew my parents struggled to keep him in class until he finished high school. Even before he graduated, he’d started hanging out with a gang of boys from the street. My parents kept me ignorant of most of the worst details of what he was up to, but I later found out that his gang was really a bunch of small-time criminals. Peddling drugs to school kids, petty theft, stealing cars, that kind of thing. Kai almost ended up in jail more than once, but I was never told at the time.”
Mack screwed up his mouth in a grimace of understanding. It was such a cliché. Kid gets sucked into a dubious group, gives in to peer pressure and ends up on the wrong side of the law. It happened all over the world, to all kinds of young people who were searching for a place to belong, somewhere they fit in.
“Because I was so oblivious to all of Kai’s faults, I used to idolize him,” Bindi continued. “I always looked up to him, wanted to be like him. But most of the time, it was as if I didn’t exist for him. As if I was beneath him. He had his own life with his own friends, and he ignored me. But that all changed when I turned fourteen.”
Bindi shuddered as she remembered her fourteenth birthday.
“What happened?” Mack prompted gently.
“Kai turned up to my party with a group of his mates, Mutt included. Mum wasn’t happy, but she hadn’t seen him in weeks and so didn’t want to turn him away. His mates all started to wink at Kai when my parents weren’t looking, telling him that his sister was hot. To start with, I lapped up all their appreciation, but it soon turned into something darker, and uglier.”
Bindi remembered all the crude comments, made when her parents were out of earshot. About how pretty she was. How grown up she’d become. That she was a hot piece of ass. And how they’d like to take her out the back and fuck her hard. That last comment had come from Mutt, and she’d gasped at his blatant crudeness.
“They started making innuendos to all my friends, as well, and most of the girls excused themselves and left early.”
“So, they ruined your party. Bastards.”
“Yes, they did, but it was more than that. When Kai and his mates left that night, Kai looked at me as if… I don’t know, as if I’d betrayed him somehow.”
“What do you mean?” He leaned forward, a little V of a frown forming between his brows.
She pursed her lips and tilted her head to watch the blue sky shimmer between the branches above them.
“Later that night, he came home again, after my parents were in bed. There was something angry and mean eating him up inside. He said that I’d shamed him in front of his friends by acting all coy and flirty. Like I wanted it, or something. Mutt had told him that I was coming on to him, giving him the come-fuck-me-eyes. But I promise, I didn’t do it on purpose. I was just a fourteen-year-old girl who just discovered boys and was eager for their attention.”
“What happened?” he asked, voice cold and flat. The ice in his tone seemed to suck the heat straight out of the day, as if he knew what she was about to say. But she’d started this story, and she knew she had to finish it.
“He raped me,” she said in a whisper. “Then told me he’d done it because he loved me, and he was saving me from something worse. And not to say anything to our parents, because if they actually believed me—and he said it was highly doubtful they’d believe my far-fetched story over his word—they’d throw me out of the house for being a dirty little slut.”
Mack went incredibly still beside her, like he was suddenly made from stone. “So he was twenty-four when he did this to you? And you were fourteen?” he demanded.
Bindi hung her head and nodded. Yep, he was more than old enough to know better. To know exactly what he was doing. Even though he tried to blame her; said it was all her fault, that she was so beautiful that he couldn’t keep his hands off her. That he was doing this to keep her away from his friends, that he’d needed to be the one to take her virginity because they all wanted to be her first, but if any of them got hold of her, it would’ve been ten times worse.
“That disgusting piece of shit.” Mack spat the words with such venom, Bindi was taken aback for a moment. Mack’s lion-like eyes blazed, burning with heat and hate. It’d taken her a while to come to the same conclusion, but Mack was right, her brother had done a sickening thing. It was an act that would change her life forever. But it would also change his.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It took me a while to understand he was sick. That his perversion wasn’t my fault.”
“None of what happened was your fault,” he said tenderly, draping a hand around her shoulders and pulling her in close. “That perverted, sadistic prick,” Mack growled. Bindi glanced up and saw he was clenching his teeth so tight, she could see the outline of the tiny muscles in his jaw pulse with anger. “I’m not sure I want to find out what happened next,” he said. “But I need to know what part this Mutt character played in all this.”
