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“But you stayed.”
I stopped pacing and glared at him again.
“I did, but it’s not like it’s not getting held against me that I tried in the first place.”
“You didn’t try. You thought about it,” he corrected, “and it wasn’t me who flushed those down the toilet, it was you.”
“Stop trying to give me an out, stop fucking trying to make this better,” I screamed, kicking the rocks so they flooded into the water all at once. My heart was pounding, and I was angry.
He jumped to his feet then and pointed out over the lake. “Scream! Put everything you have into it. Scream!”
I locked my jaw tight, my teeth aching from the force of it, but I refused to follow his orders.
“Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn?” he growled, throwing his hands up. “You know the guys are back there freaking out because they had no clue where you are, but I did. I knew you’d come here.” He tapped his chest hard as he spoke, the thud making me wince.
He leaned in so his face was inches from mine.
“You know how I knew? Because I see myself in you, Shaye. You can deny it all you want, but you’re angry, baby girl. So angry you can’t breathe, so angry that it’s drowning you. Sure, there’s grief there. You miss him with your whole soul, and that’s not going to change. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop living. So show me that you’re strong, show me that you want to keep living. Fucking, scream!”
The scream that ripped out of me was more of a growl than anything. It was visceral, feral as I unleashed it from my soul.
The proud smile on his face had my cheeks heating, but I refused to give in to it right now.
He was right. I needed to focus on this. I had to let it go. Feeling terrible every time I looked at one of them was no way to live. Hating myself for feeling things for my pack was not natural.
Yet, that scream didn’t take away everything.
“We had plans, you know,” I said as I started to pace again. I snatched a cattail that was growing on the edge of the dock and started peeling off the layers, picking at it as I spoke. “He promised me forever, and then he left me. I was alone, broken, and I didn’t even know who I was. I tried to run, and you know what? It didn’t fucking work. Every night I woke up screaming for him, every night I went to bed crying. Each morning I woke up looking like a zombie. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. My plans for the future, my goals—all of it is buried in that grave with him.”
He collected a few more rocks and piled them up, already knowing I wasn’t ready yet.
“It’s fucking ridiculous that I can’t smile without guilt. I hate that it feels like my grief and guilt and anger and frustration and pain are just filling me up inside, pushing me until I know I might burst with it. There’s no escape.”
He handed me a rock and I took it, wrapping my fingers around the rough stone as I looked at him.
“You know what I really want, Riven?” I continued, my voice breaking.
“What?” he asked gently.
“I want to be whole again.”
“Then you have to let go,” he said, as if it was that easy.
When I didn’t budge, he stood up, squaring off with me.
“You know what? I’m not going to lie to you, Shaye. Life fucking sucks. Do you know how many broken bones I had as a child? Way too many to count. My mother was the only one in my life who didn’t abuse me. Yet, do you know what she did? She left me with my abuser,ourabuser.”
The fight started to drain from me as I listened, tears still trailing down my face as he spoke.
His voice was deeper than usual, the pain in it winding with his words until it was dripping from every syllable.
“The asshole blamed me for that, too. The day that she left, he sent me to the hospital. They made some excuse and got me back. My beta fathers spent the rest of my childhood hiding every bruise and fracture and pretending like everything was fine. They were just as bad as him, all of them beating me and tearing me down day by day until I was sure that death would be my only escape. I prayed for god to take me, to save me from that.”
There was nothing I could say to him. His face was showing more emotion than it had since we met and all I wanted to do was hold him.
“Then I grew up and I was no longer a punching bag. I was twice my beta dads’ size. When I could hit back, I guess I lost my appeal. The last day I spent there, they tried to lay hands on me, and I returned the favor. My alpha dad was alive when I left, my knuckles bloody and broken, but I didn’t care.”
He stopped talking and glanced down at his knuckles. There were thin scars dotting his skin, the tattoos hiding a portion of them.
