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She didn’t give him a chance to get out of the truck. She raced at it, her hair flying out behind her like a cape. She wrenched open the door and tumbled in to face Kier’s seriously worried expression.
“Taylee—”
She latched her seatbelt into place. “Can you drive?”
“Where?”
“Just anywhere. Please, just anywhere. I just…no one else can know about this. Only you.” She wished she could telegraph the rest because she couldn’t say it.I’m sorry I’m a problem. I’m sorry this is what your life has become when it comes to me. I’m sorry all I have is bad news. I’m sorry I’m destroying our life right when I’d decided that the only way to live was to pick it up and put it back together.
She watched Kier back the truck up and head down the road. He inhaled sharply, like someone had kicked him in the gut, but he didn’t say anything. She watched his side profile, and suddenly, at the most inopportune time, shesawhim.
She’d noticed the details before—but they hadn’t sunk in the way they hit her at this moment. She was barely holding back her tears. They shimmered in her eyes, blurring hm, but it didn’t make much of a difference. She knewhe was muscular. That every bit of him was as hard as stone except for his soft eyes and his even softer heart. But now?
She’d never really seen anyone fill out a plaid jacket or a pair of jeans the way he did. His hands looked sure and sturdy on the wheel. His skin was that natural gold tone of someone who sunbathed, which she knew he didn’t do. She was all heat and raw nerve endings. Her body burned. She had the craziest urge to launch herself across the truck, clear the middle console with the plastic cupholders and probably receipts and junk in it, and cling to him. She wanted his strength to consume her. To cover her. To wrap around her and protect her from whatever was happening.
Was she brave enough to ask for it? She had to be. In a few minutes, he’d pull over and he’d ask her what was going on. She was scaring him. She’d offered no explanations. He’d come. He’d come for her, and he’d done what she asked and she knew if she told him that she didn’t feel safe and she needed that from him, he’d do anything it took to give it to her.
The rising pain inside her drowned out the heat just a little.
She could focus on what the hell had happened in the woods and not just on Kier’s hands and what they’d feel like on her body, or his arms and how strong they’d be closing around her. He’d stand between her and that man and the rest of the world if he had to and he’d do it gladly, but unlike her brothers and probably her dad too, he’d use his head first.
Kier finally pulled over on a back road that branched out from the gravel road that led from Pinefall and Greenacre back to the city. There were many turn offs, and he picked the one that looked the most deserted. Lined by trees, she felt sheltered and safe. Unseen, except by him.
When he shut the truck off and turned to her, she nearly melted as his eyes swept over her. There was no heat on his end, though. Only worry.
It was too late to decide if she’d done the right thing involving him or not. Of course she had. If she kept this to herself and he found out later, he’d be so hurt. As her mate, he had every right to know and to be the first one she talked to. The acid was going to burn inside her, and she was going to feel uncomfortable no matter what she did.
She inhaled deeply and told him everything. Everything the man in the woods said to her. She described him. Described how he’d sneaked up on her, how he had her number, how he knew where she lived and even what had happened to her. He seemed to know everything about her, which was not just creepy, but also incredibly frustrating, given that she couldn’t remember most of it herself.
“Kier?” she whispered after she was done.
It was cold outside, only slightly above freezing, and a fine mist was starting up, coating the windshield from an iron-grey curtain that had become the sky above the trees. It was dark out, almost like night, it was so overcast.
The sky pressed down on her. It felt like the whole truck was pressing down on her. Maybe the rest of the world too.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No.” He’d listened so patiently and calmly, but now his face grew stormy. “You don’t need to say you’re sorry. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I’m sorry that I can’t remember. I’m sorry that I have no way of knowing if what he told me was the truth. I’m sorry that I ever kept this from my parents and my family if I did, although I can imagine how they would have reacted, even back then. My brothers would have wanted to find him and beat the shit out of him. He was an outsider. He never would have been allowed or even welcomed into Pinefall. He says that I loved him and that I promised I would do anything for him, and I’m sorry if I ever did. He has that video of me and it’s real. I shifted in front of him and let him film it like an idiot.”
“I don’t think you let him. You probably didn’t know.”
“How could I not have known?”
“He could have hidden a camera somewhere, for all you know. It probably wasn’t even from a cell phone.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t even thought of that. Had he tricked her, then? She’d promised him so much, but how did it end? Her feelings had obviously ended for him, or she never would have taken Kier as a mate. She knew that about herself. There was only room in her heart for one person at a time. “I never took him as a mate,” she whispered. “He never said that.”
“Were you young?”
She was about to say she didn’t know, then she thought about the video as she shifted. Really thought about it. “Yes. Yes, I was. It was probably…ten years ago at least, maybe fifteen, but that’s just a guess. My parents showed me photos of myself in the clinic from all stages of my life to see if they brought back any memories.”
He didn’t sigh with relief. He didn’t sigh at all. He didn’t look at her like she’d betrayed him by having a past.
“I’m sorry I never told you about this before. Before…when we decided to be mates.”
“Tay.” He shifted in his seat and undid his seatbelt when it didn’t allow for a great range of motion. He turned to her. “You didn’t have to tell me about everything that happened in your life before. We met later. We were both over forty. I knew there were lovers before. You knew I wasn’t a virgin either. That’s what happens when you meet someone mid-life. You both have pasts. And that’s okay. All those songs out there talk about how the past prepares a person for the present. How it makes you grateful for all the things that hurt you back then because you appreciate the present so much more. How it built you up and made you strong—or taught you how to be sensitive and understanding. Life prepares us for our mates, and I want to take what I can from my past to be the best mate possible. Learn from the things I did wrong and my mistakes, or just from my experiences, good or bad. We felt the same about that. We didn’t need to talk about past lovers. It was done. That was over. We accepted each other in the present.”
