meetings?”
“Fuck no.”
“Did you in rehab?”
I walk out of the bathroom into the bedroom, but she follows, and I give up to turn and face her. “No.”
“Well, no fucking wonder you can’t cope, Rhys.”
I lean in close to her, looking into those eyes that tell me how much she fucking cares about me even if she doesn’t want to. “I’m coping fine.”
She scoffs. “Tell me what happened to you at that last foster home. What the hell are you so afraid of?”
“Everything!” I raise my arms in the air as I plead with her not to do this. I drop my arms to my sides, my own shoulders slouching. “Everyone sees me as this tough, strong man. Muscles. Tattoos. Quiet.” I sink down to her bed, sitting on the edge. “But on the inside, I’m quaking with fear all of the time. I’m a scrawny, dirty, hundred-pound kid, shaking and puking at the thought of being touched.”
I look up at her and see she’s walked closer to me, standing before me. “Why? Please just tell me why.”
“No.”
She moves to her knees before me, looking up at me now. “I see you as a strong man, Rhys.” Her hand rests on the bed next to my thigh. “But I’ve always been able to see that little boy inside too.”
I feel bile rising in my throat, hating that kid. “Why are you always trying to help me?”
“You think I don’t have a little girl inside of me? That this badass, bitchy persona isn’t just a front?”
“I know it is.”
She smiles with determination and confidence. “Exactly. You see me, Rhys. And I hate it most of the time, but I also love it too. Somehow you see me, and you make me see me too.”
I know she’s all good. She has been since the first night when I couldn’t fuck her, and she didn’t make me feel like a freak. She came back for more.
“Tell me, Rhys.”
I shake my head slowly from side to side. “No.”
“Rhys.” Her voice is begging, a strangled cry as she pleads for me to divulge my deepest of secrets.
“We have to go.”
She shakes her head emphatically. “You can’t go like this into our marriage. You have to tell me. Get rid of these demons so we can move forward.”
“I’m the fucking demon.” I stand up, and she stands with me, denying it with a shake of her head. But I grab her chin with my hand gently, making her look at me. “I am. I fucked my foster mother.” I feel the shame and horror creeping up through me, but I need her to drop this shit. “And I liked it. From fourteen to fifteen, for almost a year and a half, I fucked her.”
I release her, and she watches me with caution but not disgust. “That’s not it.” Mother. Fucker. She is a pain. “There’s more to it. I know there is.”
“God damn it, Blair. We have to go.”
“No.” She places a hand over her chest as it rises and falls. She looks sick. “That’s not why you flinch when I touch you. That’s not why you can’t kiss me. And I say ‘can’t’ because I see you look at my lips and I know you want to.”
I stare at her lips now, full and painted pink. And God she’s right. I would love to feel what it’s like to kiss the ever-loving fuck out of her, to taste her mouth and let my tongue take over instead of my fucked-up mind. But I know I’d scare her when I would freak the fuck out.
I pry my gaze from her lips and move toward the door. “Let’s go.”
“Rhys, tell me. Tell me why you can’t stand to look at me when we fuck. That’s not why.”
I march back over to her, fury flying through me as I clench my teeth and will my body to calm down. “Don’t fucking talk about it anymore. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s go. Now.”
And this time, her shoulders slouch and stay that way as we grab Bree and pile into the car.
On the way to our wedding from hell.
We stand in front of the judge and exchange generic vows as I watch the man about to become my husband.
I know he’s tortured. I know there’s so much more to his backstory, and for whatever reason, I thought he’d tell me before we got married.
It was naïve to think that. It was stupid to believe he’d want to do that