“Oh fuck, Tag. He kept her in a basement back then,” Zander said in a near whisper.
Tag took a step back from the bed and pulled on his hair. “We’re not him! We’d never hurt her or lock her up down here.”
Tessa could hear the disbelief in Tag’s snarling words. She knew she’d hurt both of them by losing it over them carrying her down to the basement, but maybe if they hadn’t surprised her with it…
“Tessa, honey, look at me.” Zander kneeled next to the bed and ran his fingers lightly over her cheek. “It never dawned on me or Tag that coming down here would upset you. I’m so sorry, but you have to know that we’d never lock you up down here, or anywhere for that matter. We’d never do anything to hurt you like that.”
She swallowed around the tightness in her throat and looked at him. “But you’ve already started trying to control me. Tag’s mad at me because I don’t want you buying me things. He said I just have to get used to it, like I have no say in anything. I can’t live like that again, Zander. If you take away all of my freedom, I’ll die inside.”
“Oh, kitten. We aren’t trying to take away your freedom or anything else, but you’ve got to understand that we need the freedom to be ourselves just like you do. If we can’t express how we feel or what we want to do, then we’re just as bound as you feel like you are.” Zander ran his hand over his bare head and sighed.
“Z, we pushed too much. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have jumped the gun before we’d all had time to get to know each other and talk things out.” Tag didn’t look at her. He kept his head down while he talked. “I don’t think either of us really understood the seriousness of what Tessa went through. We’re upset and righteously pissed about it, but we hadn’t really thought about what it meant to be locked up so she couldn’t go anywhere and separated from having anyone to talk to. Like she said, he’d taken her over. While we both know we don’t plan on doing that, the fact that I just laid into her that she’d have to deal with us taking her shopping whether she liked it or not essentially took away her ability to say no.”
Tag looked up at Tessa now, his face void of all expression except for the shiny glint in his eyes telling her where his emotions were. He opened his mouth as if to tell her something then closed it again and turned away.
“I’m going back to the shop and work for a while. I’ll be back later.”
Tessa heard the sound of his boots crossing the floor before they disappeared up the stairs and the door above closed. She’d hurt him just as much as she was hurting. Why couldn’t she get anything right? Why hadn’t she resisted them and stuck to her plan of not getting involved? Look where it had landed the three of them.
“Tessa. Don’t cry, honey. I can’t stand to see you like this.” Zander crawled up on the bed and wrapped his big body around her, pulling her into his arms where she cried over how screwed up she was inside.
* * * *
The smell of oil, leather, and gasoline soothed him some. Tearing apart the busted up bike that had come in earlier that week soothed him even more. He couldn’t believe they’d been so stupid and jumped right into the fire with their Tessa. Instead of taking things slow and easing her into a relationship with them, they’d insisted that she move in with them right then and then started making demands of her as if they’d never heard how her life had been with her ex.
He snorted. Mostly it had been him. Zander had a little better handle on women’s emotions than he did. He never would have insisted that she let them take her shopping or started the punishment scenario and carried her down to the basement if he hadn’t initiated it all. How did his friend put up with him? It was always his fault when things blew up. He had a hair-trigger temper and always jumped to conclusions.
While he would never lose his temper and hurt a woman, he would go off like a rocket and say things he shouldn’t. The thing about it was that at his age, changing wasn’t going to come easy. It was how he was wired, and no amount of wishing it weren’t was going to make a difference. He’d try to change for her sake, but it wasn’t going to be easy and it wouldn’t happen overnight. He just prayed she could ignore it for now.
Maybe if they’d gone slow with her, she would have adjusted to his gruffness and learned when to pretend to agree with him and when to stand up to him. Now, though, he was afraid she’d refuse to stay with them even if he tried to change.
Tag roared out his frustration and threw the bolt he’d finally managed to get off across the garage where it bounced off the metal bay door before rolling across the concrete floor. He’d be lucky if he ever found the bastard again.