Touching Scars(65)

“He’s in your head, Kat. I’ve been fighting for his space for months now. I want him gone. Eradicated!”

I reached over the center console and shoved him hard. “You think that I can just forget about him? What he’s done to me? He stole something from me that no girl ever wants to give to just anyone for the first time. I’ll never get that back, Timber! So of course he’s in my head. He’s a monster that lurks around every corner. I never know what will bring him crashing back into the forefront of my mind but I certainly never expected you to willingly throw him in my face!”

“I’m not trying to throw him in your face. I just want you to know that I want to replace him. I don’t want him to be lurking around when I’m with you, when I’m inside of you.”

I was completely taken aback. How did this conversation take a turn so quickly? “You are talking to me like I haven’t tried to forget about him. I fucking moved here to get away from him! I was living in that town in fear that he’d show back up and do the same thing all over again. Christ, Timber.” I threw my hands up in the air. “I had to fucking quit track, something that I loved, because I couldn’t step foot back in the locker room where he raped me.”

I suddenly stopped yelling and my hand flew up, covering my mouth. I’d just told him a piece of information that I’d never shared. His eyebrows rose as shock registered on his handsome face. The wheels were turning behind his beautiful blue eyes as he let what I’d said sink in. I was now a sitting duck, waiting for his fury to come flying out.

“It happened at the school?” he quietly asked.

I nodded my head, tears starting to pool in my eyes.

“And was he an adult or was he a student?” The softer he spoke, the more menacing his tone became.

“Student,” I choked.

“Do I know him?” He turned to look out the windshield. It almost hurt more because he wouldn’t even look at me.

“Probably,” I lied. “It was a small school, Timber. There weren’t that many faces that we wouldn’t have passed at some point in the hall.”

“You know what I’m asking you, Kat. Don’t fuck around with me right now.”

As a matter of fact, I did know what he was asking. I felt like I was at a crossroads; trying to decide between telling him the truth, sending him into a rage, or evading his question and make him think that it was a guy from my class. There was no doubt in my mind that he would blame himself, then go hunt Adam down and do unspeakable damage if I told him the truth. Timber was two years older than me, so he could believe that it was someone that graduated with me. I made my decision almost too easily.

“It was someone that I graduated with. He ran in a different crowd than you, okay? I’m sure you barely even knew the kid.”

He didn’t relax in the slightest. “What was his name?”

Shit! I hadn’t planned on him asking me details. My heart was hammering in my chest. Simply discussing this topic with him made me want to roll my window down and hurl. I really didn’t want to keep lying to him, and I also didn’t want to keep talking about it.

“Timber, I can’t, okay? I know you want to know, but the idea of even speaking his name makes me want to throw myself off a cliff. That name in my head is one that will forever be burned there, and I don’t ever want to feel it coming off of my lips. Please, I’m begging you, can we just drop it?”

My tears were falling in slow drops from my cheeks, and he was watching me guardedly. I could see the internal battle that was raging inside of him — the need for him to know even a name so he could feel like he was further protecting me, and the very simple need to give me what I was asking for. I took a shaky breath when he chose the latter.

He used the backs of his hands to wipe away the dampness on my face. “This is the hardest thing I think I’ve ever done. Every impulse in me is telling me to find this person and do to him one thousand times worse than what he did to you. I’m hanging by a thread here, Kat. I want to hurt him so bad I feel murderous.”

He looked it too. I needed to pull him out of his head and bring him back to just me. Unbuckling my seatbelt, I maneuvered my way over the shifter and onto his open lap. I faced him as I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. I shoved my nose into the crook of his neck and breathed in the earthy scent of him mixed with the faded hint of his cologne. I could feel him doing the same as his arms came around me and pressed me to his chest so that there wasn’t an inch of space between us. I heard him breathing as he buried his head in my hair. His hands were trailing slow paths up and down my spine. It was somehow calming to both him and me. I needed to be touching him as much as he needed to have every part of me wrapped around him.