Page 87 of Malice and Surrender
Raine
I was shocked when I got Avro to agree to hold off a day in telling him what happened. I said I needed to sleep and think and that I would tell him the next night, but I needed the time to collect myself.
The issue was, I didn’t sleep well. I cleaned up the rest of the mess, paced my room, tossed and turned, then read a little. The entire time, I worried about what their reaction to my story was going to be. I also couldn’t help wondering if Kai was going to show up again. Now here I was having to pay the piper.
Avro had insisted that I tell both him and Jace at the same time. I argued, but I had realized that arguing with Avro was like yelling at the sky, telling it not to rain. He said the three of us were a unit—if I wanted in—that meant we shared everything, the uncomfortable and the great.
I agreed with the idea in theory, but Jace’s stare made me more nervous than if it had just been Avro. I paced Avro’s living room and hated that they were watching me like I was a ball in a tennis match. It was fairly accurate. I felt like a ball bouncing around from one emotion to the next. Worry, then anger and frustration. I stopped and pinched the bridge of my nose.
If I told them and they both decided to bolt, I guess it was better now than later. I’d never told anyone what happened except the police and Kai the other night.
“Okay, I’ll start with this. Jace, you asked the other night where I got my scars. I said it was a long story and didn’t want to talk about it.” The two of them nodded in unison. “I got them the night I was….” I licked my lips and stared at the ocean picture above the couch. “I got them the night I was raped,” I said, and my shoulders slumped. It was like a fifty-pound weight lifted from my chest to get the words out.
The guys didn’t move or even blink, which was eerie.
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Just didn’t want to interrupt you. I know that took a lot to get out,” Avro said. “I know it was like that for me, anyway.”
I nodded and took a steadying breath. “I was just shy of sixteen. My friend and I have birthdays a week and two days apart, which made him eighteen. Anyway, I was attacked at this place that had underground fights.” I waved my hand to dismiss that part. “The point is, I was attacked in an alley, and I thought that it was my friend who attacked me.”
“Shit friend, if that was your first thought. But that doesn’t explain the bruises now,” Jace said, his eyebrow shooting up.
I chewed on my lip, angry at myself for wanting to defend Kai.
“I’m getting to that.” I wet my lips to get some moisture into my dry mouth. “The friend that I went to see was supposed to be fighting at this club thing. When I was attacked, I mistakenly thought the attacker was my friend.”
Avro crossed his arms. “Jace is right. That was some friend, if you thought that about him.”
I glared at Avro. “Please don’t interject like that. You have no idea what we went through together that led to that moment.”
They looked at one another, silently communicating, before turning to stare at me. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” Avro said.
“The point is I was wrong, but I didn’t think I was wrong, and he got a raw deal and was sent to prison for ten years.” I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I sent my best friend to prison for something he didn’t do.” The words sunk in more now than the night I realized my error, and I fought back the tears forming all over again. I needed to keep myself together to get through this. “I have all this guilt over it, and I should. It was a shit thing to do to someone I cared about.”
They shifted closer to the edge of the couch at the same time.
“Okay, stop doing that. It’s weird.”
“Doing what?” they asked together.
“That. Stop being so in sync. It’s creepy.”
They smiled at the exact same time, which I was sure they did to freak me out. Giving up, I started pacing again. The nervous energy was still thrumming through my body, and it didn’t seem to want to let up any time soon.
“Okay, we will try to tone down the creep factor. So, tell us exactly what happened?” Avro asked.
This part was the worst. I knew what they would want to do, and I didn’t know how to stop them. “My friend…he got out of prison a little while ago and…um. Well, he found me, and he was pretty pissed off about having to go to jail for something he didn’t do and that I was the one who put him there for ten years.”
Jace’s eyes went wide. “So he beat the shit out of you?” His voice was a deep growl that made me shiver.
He leaned back, a scowl on his face as he crossed his arms over his chest. I could leave out what really happened, but with my luck, that would blow up in my face. I figured this entire thing would blow up in my face, anyway. Why the hell would they want to stay with me and the truckload of baggage I dragged around? If I were caught lying by omission, that would make it worse. At least this way, it was all out there, and if they kicked me out of the relationship, they did. Yeah, it was better to know now than months from now.
“He did more than that. He kind of…did what he was put into jail for,” I said, and the room went silent.
I stopped near the window and stared out at the ocean across the road, but I could see their reflections in the glass. They looked like they’d been frozen between shocked and furious and couldn’t decide which they wanted to be. I turned and leaned against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest as I waited for them to say something.
“I just want to make sure I heard you right,” Jace said, slowly standing from the couch. I swallowed hard at the dark look in his eyes and was terrified to see what would happen with him and Kai in the same room. “This guy, this supposed friend, showed up at your house, assaulted you physically, and then raped you?”
