Instead, Katy smiled smugly at me. “Just as long as you realize how crazy you sound.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Got it.”
After a second, Katy sobered, her expression going gentle and solemn. “But seriously? I think it might help you to talk to someone about this.”
“I’ll tell Remy,” I replied, already dreading having that conversation, but knowing it was necessary.
“That,” Katy hedged, “but I was thinking maybe someone else, too? Like a professional?”
“A therapist?” I knew my face probably looked as stunned as I felt.
“Might not be a bad idea,” Larkin agreed, tucking her hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, but telling someone everything that happened? Spilling my guts to a total stranger?” My spine stiffened as I resisted the idea.
“It’s not like that,” Tate said quickly, reaching out to take my hand. “After what happened with my parents, my father had me see a therapist in our pack. It helped me work through a lot of what happened with them. I’m not saying it’s a cure, but you might be able to get a handle on what triggers your anxiety and find ways to cope and work through it.”
“There’s a guidance counselor here at school you could try talking to,” Katy added.
“And there’s no pressure,” Tate went on. “You talk about whatever you’re ready to talk about.”
I swallowed, letting the idea settle even as doubt crept in from the corners of my mind. “But … but what if they don’t believe me?”
“After what happened to you last semester? There isn’t a single person in the school who would doubt your story,” Katy said honestly.
She must have seen the panic starting on my face because she was quick to add, “No one knows specifics. They don’t know what happened to you before, or really even the pack you came from.”
Tate’s face broke into a smile and she giggled. “My favorite theory is you had a stalker that was obsessed with you, and you jumped off a cliff rather than be with him.”
My jaw dropped. “What?”
Larkin clicked her tongue. “Or the one where Skye was being kidnapped to be Trace’s new mate? You know, since his dad lost Remy’s mom to Gabe, they needed to even the score.”
“You can’t be serious,” I sputtered, at a loss for words. Were people really speculating this?
Katy rolled her eyes, shaking her long hair out. “I swear, people will never get over that stupid fight from when my parents were younger.”
“It did fuel the fire between our packs,” Larkin commented with a shrug. “Blackwater and Norwood have a lot of bad history, and your parents are a part of it.”
“Basically everyone thinks it was a fight for your honor that got way out of hand,” Tate finished, still grinning at me. “I even heard a few guys say they wished they had known it was a contest because they would have tried for a shot with you.”
“Stupid boys,” Katy muttered. “Why do they always think they can fight to win a girl?”
“Um, years of normalization?” Larkin answered, her tone heavy with sarcasm. ”Some packs still do that. If two males want the same female, they challenge each other for her.”
Katy looked absolutely disgusted. “Freaking medieval, archaic shit.”
“Anyway,” Tate cut in loudly, shutting them both down, “the point is, it might help you to talk to someone who can be objective and won’t judge you.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said with a thin smile as my eye caught movement at the end of the hall.
My heart stumbled in my chest as I locked eyes with Remy.
His shoulders were set in a hard line, every inch of him looked powerful … and exhausted. He didn’t make a move towards me, though. He stood still, waiting for me to come to him. Still letting me set the pace.
This time yesterday, he would have come up behind me and wrapped his arms around me. Now there were yards and miles separating us.
I hated that separation more than I hated anything.
Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and took a step towards my future.
Towards my mate.
7
Remy waited for me to finish walking to him before turning and heading outside, holding the door for me. Neither of us spoke as we walked back to the cabin. Where typically I would have held Remy’s hand and leaned into his warmth while walking through the snowy Montana trail that led back to the cabin, I trailed behind him by a foot in silence.
Awkwardness and uncertainty lay like a giant, immovable object between us that I needed to overcome.
No, that I needed to destroy before it ruined us.
The cabin was warm inside as we took off our wet boots by the door, dropping them onto a water absorbent rug before moving hesitantly into the main room.
It still bore the traces of the sleepover the night before. Pillows, blankets, and random articles of clothing were shoved to the corners of the room in a haphazard attempt to clean up before we all headed to our first morning classes.
Walking to the couch, I sank into the corner of it, letting the worn cushions comfort me as I shivered. My bones were cold, but I knew it had nothing to do with the frigid temperature outside and everything to do with the anxiety rolling through my system like a never-ending series of tsunamis.
I watched as Remy moved towards me, but paused by the couch, clearly debating if he should sit with me on the couch or across the room from me in a chair.
My heart sank at his indecision.
I had done this. This divide hanging between us—literal, physical, emotional—was on me, and it was on me to fix it.
“Please, sit,” I begged softly, reaching out for him.
I still couldn’t get a read on his expression as he sat down beside me, near but not touching. His face was guarded, watching me for cues and tics.
His alpha face was what I called it. How he looked when he didn’t want to let people know what he was thinking, and when he was hanging back to assess the situation.
“I’m sorry,” I started, taking in a deep breath and steeling my spine. I owed it to both of us to own my meltdown and the current rift between us.
A line formed between his eyebrows; the first crack in his blank façade. “Skye, I don’t want you to be sorry.”
Swallowing, I pushed down the rising panic clawing at my insides. “But I am sorry. I reacted badly, and then I freaked out.”
He exhaled through his nose, his mouth pressed into a hard line.
I pressed on, needing him to understand it was my fault. “I should have told you what happened. Where my head was, but I just kind of shut down.”
“It happened so fast,” he murmured, shaking his head. “I didn’t know if I hurt you or—”
“No,” I said quickly, reaching out and grabbing his hand in mine before he could finish that thought. “God, no. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me.”
“Baby, you gotta walk me through this,” he replied, his dark eyes locked onto mine. The pain in his eyes slashed through my chest. “I thought we were on the same page. Then you were shaking and crying and yelling at me like I was forcing you—”
I flinched at that, jerking my hand back and wrapping my arms around myself.
Remy froze, his jaw going slack for a second. “Is that it?” he whispered, his voice rough with emotion. “Did you think I would force you to do something?”
“No.” The word was barely audible between us. My voice was a whisper, twisted by horror and revulsion at the idea of Remy ever hurting me.
But in that moment, pinned underneath Remy, it wasn’t him that I felt touching me. It was the hands of people who had tormented me most of my life touching my skin. My brain couldn’t differentiate the past from the present.
He shot to his feet, putting more space between us as he paced to the fireplace before spinning around to stare at me.
“Jesus Christ,” he hissed, raking a hand through his dark hair. “Don’t you know I would never do that? I
’ve told you that we’ll take this at your pace. All you have to do is say ‘no’ and everything stops.”
“It wasn’t like that!” I exclaimed, getting frustrated by how quickly this was spiraling out of control.
“That’s sure as hell what it seemed like,” he replied, spreading his arms wide. “If you didn’t want to do something, all you had to do was say so.”
“That’s not …”
Fuck.
This was getting out of hand. He just wasn’t getting it, or maybe I wasn’t explaining it right.
“I was fine,” I said slowly, measuring my words. “I thought I would be fine. That I could handle it.”
His eyes went wide, incredulous. “What the hell does that mean? You were just going to lay there and endure it? Pray it would be over quick? Am I supposed to be thankful you were just going to take whatever I gave?”
“God dammit, Remy!” I finally shouted. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I … the position we were in … I had a flashback of something that happened before. It happened over two years ago. It wasn’t you. It was me.”
He went statue-still. “What?”
My knees turned to jelly, and I fell back down onto the couch. I buried my face in my hands, wanting to crawl under the couch as tears burned hotly in my eyes. Humiliation swamped me, weighing me down.
“This morning was amazing. I loved every second of it,” I said quietly, forcing myself to drag the memory of Cassian, Preston and Marc into this moment with us. “But when you rolled us over and pinned me … All of the sudden I was fifteen again, and Cassian and his friends had me pinned down like that. The things they did …” I swallowed, unable to look at him as my voice dropped to a whisper. “It wasn’t you, it was a flashback.”
The silence in the room was a terrifying, palpable thing. The world stopped moving around me. The only sound was the soft humming from the refrigerator in the kitchen.
After several agonizing minutes, I slowly lowered my fingers and looked at Remy.
He looked absolutely crushed.
All I could do was manage a strangled apology again. “I’m so sorry.”
That snapped him into motion. He was in front of me and kneeling directly in front of me in seconds. His hands shook as his dark eyes bore into me.
“Do not ever apologize to me for what happened to you before,” he said fiercely.
I blinked and twin tears fell from my eyes. “But I keep ruining things. This morning was incredible, and then I messed it all up—”
“Skye, stop.” His tone was so strong and firm that I immediately complied, both my wolf and I submitting to our mate.
“You didn’t ruin anything,” he said, his voice kinder and gentler now as both hands reached out to frame my face. He held me in place so I couldn’t look away. “I know you’ve had a lot of bad shit in your past. I know there’s a lot you haven’t told me, and that’s fine. You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
I couldn’t imagine a time I would ever be ready to share with him all the things that had happened to me.
He exhaled. “But I didn’t think there might be things that could trigger you. That’s on me. I should have expected that.”
“Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds?” I demanded, grabbing his forearms with my hands as his thumbs swept away more tears from my cheeks. “You shouldn’t have to anticipate your girlfriend having a nervous breakdown because you kissed her.”
“This is all still new, baby,” he replied honestly. The concern and understanding in his expression was both healing and destroying me. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about each other. I thought this morning was about me doing something you didn’t like. I didn’t even think it could be something from your past.”
My eyes slid shut, my head dropping forward. “So, it’s always going to be like this? You walking on eggshells, trying to get a read on me before you do anything?”
His forehead touched mine, the touch instantly soothing. “No. But we have plenty of time. We just need to work on communicating.”
With a groan, I pulled away and flopped back on the couch. “But I don’t want that. I want to be normal. It’s not fair to you that you’re stuck with—”
“Jesus,” Remy muttered, sitting down beside me and pulling me onto his lap in one fluid motion. His nose nearly brushed mine, and I could feel his warm breath fanning across my face.
“I’m not stuck with you, Skye,” he informed me tersely. “Even without the bond? I choose you. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I replied automatically. “But—”
“No. No buts. You and me. We’ll figure this out as we go. You just can’t shut me out,” he said fiercely. “I will never judge you for what happened before. And while I wish like hell I could kill that fucker, you already handled that problem.”
I snorted out a laugh, the knot tightness in my chest easing up for the first time all day.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “I’m sorry.”
His eyes flashed. “I told you—”
Quickly, I covered his mouth with my fingertips, silencing him. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you what was going on. It wasn’t fair. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He raised a brow at me, challenging that thought.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I corrected, smiling back when he did. “But I shouldn’t have run out this morning and left you wondering about what happened.”
There was absolutely no way to doubt the love in his eyes. He nipped once at my fingers before kissing them. “Apology accepted.”
The knot of tension was almost gone. I drew in a deep breath, glad that burden was gone.
“How about if going forward, I check in to make sure you’re okay?” Remy suggested, his voice going husky in a way that made my toes curl and my insides quiver.
But still … ugh. That sounded pretty unromantic.
“I don’t want you to have to always check with me.” Now I just sounded whiny.
Remy took in stride, even grinning. His gaze swept hotly down my body. “It might not be so bad.”
I huffed out a laugh a second before his lips landed on my neck.
His teeth scraped the tender skin of my throat before his mouth and tongue slid along the flesh, pressing blisteringly hot, open-mouthed kisses along it.
I gasped, arching into the touch as he lifted his head. Pleasure unfurled in me, sending ripples of heat and awareness through my system.
“This okay?” he murmured before repeating the action on the other side of my neck.
“Um, yeah,” I whispered, my hands finding his shoulders and grabbing tight as my bones melted against him.
I could feel his lips curve into a smile against me as his hand slid along the outside of my thigh, stroking up to my hip.
“Still okay?”
“Definitely.” My voice broke as my head fell back, silently offering him more access.
His lips moved to my jaw as his hand slid around to my back, slipping under my sweater and tracing the line of my spine with the rough tips of his fingers. He pressed his palm flat against the small of my back as I arched towards him.
“Still?”
Was he serious?
My hands went to his head, tangling in his hair as I pulled his mouth to mine. A warm chuckle escaped him a second before his mouth slanted across mine, his tongue sweeping inside to devour me.
The hand on my back slipped up higher until it was wrapped around the back of my neck. He took advantage so he could angle my head just where he wanted it.
The collar of my sweater pulled at the front of my throat where it was being stretched under his powerful arm. I was seconds away from ripping the sweater off even as alarm bells rang somewhere in the clouded recesses of my brain.
His teeth caught my lower lip and tugged gently before pulling away.
“Remy.” His name was a whispered plea even as the bells kept going off in my head.
No, not in my head.
Actual bells were going off.
Blinking my eyes open I saw Remy smiling up at me with a totally satisfied male grin. He shifted us, reaching into his pocket for his phone. He turned off the alarm he had set before giving me a sheepish look.
“Lunch is almost up. We need to get to class before they send out a search party for us.”
My wolf howled in my chest, not wanting to let him go.
I get it, girl.
Remy stood up, taking me with him and holding me in his arms for a second, full on bridal style in the middle of the living room.
“We’re good?” he asked, but there didn’t seem to be any doubt lingering in him as his eyes roved over me.
I made a face. “We’d be better if the alarm didn’t go off.”
Laughing, he set me down, but pulled me close again for another lingering kiss that had me rocking to the balls of my feet when he broke it.
“Tease,” I muttered, but I was smiling.
The knot of stress in my chest was almost completely untangled, but I absolutely hated these moments with Remy; the moments when I would lose it and there would be some serious soul-bearing after. But I couldn’t deny that every time I told him something else the weight got a little bit lighter to shoulder.
And I felt even closer to Remy.
“Are you going to class or do you have more meetings?” I asked as we started pulling our shoes and coats on again.
He shook his head. “No, I’ll be in class. The guard reinforcements showed up this morning so we were getting them all up to speed on what was going on.”
I opened the front door to a frigid blast of air. “Does that mean no more personal escorts?”
He shook his head, pulling the door shut behind us. He grabbed my hand in his as we headed down the front stairs.
“Nope. We’ve assigned a protective detail to the dorms and tripled the amount of perimeter guards.”
“Tripled?” That caught me by surprise.
“The packs all sent extra guards,” he replied as we walked down the snowy path. “We’re keeping some shifted to keep to the woods and mountains, just to be safe, but there’s a full perimeter set up with a rotating shift of guards. No one is getting in or out without us knowing.”
Prey (Blackwater Pack Book 2) Page 6
