“No. I’m sorry I pushed.” Dang it, I’d gone and ruined the moment. “I call a take back.”
“A what?”
“A take back. You get to take back something you said or did; pretend it was never said or done.” I’d dreamed of a take back in relation to what’d happened to me, but that was something I’d never get. This one…hopefully I would.
His face softened, and he closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. That was a bad time for me.”
I nuzzled more under his arm and rested my gloved hand on his chest. I wanted to know about it so badly, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew all too well about not being able to talk about bad parts of life. He knew the basics of what’d happened to me, but not all the details.
I wanted to tell him, to share that part of me, but he might really flip out.
Logically, I knew he wouldn’t. He’d never made me feel badly even with all my quirks. Maybe if I started with a short snippet, he’d take my lead.
“It was five guys. All wearing black skull caps.” I swallowed hard. “I was walking home from a party. Freshman year.”
His arm tightened around me. I felt so safe in his arms.
“They knocked me out and I woke up inside a room, tied to a hard bed…pretty much naked.” I closed my eyes, digging deep for some of Hunter’s strength. “I could tell I’d already been raped, but they…the leader…he didn’t have any plans of stopping with that.”
“Lina,” Hunter whispered.
Tears welled, and I sat up a little straighter, working to get through the emotion clogging my throat. Other than Jenna and Lizzie, I hadn’t told anyone any part of it, not even my parents. I’d tried, but the pity-stares stopped me. They couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle the shame I’d brought on the family. Especially when I fell deeper into my illness.
“I was there for three days. No food. No water.” I cleared through the thickness in my throat. “All five…they kept coming back. Mostly the first two days. Then it was just the leader.” I shook the image of his face trying to dominate this moment I was sharing with Hunter. I wanted to open up to him more, wanted him to with me as well. “I wanted to die so the pain would end. So that the…assault…would stop.”
“Why’d they…I mean…was it a random—”
I shook my head, gulping through the tightness growing in my chest and throat. “Billionaire Dad. They were…looking for money. Payback for something.”
We sat there in silence for a long time. I didn’t have it in me to go on about the morbid details behind the abduction. This was a first step, and hopefully when I gathered enough strength to look at Hunter, he wouldn’t have the dreaded,Holy shit, what do I say now?look on his face.
But I had to, we couldn’t stay on this bench for much longer considering how cold my butt was.
“So where are you going to take me for our next adventure.” I propped my head up so I could see his eyes.
For a long time, maybe more than thirty seconds or so, he stared down at me. His eyebrows furrowed a few times, and his eyes widened while his grip around me tightened. He pressed his lips to my forehead, then rested his cheek against it. “You’re inspiring, you know that?”
I couldn’t have dreamed up a better response from him, really. At that moment, every wall around my heart shattered. The strength in his muscles was nothing compared to the power he held in his eyes. He didn’t pity me. He didn’t think me disgusting. No, he thought I was inspiring.
Waiting for him to speak, I watched the people skate. Hopefully, his silence meant he would tell me something about his life now. He knew so much about my junk. I’d love to know his.
“You never push me on stuff, other than when you left the ball in my court statement, which was a nice move by the way.”
I chuckled. I’d hated waiting for him, though. It was much harder than I thought it would be. “Yeah, well, I know first-hand how the past can impact the present. I hope you know how much I want to know about you, your past and everything. I care about what happened to you. And it won’t affect my opinion of you now, Hunter. Nothing could.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Lina.” His grip on my shoulder tightened. “I want to know so badly what you suffered, but I know I need to earn your trust.”
Tears burned beneath my eyes.
“But I will.”
“And me? Will I be able to earn yours? You know so much about mystuffalready, but I hardly know you. And I want to, Hunter. You know that, right?”
He nodded. “And I do trust you, more than I’d expected to. You surprised me.”
“Surprised?” I sat up more, facing him. “What do you mean?”
“I never get attached. I mean, I teach classes and stuff wherever I end up, but this one-on-one stuff…it’s not me.”