Page 3 of Hidden By His Side

“How could it be your fault?”

Her tears started falling faster, the shaking taking over her body. “It is. I deserve this.” She swayed toward the ledge.

“No. You don’t.” His body turned toward her, his arms reaching up, ready to grab her, but also an offer. “Come here.”

Her eyes widened, so gorgeous in the moonlight, even drenched and sadder than anything he’d ever seen. She swayed toward him, and then she was launching herself against him, nearly taking them both over the edge.

He bundled her up against his chest as she sobbed out her story.

The story of a sheltered girl giving in to the pressure of her friends to join them at a party. Her first, and she was going to be good, so she accepted a soda, not any of the alcoholgoing around. The boy who handed it to her seemed nice. He flirted with her, and she liked it.

“No one had ever flirted with me before,” she confessed, like it was the biggest sin.

No, the biggest sin wasn’t hers by a long shot.

She started not feeling well, so the boy led her somewhere to lie down. Then things dimmed in her mind, the jumbled voices and hands and laughter becoming a vague nightmare.

She woke up naked and bruised and bleeding.

“My throat was sore, like I’d been screaming,” she mumbled against his chest. “I still wake up screaming. My friends said they didn’t hear anything, though. They said I acted like a slut, going off with him.” Her nails dug into his tear-dampened shirt. “I wouldn’t. I was going to wait until marriage.”

Fuck, how did he get this innocent girl in his arms? Just touching her was probably tainting her.

“They laughed. My friends. They laughed about how I wasn’t so pure now.”

He suddenly wanted to kill a bunch of young girls. He didn’t touch women, but maybe an exception needed to be made.

Her fingers uncurled, her palm flattening over his heart. “I told my parents. I was so scared, and I told them. They were mad at me. They said I got what I deserved, sneaking out to a party like that.”

He daydreamed about killing her parents as well, nameless fuckers who didn’t deserve the gift they’d been given. If he killed them, she’d be his.

She was already his.

She turned her head, an exhausted sigh slipping out. “They said I have to have the baby. I’ve already embarrassed them in front of the church. An abortion would be an even greater sin.”

Of course the hypocritical bible thumpers would convince this poor, sweet girl that she was the biggest sinner.

His mother had believed in God. She’d believed that those God called were the chosen few, raised higher than non-believers.

If God chose these fuckers, then Ramiro was thankful not to be part of His chosen. His mother was probably rolling in her grave at the thought, or she would be if he believed there was anything after death. As a child, he’d stared at the empty husk his mother had become and known for sure there wasn’t a God.

“I know I shouldn’t, but I hate this thing inside me.” Her hand left his chest, the fingers curling into her stomach again, as if she could rip it out herself. “I can’t.” Her eyes slid shut, and it was as if she drifted away from him even while his hands tightened around her. “I can’t,” she repeated, nails digging into her flesh. “It’s better if you let me jump.”

He was so fucking angry, not at her, but at every single person who had brought her to this moment, yet he couldn’t prevent the harshness of his fury from slapping at her. “You think it’s better to die than to get a goddamn abortion?”

She flinched in his arms, but he wouldn’t let her get away.

“The baby’s dead either way, isn’t it?”

“They said I couldn’t.” Her voice shook with more tears.

“You don’t need their permission. I’ll help you.”

She stiffened, tension twisting up her body. “No. Let me go.”

He pulled her in tighter. “It’s too late for that, baby girl.”

“What?” She was so close to his body that her head bumped his chin when she tried to raise it.

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