Page 28 of Break The Ice

Wren is watching me closely. I can feel it. Is he disgusted?

“I couldn’t fight back. They made sure the entire school just pretended I didn’t exist. They used to beat me up. Even the teachers would see it and turn away and pretend it wasn’t happening.” I say it all in a rush of words and emotion. I still can’t talk about it without reliving it.

I remember vividly the feel of the underwear in my mouth as the blows rained down. Their laughter and taunts hid the desperate sucks of air as I tried to get enough but couldn’t quite do it. The flicker of black. The wish that I’d told my mother I loved her before I left, and the bitter sadness that I was going to die in a locker room, covered in piss, while Callan’s screams echo from a locker not far away.

I shrug and force a light laugh.

“It was no big deal.”

“NO BIG DEAL?” Callan snarls from behind me. “They broke your arm by jumping on it. They tortured you. You almost killed yourself, Kit!”

I squeeze my eyes closed and wish I could make him take his words back.

“I survived it, though.”

Callan storms back out of the dining room.

I can’t take Wren’s silence any longer; with a frustrated grunt, I look up and freeze. I’m like a hunted animal finally noticing the deadly predator right in front of me. He stands up and looks down at me.

“Give me their names.”

I mutely shake my head.

“Their names, Kit.”

“You have hockey, it's not worth it. You have to protect your reputations.”

Wren struggles. I can see him putting it together, and, finally, his expression clears, and he stares at me, aghast. “You’re the reason no one knows Raider has a pack?”

I fidget and shift. “It’s better this way. He’s got a really good career, and he has his own issues, but it’s better if he’s not associated with me. If no one knows about me, they can’t use me to hurt him.”

Wren is shaking his head when I peek up. “No, just no. This is wrong.”

I feel Raider enter the room. He’s got this intensity that seems to come from his dad. It’s potent. Charles Raines is a force unto himself, and both Raines boys inherited it.

“Why are you okay looking like the bad guy all the time?” Wren spits at Raider.

“I am and always will be Kit’s shield. Whatever he needs, I will do it,” Raider says slowly, breaking my damn heart all over again. I love him so much and every day a little bit more.

Wren stands up. “I want their names by the end of the week or I’m going hunting.”

I gape at him as he grabs his jacket and storms from the house.

“Well, that went just swimmingly.”

I turn my head and catch Ryann watching from the kitchen. Before I can say anything, she turns and disappears.

I feel dirty but slightly better. Wren doesn’t hate me. The relief makes me weak.

Raider pulls me up and into his arms, hugging me hard. “You should have told me. I would have got you out of there faster.”

“I didn’t see him straight away, and he was between us. I couldn’t get to you.”

“That’s what bonds are for Kit. You yank on em, scream on them. Let me come and save you. Stop pretending you don’t have them. We’re a team.”

I wrap my arms around his waist, loving the feel of his hard muscles.

Raider picks me up and carries me up to our bedroom, where we find Callan reading. He looks up as Raider lowers me, and then I’m cocooned between the two of them.

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