Page 86 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

I get up from my desk and walk over to her.

“I want you,” I say.

“That’s nice.”

I’d laugh if I weren’t so afraid of losing her. “Would it be so bad to stay with me?”

“I don’t trust you,” she says after a long moment.

A door opens.

“Aren…” It’s Finan.

I don’t look away from Kat. “I’m talking to Kat.”

The door closes again.

She lifts her chin. “It could be important.”

“If it were important, Finan would have said. Look.” I struggle with my frustration. “We are trying to help. That is what pack does. Help. Lean on us.”

Her eyes narrow. “Lean on you, you mean?”

“I’m not trying to trap you here,” I snarl.

“That is exactly what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work.” She spins around to leave.

“There is strength in a pack. If you can’t trust me, then trust the pack to help you.”

She stops.

I think I’ve gotten through to her until she turns around and says quietly. “Do you know what happened the last time I trusted someone who said I could lean on them?”

I have a feeling I won’t like what she’s about to tell me. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to know. I do. Especially the things that hurt her.

I shake my head.

“I told him how I’d wound up in foster care. When I refused to sleep with him, he spread it around the school that I was Rylie Cooper, AKA Trash Girl, the girl that cops found scrounging for food beside a dumpster.”

I briefly recall the headlines. “That wasyou? Why?—”

“And when I confronted him about it,” she continues in that same quiet, tense voice. “He turned vindictive and spread around the school that I’d fucked half of the football team and would open my legs to anyone who would pay for it. I spent my senior year having people throw dollar bills at my head, write filthy messages on my locker, and treat me like a leper. But senior year was important, so I turned up every day, went to class, did my exams, and graduated so I could get the hell out of that city and rebuild my life.”

I stare at her, shaking with rage.

"Then, in my freshman year of college, I met a nice guy. You can imagine, after Blaine, I was hesitant to trust anyone.” Her voice carries bitterness, yet her eyes reveal pain. "He was so sweet to me. Do you know what happened when I trusted him?”

“You don’t have to tell me this, Kat,” I tell her quietly.

All this is doing is hurting her and I’ve done plenty of that already.

I want to know more about her. I want to know everything about her.

But not if it hurts her to tell me.

“I was a bet.” Her laugh is bitter. “And I didn’t find that out until after we slept together. My first time with anyone and I was a fucking bet. I’ve learned that what happens when I trust is I get a knife in the back.”

I watch her go.

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