Page 190 of Fearless

He held her fast. “Why not?”

“Because how can you?” Her voice broke and she gasped, desperate to stop the tears before they got started. It wasn’t working; her vision blurred. “How could you touch me after you learned that I’d been with him, and that he’s…he’s…oh, God.”

He smothered her puny attempts to stave him off by tucking her into his chest, both arms tight around her, hand cupping the back of her head as the crying took hold of her and she started to shake.

“You didn’t know.” He rubbed her back, fingers delicate along her spine. “Hush, sweetheart, you had no idea.”

She couldn’t stand the sweetness, the acceptance. She hated herself too badly. With a firm shove, she managed to get loose of him, still crying, wiping at her messy face with inefficient swipes of her hands. “I should have,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t give me an out.”

“Ava, baby.” He smoothed her hair back, tilting her head in the process. “Fillette. You need to calm down.”

“I was sleeping with Mason’s cousin!” she burst out, a sob tearing at her throat. “He killed my baby, and then he put his cousin in my bed. Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God.”

“Ava, stop.”

But she couldn’t. Just like she couldn’t bear the anguish in his eyes when she was the one who’d done something so unforgivable. She rolled away along the wall, into the open room of his dorm, and rushed into the bathroom, locking the door before he could catch her.

Mercy waited, listening to her cry, until the shower taps cut on, then he made his way slowly back down the hall to the common room, where things had progressed to the point of Carter sitting at Ratchet’s laptop, clicking through Facebook pages and digging into Ronnie Archer as much as was possible, Ghost and the others peering over the kid’s shoulders at the screen.

Only Maggie was uninterested in all this, and she came to meet him, halfway across the floor, her pretty face drawn up with concern. She laid a hand on his forearm, a light, familiar touch, seeking reassurance. “Where is she?”

“In the shower.” He heard the unsteadiness in his voice, and realized the rage was in danger of spiraling inside him. “She…” He shook his head. “How did this happen, Mags?”

Maggie pulled her lip between her teeth and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “She…” She blinked hard, staring into near space over his shoulder somewhere. “She didn’t seem to want anything to do with romance for the longest time.” She shrugged. “But I’d imagine, at Georgia, without anything to compare him to, Ronnie was charming. And most importantly” – her eyes snapped into focus, shimmering, hazel and furious as they locked onto his face – “he was nothing like the jerkoff who tore her to bits.”

The truth of her words fell like lead in his gut. It all came back to him, didn’t it? He broke Ava; he left her, and she’d sought comfort somewhere else, with someone else…who’d been nothing but a plant all along.

The self-loathing was too terrible to take, so he redirected his hate, sent it where it truly belonged: toward Ghost.

He glanced over at his president, and felt the tension begin to wind through him, curling around muscles, strumming bowstring tendons. “Is he happy?” he said quietly, through his teeth. “Does he like what his little girl brought home?”

Maggie’s hand tightening to a claw around his wrist was all that told him he’d taken a step forward. “No,” Maggie hissed, low so no one around the computer could hear. “Don’t let this one thing turn you against your president.” She’d pulled the tears back, composed herself when he glanced at her face. “That solves nothing.”

“Then tell me who I have to decapitate” – he gestured toward the dorm hall – “to make her stop crying.”

Maggie’s expression tweaked, a fast flash of sympathy. Then her mouth settled in a firm line. “She’s got to work through it. All you can do is be there, and sometimes, that’s the hardest part.” Her brows plucked, accusatory, hinting at a warning.Don’t hurt her again, she wanted him to know.Don’t break her this time.

When he didn’t move, she gave him a little shake and released him. “Don’t make things worse for yourself with Ghost,” she whispered. “He’s on your side this time around.”

He managed to nod. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this furious and without an outlet for it. “I’ll keep her here with me tonight.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

She scrubbed her skin with Irish Spring until it was pink, and the water began to sting. She stayed in the shower until it grew cold, and her teeth started to chatter. It didn’t even make sense – Mercy had been the last one to touch her. But she still felt so dirty. Soiled, deep in the most hidden parts of her heart, so betrayed and wounded and lost.

When she could stand it no longer, she shut off the taps and slicked her hair back off her face, wrung it out over her shoulder. Then it was just the drip-drip-drip of the leaky faucet and the cold humidity pressing all around her.

Mason’s cousin. She’d let Mason’s cousin inside her, literally and figuratively.

She toweled off and found one of Mercy’s t-shirts hanging off the counter. It swallowed her up, soft and warm, Mercy-scented, hanging almost to her knees, the short sleeves ending beneath her elbows.

He was waiting on the bed when she stepped out of the bathroom, a reverse of two nights before, him with his legs stretched out, her with the damp towel.

She tossed it over the desk chair and finger-combed her wet hair, studying him.

He’d hung his cut on the doorknob and was in his t-shirt, the ink on his left arm black and clear-edged against his golden skin in the lamplight. It was evening, and a blush glow came through the high window, but not enough to light the room. Amid the lamp-cast puddles, there were shadows, pockets of dark, like the dark under his eyes and in the taut clenched line of his jaw. He looked distant, removed from her, though only two feet separated them.

“What?” Ava asked, feeling a cold lump settle in her stomach. She was sick already; she couldn’t take his censure or rejection, not even if she felt she deserved it.

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