Page 63 of From My Past
“That’s enough!” Kieron roars, standing up quickly and tugging my hand and pulling me up with him. “She’s answered all of your questions. You know when the abuse started, I know, she knows. We aren’t going to go around and around in circles, forcing her to relive it more than once.” Kieron snapped at his dad.
“We’re leaving.” He announces and pulls me towards the door. “If you need more information, you know where she is. But she needs a break.” Kieron says softly.
I realize he’s leaving a structured Clan meeting without the explicit permission of the Skipper and I hope Kieron isn’t getting himself in trouble.
Kieron pulls the door open and I glance back quickly at Kellan in fear, but he didn’t look angry, he didn’t look like he was formulating a plan to punish us, either together or separately. He was just looking at me, with what I could only think was compassion.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kieron
Icouldn’t believe my ears.
I’m one more word away from having to go to the gym to obliterate the punching bag. Or better fucking yet, I want to go to find Luca and pull his fingernails out with pliers and cut his cock off then jam it down his own throat. Maybe disembowel him and watch him bleed out slowly inourinterrogation room.
It was more of a torture chamber and I wanted to inflict some goddamn torture.
I pulled Talia through the hallway, away from my father and his horribly necessary questioning. My heart is beating so fast and so strong I’m starting to get scared that I’m actually having a heart attack.
“Kieron,” Talia said softly and she lightly tugged her hand from mine. I know she wants to talk about what happened, but I couldn’t.
“Don’t.” I said sharply, dragging her towards her place.
I’m fully aware that I’m being a prick but I need to make sure she’s okay. I needed to get her out of there more than anything. If I had to watch one more tear fall from her eye or listen to one more word as she tried to hide her sobs, I was going to pull her into my lap and hug her close to my chest, protecting her as best I can from the rest of the world.
But I couldn’t do that in front of my father, not yet at least. It wouldn’t be appropriate for his Second when we were meeting in an official sense.
Holy fuck, it took all my willpower though and I’m sure as shit that Dad knew it too.
“Kieron…” Talia’s sweet voice tried to get my attention again, and I kept pulling her.
“Please, Talia. Just a little farther.”
I got no response, and when I looked back at her, I knew I fucked up. Again.
Finally, we arrive at her door and I tug her inside. Looking back at her, I see her curl in on herself; shirk away from me and her shoulders curl forward as she tried to make herself smaller. Less of a target.
I keep fucking this up, especially when I’m so overwhelmed with all the different emotions that keep showing up. I push my hands through my hair, getting the rings on my fingers get tangled. I deserve the sting of pain as I rip the rings from my hair.
“Are you mad?” She whispered and the guilt made me clench my teeth a little harder.
“Baby, I’m sorry. For all you’ve had to endure. For all you’ve suffered. And I’m sorry I just made you feel like you had to try to hide.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying my best to calm my beating heart. “Yeah, I saw that.” I stepped into her, and wrapped my arms around her.
It felt like forever of silence, of her arms not around me, and just when I was going to lean back, fearful that I’d officially done more damage than I could salvage with my words, her arms wrapped around my shoulders.
“This isn’t your fault.”
We would be going round and round in circles of blame if I brought up just how much it was my fault. How much itfeltlike my fault. How even though I’d done my best to make sure someone was watching over her, I’d failed. We’d already spent too much time in the guilt/blame game.
Instead of saying that, I just burrowed into her embrace further.
“After hearing what he made you do…what you had to do to survive… how could you be okay with being intimate with me? With anyone?” I felt sick to my stomach about how she must have been so uncomfortable when we were together. Luca had used her, humiliated her, abused her, raped her forcefully, and hearing the specific stories correlated with awful thing…
“That’s what’s bothering you?” Talia said incredulously. Her hand lifted my chin and those gorgeous eyes met mine.
“Kieron…” She said softly, her hand cupping my beard-clad chin. “I didn’t want to tell you those things.”
“I know. And that’s another reason I’m so fucking pissed off because you were forced to. By my dad. Some of those questions weren’t necessary.”
