Page 52 of Only Mine
I can’t breathe. Shame, hot and brutal, swells my throat. “It’s nothing. It’s old.”
“Old how?” His voice lowers in warning. “Who did it, Wrenley?”
“No one,” I insist.
The implication that he thinks someone else had hurt me, that these scars were a testament to violence inflicted by another, is almost worse than the truth.
“It’s not what you think. Please, Saint, just drop it.”
He ignores my plea, his gaze unwavering and accusatory. “If someone laid a hand on you?—”
“It’s not like that!”
Tears prick my eyes, blurring the image of his rigid stance, the condemnation etched on his face. The weight of his scrutiny on top of the storm, the dream, his rejection, is too much.
“Then what is it?”
He crowds me again, but this time it’s not desire radiating from him. It’s cold, hard fury.
A sob escapes me. “I can’t … I can’t talk about it.”
I turn away, hugging myself tighter, the damp fabric cold and sticky against my body.
He spins me back to face him, the sudden movement sending a fresh wave of dizziness through me.
“Do you think I’m going to let you hide away until you tell me who put those marks on your skin? Is that why you came to this town? To escape someone?”
“It’s not?—”
“Don’t lie to me.” He gives my arm a small, impatient shake. “I’ve seen injuries, Wrenley. Those aren’t accidental. Did he hit you? Burn you?” His voice drops to a dangerous level. “Because if someone hurt you, I will find them.”
The possessive fury in his tone, the assumption that I’m a victim of someone else’s cruelty, is a fresh stab of humiliation.
He thinks I was broken by another. Not broken by myself.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper, the fight draining out of me and replaced by a bone-deep weariness.
Saint loosens his hold, but his gaze pins me in place. “Then make me understand. Who is he?”
He’s so sure. So utterly convinced. And the truth feels like a shard of glass lodged in my throat, impossible to speak but impossible to swallow.
“Please,” I choke out. “Leave me alone. Just show me a guest room where I can stay until Ivy wakes up.”
Saint doesn’t reply. The only sound is the dying crackle of the fire and the distant rumble of the retreating storm.
But nor does he move.
His eyes, those piercing blue jewels, are still fixed on my shoulder, as if he can burn through the thin fabric of the cardigan and see the truth I’m so desperate to hide.
Then he blinks.
“The room at the end of the hall,” he says finally, his voice flat. “There are spare clothes of Celeste’s in the drawers.”
Saint turns his back to me then, staring into the fire. The dismissal is as complete as his earlier rejection.
I nod, a jerky, puppet-like movement, and stumble toward the hallway, each step an agony. The plush runner beneath my bare feet feels like sandpaper. Tears finally fall, hot and silent.
And he doesn’t watch me go.
